OUR HOLY WAR

by Mags

The Vatican's Chief Exorcist now claims that Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the devil. The Pope is considering embracing Intelligent Design. Evolutionary Biology is left off a list of fields of study that can be funded by federal funds.

Americans are second only to Turkey in the belief in a mythological creation above a scientific explanation. Doctors. refuse to prescribe the pill, and pharmacists are allowed to refuse filling prescriptions which contradict their beliefs.

How close are we to a closed society where you and I will be forced to profess Christianity? How long before out and out fantasy is taught in our public schools to our children? Who will enforce this national "faith?" And, what will we do when freedom from religion, the Christian religion, is no longer an option here in the good ole U.S. of A.?

How close are this regime and this government to waging openly religious wars, and engaging in religious oppression?

When a community in Kansas tried to vote in only board members who supported the teaching of creation, the citizens of that city voted in favor of real education. They voted against the closing of the minds of Kansas kids. But, I wonder what happens if the Pope (does he deserve capitalization?) embraces the mythological Intelligent Design. Will creationism alone be forcibly taught in all Catholic schools? Will the pope (screw his excellency; he gets no capital letters from me) experience an uprising from his loyal flock? And, who in a million years would think we would be asking these questions in America? Certainly not me.

Christian religionists around the country have been home schooling now for two decades out of fear that their precious youngster might learn something other than their proscribed doctrine. But, can a national movement like the anti-Science movement we see now reverse this trend and send the liberal children home for their education?

At a time when we are told that Americans must be more educated to compete in the global markets, one has to wonder. What is happening here? Advances in biological technology will require us to have solid scientific foundations to compete, but even legislative trends are pushing us backward.

But, I digress. My point here is that we are being pressed daily to move backwards to a time of ignorance. We are chided for not accepting the most archaic of ideas as fact. In short, bit by bit we are being dragged by our heels into a time not unlike the Middle Ages when the church ruled all peoples of a nation, controlled all aspects of their lives, from birth (baptism) to death (last rites), and everything in between (marriage, reproduction, absolution from our sins). We find ourselves leaning over the precipice about to fall into a time when The Inquisition and Crusades were part of rationality, where actions like that were sanctioned as noble.

I can imagine that that is a powerful drug for one such as his popeness. It is a temptation that the devils running our country are not equipped to resist. George, “the decider” sure likes the idea of theocracy. This is not the first time that power has enforced an ideology. No, those with unchecked urges toward power and greed always manage to get here, delusions of grandeur and all that jazz.

A TV special on Hitler and Evolution and a simple statement by a hack pundit like Ann Coulter and now the population wakes up to the nightmare of evolution=evil. Evolution equals the enemy. Evolution = holocausts. How long have they used the term holocaust in the anti-abortion movement? Science is not to be trusted. Not even you are to be trusted. We are all children who must be led by those whose minds can contain only the most simplistic of thoughts.

It comes to us now. We must grapple with the reality that a band of outlaws are in charge. So long have we taken our freedoms for granted that we have fallen asleep. Just now, we notice that the basic freedoms which we fought for over 200 years ago are being eroded by smooth double talking, for lack of a better term, traitors to the American way of life. It is preposterous. It is unthinkable, but this is the current theme.

Bush has set the world on fire. He has managed to set ablaze religious and nationalistic passions across the globe. Some would say, intentionally. If there is a formula for fomenting civil wars, let us admit that the USA has found it out. We only need look at Columbia, Chile, Afghanistan and now Iraq. This is such a partial list. Those in power have manipulated US policies to dabble in the lives of others that we have fairly lost count. This administration has done nothing to bring peace to the Middle East, but rather it offers a sword, and with no apologies, but plenty of PR double talk that seems to soothe the politically illiterate, the religiously indoctrinated. How easy it is.

What stage is being set here, within our country? What happens when a government abandons freedom of religion and officially adopts the language of religious fundamentalists? What happens when myth becomes policy? What happens when the educated cannot seek or teach fact, but must teach fantasy, when they must accept and proclaim a lie? At what point will we face the irresistible pull to hate those who force us to accept their doctrines, who would govern us according to their law? At what point will our own culture boil over? Soon?

At what point will I lose my right to a valid education? At what point will I lose my right to plan my family? At what point will I lose my right to govern my own affairs, my marriage, my children, MY family, my own conscience? And, if we do not hold onto our freedoms by peaceful means, will we have to fight for them again?

We have allowed fools access to seats of power. We have been lax in our vigilance regarding our freedom. As I type this, I do not know what to do. I am hoping that you will. As oppression and repression become socially acceptable, I ask myself at what point will Americans say enough is enough?

Are these men full of greed and lust for power sowing seeds of dissension purposefully? Are they setting us up? Is it their intent to rip apart their own culture, their own nation? Do they cross the line, knowing full well that this is what they are doing? This would not be the first time that those in power promote conflict to serve their own goals. With these pronouncements they force reality into uncertainty. By these means, they make fact debatable. By these means the rational become outcasts and what is irrational becomes the prevailing point of view. The dominant culture has never been much of a treat to begin with, but this forces it over a ledge that not even the dominant culture can survive.

We are not alarmists anymore, my fellow Americans. We are those night watchmen; we are the guards at the gates. It is time to sound the alarm.