Suggested Obama speech draft: Response to Muslim rioting over Quran-burning

My fellow Americans…tonight I’d like to talk with you -- AND at the same time address the entire Muslim world…on recent events that have grave implications, not only for peaceful international relations…but in fact for the civilization we have so carefully built in the West for the last five centuries.

I refer to the Muslim fury, now in its fifth day, at the burning of their holy book. It is appalling and repulsive to the rational mind, this furor over a book, and I call upon all Muslims who believe that theirs is a religion of peace to join with me and ALL civilized people to demand an immediate end to these demonstrations.

I now realize that Speaker Gingrich was right. THEY should apologize to US for the murder and mayhem – two things that Muslims seem to be very good at – that have accompanied these latest perceived offenses.

To Muslims I say: we are sick and tired of your one-way touchiness. You regularly burn our flags. You burn our Presidents in effigy. You never apologize.

Tolerance is a one-way street with Muslims, and that stance will no longer be acceptable to America. We will speak out emphatically against Muslim intolerance. If American lives and property are endangered by these demonstrations, we will respond accordingly.

But I don’t want matters to escalate, and that is why I call for an end to the violence. There have been over 30 deaths over this, and only two were American. Enough, I say to Muslims everywhere: enough.

And I also say this: we are a free country, and if someone wants to burn a book, be it Shakespeare or the Quran, he or she is free to do so. We as a society – and I personally – do not condone book-burning. But free speech comes first.

All religions say they are religions of peace. All have their share of violent fanatics. There are enough such people on all sides, but especially Muslims…to keep the world in a constant state of turmoil. This is why religion is such a clear and present danger to the future of humanity.

Religious people fail to understand that only THEY have to respect their holy books. The rest of us do not.

[PAUSE]

I look at the newspaper pictures of the shouting faces of young men, probably unemployed and full of anger, which their clerics cleverly redirect at the West. I feel sorry for those poor puppets who are incited to violence over the burning of a book. A book! I look at those shouting faces, and I see the demonic and total mind-control of which religion is capable.

So no, President Karzai, and all of you who cling to and revere barbaric medieval books: I will not apologize. Americans can burn the Quran or not, as they choose.

It is you, the shouting faces in the pictures and the cynical clerics who pull their strings, who should apologize…for your failure to transcend the 8th century in your thinking, for failing to join the modern world, for ignoring (or even rejecting) modernity and living by the psychotic fantasy you call a religion, for doing nothing, until very recently, to depose the regimes that keep you in poverty.

The Muslim world should join the 21st century. They should, but they probably will not – not when they riot over books and cartoons. If they want to wallow in tribal warfare, that’s their business. But the rest of the world must be allowed to live in peace and to progress as best it can. The vision of a Muslim world must be abandoned.

[PAUSE]

Once again, I deplore the violence over perceived slights. To Muslims, I say: Many religions, including Jews and early Christians, have endured far worse and survived. If your religion is truly strong, it will survive a little book burning.

End this violence now. And keep your religion in your homes and houses of worship…and off the streets and out of government.

And, my fellow Americans, I leave you with these words from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.”

As never before, the disease of religion threatens the very existence of humanity. People who become violent at the burning of a book are capable of flying planes into buildings and committing all manner of mayhem.

America stands on the side of science and reason. It is these, and not religion, that have always created -- and always will create -- a better life on earth.

I call on all peaceful and moderate Muslims to speak and act against the book-burning violence and to isolate and condemn their murderous brothers.

If you cannot control them, then we will have to do so, by whatever measures are necessary. We cannot allow Muslim barbarism and violence to govern our lives. We know that the battle against religious orthodoxy, fundamentalism, and fanaticism is a fight for civilization itself.

Thank you…and may America live long and prosper.

GM comes back: time to PAY back

“The way to conquer the foreign artisan is not to kill him, but to beat his work.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In the business world, everyone is always at legitimate cross-purposes, governed by self-interest.”

Harold Geneen, CEO, ITT, “Managing” (1984)

“In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running; if you stand still, they will swallow you.”

William S. Knudsen, 1939

On the eve of the Michigan primary, we are reminded of Mitt Romney’s roots, and sometime Michiganders like me (1974-91) recall his father’s car company, American Motors, and their horrid little cars like the Gremlin and the Pacer.

At least John DeLorean had a commendably cool car to market against the Big Three. AMC never did, it seemed. (It’s hard to believe that there were once hundreds of automakers in the US, but mass marketing and economies of scale helped consolidate the industry.)

I worked for a while at AMC’s Southfield MI headquarters, which had been leased out to other companies, including my employer, Michigan Bell.

One word

As I recall, one word doomed Mitt’s father’s 1968 Presidential candidacy: brainwashed. George Romney said he’d been brainwashed on Vietnam, in other words, told the government’s version, not the truth about how the war was going. He plummeted in the polls, and his candidacy disappeared.

I don’t see that Romney had anything to be ashamed of. We now have plenty of accounts of what it was really like in Vietnam. Maybe Romney didn’t back in '68. He wasn’t especially gullible. He was first lied to by his government, then found out the truth. What was the BFD?

Seven billion! Anyway, we’re on the eve of the Michigan primary, and General Motors, my former employer (1984-91), is posting record profits of seven BILLION. When I was there, four billion was considered a damn good year.

People in Michigan are happy. I doubt that the Flint MI -- the middle-class, clean, smiley-faced paradise of Michael Moore’s youth -- will ever return, but GM is back.

It’s hard to believe that GM once owned so much of the North American vehicle market that there was talk of breaking it up. When I was there, market share was accelerating on a slippery downward slope – but was still in the low 40’s. I predicted that Oldsmobile would go out of business. I didn’t see much of a future for Pontiac. And Saturn was a fine car but simply a decade too late.

How they screwed up

They got where they did by consistently underestimating the competition and taking their customers for granted. As late as the 1990s, GM executives had to be reminded, in internal speeches, that a returning car purchaser could tribute hundreds of thousands to the corporate coffers in purchasing and finance fees.

They failed to adopt Japanese quality methods, which – this was really radical – involved treating workers with respect; everything flowed from there: stopping the production line, treating parts carefully during assembly, consistent improvement, and much more.

Of supreme irony is the fact that an American quality engineer named W. Edwards Deming propounded these same truths. He said quality was 85% management’s responsibility. He was rebuffed by the postwar automakers, who couldn’t build cars fast enough to meet the pent-up demand.

Deming went to Japan, where the auto industry, rising from the ashes of WWII, listened to him, built quality cars (even, later, on American soil, with American workers!), and relieved Americans of those annoying trips to the dealership for one repair after another (one of my friends joked that he had his own coveralls with his name embroidered on the chest).

Labor problems

As for the labor problems created by shitty militaristic management, they had unions, contracts, elaborate grievance procedures, everything carefully negotiated between these two antagonists, who really had to work together to build better cars, faster; that was the essence of many management speeches I wrote.

Michael Moore just celebrated the 75th anniversary of one of an early Occupy action – the Flint sit-down of 1937. A really low point, from a humanistic point of view. Nothing to celebrate. The two sides fought like children for decades.

“What future?”

GM was late in adopting Deming’s methods. I remember one management seminar where the old codger was asked what he thought of the future of American management. He waited a beat, then said with a sneer, “What future?” He foresaw a lot of downsizing and outsourcing, a lot of job loss by workers and managers alike.

I soon realized why. I actually visited a union-management retreat, where no one knew who was who till the end. It was an enlightening exercise. I hope it helped a little.

In culture, GM remained counterproductively military, including the buddy/old-boy system and relentless boss-ocracy. The #2 man in the company, for whom I wrote speeches, referred reverently to the one person whose authority exceeded his as “my boss.”

Much incompetence rose to the top. Empty suits. Non-performers could flourish if they were nice, go-along guys.

White bread

Demographically, the company was relentlessly Midwestern, Protestant, and white bread. They built cars that they and people like them would like. Big, roomy, for family vacations Up North. Good heaters and A/C for the Michigan climate.

But they blew it. Top of the ninth, 10-run lead, and they blew it. Sort of like the Steve Bartman Cubs (Chicago in-joke). Let’s count the ways.

They refused to believe they could make money on small cars.

They didn’t provide for the aging and death of Cadillac’s core clientele.

They saddled themselves with impossibly expensive labor costs, including heath care and retirement. These commitments remain part of the cost structure, as far as I know.

Worst of all, in the interest of immediate cost-cutting, they made all the brands look alike. This despite the fact that each had been prospering on its distinctiveness and brand image, according to the aspirational ladder that Alfred Sloan had so craftily built: you started with a Chevvy and, per the American Dream, worked your way up to the Caddy.

I was aghast. Even a lowly PR staffer like me knew it was a dreadful error to trash all those generations of brand image and equity. Fortune magazine published a front cover with the lookalike cars.

This was the height of the “they’ll buy anything we build” arrogance. No, they won’t buy a Chevy with leather and called a Cadillac.

Starting from scratch

So GH had to start from scratch. Cadillac has done a magnificent job. Elegantly angled, jewel-like cars. And expensive! Just right for the investment banker, black rapper or other aspiring plutocrat. Buick has receded as a brand, preferring to emphasize its various models. Chevrolet continues to successfully pursue its link with patriotism and America, a truly appalling piece of marketing flimflam worth of Edward Bernays himself, but it works.

And the cars are much better. RIP, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Saturn.

I remember writing a speech for the 80th anniversary of Olds, in 1983. The banks of the Grand River, in Grand Rapids MI -- that most American of American towns -- were lined with lovingly restored, glistening Oldsmobiles from every era. Will these people still continue to bond over Oldsmobiles? Maybe more than ever. They’ll never build another 442.

Creative destruction - NOT

The creative destruction of capitalism continues, but retarded and reversed by the heavy hand of Obama socialism. Was GM too big to fail? I don’t see it that way. Many of their operations were viable and could have been sold off. They could pay off the remaining workers and dealers the same way they presumably paid off the workers and dealers of the brands that disappeared.

As for Flint, I have some sympathy, but it’s limited. They allowed all their milk to come from one teat, which was fine as long as it kept flowing. No one had the foresight to diversify the economy and invite other businesses in when Flint was prospering.

So Michael Moore’s paradise turned to a toxic slum, and it was supposedly all GM’s fault. I don’t think so.

First of all, Moore has the timing wrong. It was AFTER the recession of the early 80s that GM started moving jobs south of the border.

More important: Flint paid the price for depending on one company and has only itself to blame for what happened.

Roger and Me

BTW, the Roger whom Moore kept trying to meet in his movie, CEO Roger Smith, was the Roger that I wrote speeches for. A very nice, smart guy who tried a lot of things to shake up GM’s culture of dependency, bossocracy and cronyism -- H. Ross Perot (a story in itself), legal luminary Elmer Johnson, Superstar economist Marina Whitman.

Nothing worked.

At the same time, the government was closing in with impossible fuel-economy requirements (30 years later, we’re still just as dependent on foreign oil), making it necessary for the company to lose money on small cars in order to sell enough of them.

It was still taking way too long to get new products to market. And the trashing of brand equity was a fatal error, guaranteeing the death of one or more brands.

The great irony was that GM was recklessly proliferating parts that the customer could NOT see. Nine different air conditioner hoses where one would do. Repeat that error a few thousand times and you have a major cost burden.

A car just for you

Add to that the customization that GM promised but found extremely expensive to deliver. I recall a presentation at which it was explained that a Toyota Corolla came in 32 variations. With the equivalent car, a Chevy Cavalier, the number of possible cars, because of the plethora of options, was in the tens of millions.

One of the things Roger tried and was almost successful at…was Saturn. I also wrote the executive speech delivered to the first group of Saturn dealers.

Sigh. These auto entrepreneurs, already successful, had put their money on the line for Saturn. And GM failed them. They had a car culture going there for a while, driven by the gravel voice and homey commercials of Hal Riney, but they couldn‘t sustain it.

They started building Saturns at other plants, although the Spring Hill, Tennessee facility itself, state-of-the art and environmental to a fault, had been part of the Saturn culture. And, as mentioned, they were ten years too late.

Doing what they’re supposed to do So GM’s back, doing what capitalism is supposed to do: generating wealth for the senior executives and the shareholders, especially the large pension funds. They’re once again building cars that people want to buy.

Now it’s time to PAY back. I have not heard or read one thing about that. A portion of the annual revenue must go back to the American people, who, trusting business-whore Obama’s judgment, allowed GM and Chrysler to survive. Payment every year, whether they make money or not, until every cent is paid back.

I don‘t wonder that execs who are now back in Fat City (there’s no beating the corporate jet for travel comfort) lose no sleep over not paying back the Americans who rescued them. That’s what they’re paid to do.

The cat, the flashlight, and the fragility of science

“Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.”

Hippocrates

“If the kind of God exists who would damn me for not working out a deal with him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.”

Mary McCarthy

“Prayer is like a rocking chair: It’ll give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.”

Gypsy Rose Lee

If I weren't already concerned about the fragility of science, I would be more than a bit disturbed by the comments of Robert N. McCauley, a philosopher of science at Emory U., in an interview by the Boston Globe (January 8, 2012).

But I was already concerned. Two centuries after the Enlightenment, I saw the persistence of religion, generation after generation, saw my contemporaries grow up and repeat the same old rituals. I started to feet like an idiot who had gotten it completely wrong. Thirty years ago, I saw some weakening of religion in Western Europe and Scandinavia, and I thought the progress of reason would be halting at best. But there would be progress, right? Exceeding expectations: ”God’s match for you”

Well, reality has exceeded my worst expectations. Fundamentalist religion is alive and well in most of the world, exerting a powerful influence on society and politics. The primitive Abrahamic religions ruthlessly occupy center stage all over the globe.

More bad news: Technologies created by science are blithely turned into vehicles of fantasy. Christianmingle.com, with membership in the millions (that alone is cause for alarm), advertises that if you join, you’ll ”find God’s match for you.” So the deity is wired into cyberspace, and Chrstianmingle.com merely does his will. A bold claim. What other commercial site claims that it delivers God’s will?

Religious wars continue to flare. Muslims fight themselves and many other groups around the world. No news there.

Perhaps worst of all, huge majorities in this Puritanical, evangelical land of ours, profess belief in God, consider America a Christian nation, and connect patriotism to Christianity (hence the Christianization of the military and the mistreatment of atheists). From somewhere there appeared $27 million to build a Museum of Creationism.

Wrong museum!!

I think the old USSR had the right idea. In the 1960s, in (then) Leningrad, I visited the Museum of the History of Religion. It was all there, in gory detail: the Inquisitions, crusades, persecutions, and atrocities. Life-sized replicas of torture instruments. I loved it. Why is there no such museum in the US?

So yes, I have been concerned about the progress of reason for many years. And Dr. McCauley has made me even more concerned: “If you consider how the human mind actually works, science faces challenges even when it seems ascendant. Religion is too intuitive, too natural a style for thinking, to be gotten rid of.”

He notes that “science is extremely unnatural. That's why scientists have to take courses in all these things – and then it's still hard. The products of scientific reflection are inevitably radically counterintuitive. They challenge common sense."

Religion and politics

That’s certain true of much of modern physics, beginning with quantum mechanics. Now much of the language – of ‘branes and multiverses and strings -- verges on the poetic. There may be physical or mathematical data supporting the concepts, but they’re probably beyond the reach of non-specialists.

The unnaturalness of science vis-à-vis the human brain may account for its infrequency in our world, which is a real problem, because, as the professor notes, political leaders seldom have the scientific understanding to make enlightened decisions. On the contrary (my comment), political and policy decisions are all too often driven by religion (did God tell Dubya to invade Iraq?).

McCauley also says that "If you look at the wide range of human cultures over human history one thing that quickly jumps out is how rare [science] is. There are many cultures where science is not pursued at all, to this day."

Indeed, there are places in our great land where science, if not rejected, is given equal status with religion, as politicians try to “teach the controversy” between “competing theories” and to get more and more Christianity rammed into the curriculum. A bill in my home state of New Hampshire (“Live Free or Die” on the license plates – what a joke) would mandate the offering of an elective course in the Bible.

The real deal

One more time: Let us not be mealy-mouthed about “teaching the controversy” (there is none; evolution wins, hands down), “reconciling science and faith” or their “compatibility” or their “respective domains.” THIS IS ABOUT REALITY AND UNREALITY, SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE. They are two mutually exclusive ways of viewing the world.

But so many people seem to adopt them both! Some of those are no doubt sincere (as opposed to pretending or posing for social reasons). How in the hell do they convince themselves of the truth of the Bible, of what cannot possibly be true and had been conclusively proven false by every scientific approach that has investigated it, from physics to archaeology to linguistics?

Understanding religion

Religion will be with us as long as we fail to understand it, as long as we fail to understand how deeply the religious impulse, to believe without proof, is buried in our brain. (This is distinct from the tribe/herd instinct, which is what motivates the wishy-washy Jews who occasionally attend shul, pretend they believe, and stage monstrous bar/bat mitzvahs.)

Is religion socially programmed, or are our brains hard-wired for it (whatever that tired metaphor actually means, since we'll never be able to find the complex neurological interaction, synapses, and pathways that produce religious belief)? Are we somehow predisposed to structure our world according to unproved beliefs?

Evidence from reality strongly supports the role of social programming. Dawkins rightly laments that religion always gets first crack at the kid, who’s never allowed to make independent religious decisions. He regards this forced programming as a form of child abuse, and I agree.

But there’s a lot of evidence on the “predisposed” side too. Evidence from my own brain suggest hard-wired. I was fortunate to have Bill Perlman, my father, leading the way; he was the first skeptic I ever met. If both parents had been more than superficially religious, it would have been harder, but I can’t see myself a believer, especially since, back then, happy to report, you could actually get a secular education, which enabled you to stand apart from religion and realize that it fails the reality test..

On the other hand, my brother, raised in the same environment, does his minimal bit of Judaism – 1-2 days in the synagogue at High Holidays, plus Seder, plus bar/bat mitzvahs -- and is quite happy with it. Go figure.

Never felt God’s presence

Although I spent the required amount of time davening, none of it felt as if I was talking to somebody. I never had the intuitive feeling of belief, felt the presence of God in my life, or any of that abstract, subjective BS.

Here’s where the cat comes in.

We have recently increased our family group by one, with the addition of a very sweet and trusting four-year-old female, whom we adopted from the Humane Society and named Oreo, since her coat is black, except where evolution has elegantly painted her with white markings along her chest, front paws, and haunches. When she curls up, she is perfectly camouflaged, which is why I closed the piano lid on her after she’d gone to sleep inside – but that’s another story.

Oreo is a prodigious leaper who can get to the high molding in our cathedral-ceilinged house, about 10 feet off the ground, in two leaps – first the cabinet, then the frig, then the molding. On the way down, she goes right from the fridge, which I calculate would be a 75-100 foot leap for me.

She is a perfectly tuned machine. Her best leap is from one cupboard top to another, across the stove, particularly impressive because the exhaust fan’s duct descends between the two cabinets, giving her a window of only a few inches to jump through. Makes it every time.

Chasing the light

Oreo has one weakness which does not reflect well on her species: she is attracted to the beam of a flashlight and chases the moving reflection as if it were prey. My stepson is able to strobe out her little cat-brain and get her running in circles, truly a whirling dervish. Her legs blur and her torso swivels as she tries furiously to nail the elusive prey. Dammit, gonna GET it this time!

This game never gets old. Each night the beam holds the same allure and is equally untrappable as the previous night. Sometimes she contemplates it, as if trying to process in her little cat-brain the difference between a thing and an image. But it will not compute.

When will she lose interest completely? When she processes the concept “uncatchable,” or whatever the feline equivalent of it is? Maybe never.

I thought long and hard before falling for the all too easy comparison between this behavior and religion. Religious people are forever chasing something that does not exist: heaven, salvation, eternal life, whatever. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed evidence for predisposition/hard-wiring.

The cat chases the light because it resembles prey – small and mobile. It does not know what light is. Hell, WE barely know what it is. But at least we know it’s not in the “grabbable object” class of phenomena, just as heaven and angels do not exist in the same way as cars and buildings.

And we shouldn’t be too condescending to the cat, because the response to light, the seeking of light, runs the length of the phylogenetic scale. When plants do it, it’s called phototropism. When moths do it, it’s often suicidal. When humans do it, it’s called lighting Hanukkah candles or jetting to Cancun. “Light = good” examples run throughout our English lexicon and our culture (and many others, I’m sure). What do you see at the moment of dying? Light!

A deep-seated impulse, indeed.

But the light is a chimera in the cat’s world, a non-computing concept, just as religious belief and all its trappings – stories of virgin birth, divine revelation, gods with thunderbolts and gods with multiple arms and gods with snakes for hair. Not real, never was.

Religious believers chase the illusion of gods and afterlife the way the cat chases the light. There is no evidence for anything in the Torah, so why believe in it? Why keep chasing the light of fantasy, twisting yourself every which way to believe it and accommodate it (e.g., keeping kosher – FOUR sets of dishes)?

Getting right with God

The religious answer: If only we chase the light, pray enough (= get right with God), kill enough infidels, whirl around enough, we’ll capture it. We’ll be saved. We’ll go to heaven, Valhalla, Paradise. We won’t die. Sometimes humans have decreed that finding the light requires you to kill others or yourself.

Who’s directing the flashlight beam? Again, a concept the cat’s brain doesn’t seem to grasp. Similarly, religious people don’t question the origin or validity of their practices (for sheer ridiculousness, see “tefillin”), beliefs, or stories – that’s doubt, blasphemy.

I’m not saying that religious practice does nothing for you subjectively. Some religious believers get off on the communal activity and hymn-singing, which correlates to the high pain threshold discovered in rowers moving in unison. High Church officials get off by dressing in effeminate brocade. I saw one bishop’s hat that belonged at a transvestite New Year’s Eve party.

Let’s just recognize that ALL progress comes from the scientific method. (Even the Iranians know that Allah isn’t going to build their bomb, no matter how hard they pray.)

The battle with religion will be long and arduous (the NH bill also requires that those who do not believe be defined as “atheists” and burned at the stake – ha ha, just kidding, but only about the last part). It will not end in my lifetime, for sure.

Walkin’ with Jesus

Science, though its rewards are abundant, reveals the complexities of life and the mysteries of the universe (some of them, at least), but it takes effort. Requiring evidence, documentation, experimentation, experience, independent verification – that’s BO-ring. Takes too long to get to the truth, if you ever do. Feels much better to walk with Jesus (whatever that means).

People want to believe. People love to believe. Believing makes them feel good. Believing assuages mortal fears with false promises. That’s what we’re up against.

The price of their feeling good about their retarded mythologies is very high: perpetual strife and even wider war among groups, each of whom is convinced it has the truth.

The best the rational minority can do is, as Jesse Jackson might say, is “keep science alive; keep reason alive” -- until the world is really ready for them. Keep pushing back against the forces of darkness, which threaten from every side.

Bible’s overrated reputation goes on and on

“Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.”

H.L. Mencken

“Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.”

Ambrose Bierce

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.’

Isaac Asimov

“Our Bible reveals to us the character of our God with minute and remorseless exactness….It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere.”

Mark Twain

Here in the land of “Live Free or Die,” the government purports to dictate educational curriculum – not a good sign in a supposedly free society. The legislature, as reported in the Feb. 3 Keene Sentinel, is contemplating a law that would require schools to offer an elective course on the Bible.

Say what??

Isn’t the damn thing in our faces enough as it is? Are there no other collections of folk-tales, pseudo-history and kindergarten morality that merit our attention? Is there no civilization, however primitive, that doesn’t have its version of how things came to be and how people are supposed to act? This is just forcing the dominant religion’s version to the fore once again. What is this, Saudi Arabia?

Fortunately, opposition was quick in coming. The best quote came from Claire Ebel, of the NH ACLU: “This is a specific attempt to hold one religion over others and hold a religion over no religion.”

Inflated importance

The problem with the Bible is its inflated importance, maintained by both civil and clerical authorities. The cause and effect is circular: It’s important because it’s always been – and that's partly because clerics have filtered and whitewashed its more primitive stories. Massive numbers of rabbi-hours have been invested in giving the Torah far more respect than it deserves.

Once again: the Bible is not inherently unique. It is very special mainly TO CHRISTIANS AND JEWS, who exert a disproportionate influence on the actions of Western nations. A heavily armed, religious nation like the US is a threat to the stability of the world. I wouldn’t mind if Denmark had nukes. But religion drives policy in many other non-Christian nation as well.

God and the Presidency

And of course, there is no way an atheist could be elected to lead this great land of ours, even though a person free of religious superstition (I’m willing to believe that Obama’s such a person; he just goes through the motions) is a much better choice, because he/she can make decisions without having to believe that God is on our side (they ALL believe that).

Milllions of people believe the Bible represents history, despite all efforts to disprove its truth (especially the most primitive parts: why do people cling to the psycho-killer God in the Torah?). Disturbingly large numbers of people believe without proof. There’s no debate about the folk-tales of other religions; they’re false.

NOT a Christian nation

Another factor that's inflated the importance of the Bible is the fallacy that every time the Founders said anything about God, it bears on the question of whether this is a Christian country. WTF? I hate the way religious believers cherry-pick their quotes, but that is the way of ignorant, devious people.

The truth is that some of the Founders were outright atheists. Jefferson cut out all the mythology and isolated the parts that were relevant and worthwhile. Maybe some of the Founders mentioned God because they were politicians and the rabble expected it.

The point is that the government they created in no way rests on religious fantasy. And before that, they didn’t rely on prayer to deliver them from the British. They acted exactly opposite to the church poster I saw in Troy, NH: “Put your faith in God, not yourselves.” Passivity, always. God will take care of everything.

God as underachiever (Woody Allen)

Except that he takes care of nothing. He didn’t stop the Holocaust (sorry, cheap shot). His resume is thin. Prayers may or may not be answered. Anything clerics say come from God – forgiveness, grace, salvation, strength – comes in fact from people themselves.

The NH proposed law is just another example of creeping Bible-worship. I’m sure it’s not the only such legislative proposal in this great religious land of ours. But give it a rest. There’s plenty of Bible study going on. Way too much, in fact. Along with all the Bible courses, formal and informal, that we already have, there are entire institutions devoted to obsessing over it.

Who the hell do these politicians think they are, deciding what knowledge is important? As one of the measure’s opponents said, the Roman Empire is just as important to our history and culture – why not mandate that?

Politicians should get out of education, stick to the Constitution, and concern themselves with the threats to our rights and liberties, chief among which right now is the government itself.

The existential message of "Groundhog Day"

Zen monk: "How should I escape birth and death?"
Zen Master Shih-kung: "What is the use of escaping it?"

"In this world, we eat, shit, sleep and wake up. After that all we have to do is die."

Inkyu

Once again it's Groundhog Day, which was nothing more than a rather witless locally-oriented celebration until Harold Ramis’ brilliant movie of the same name. It became -- and still is -- my all-time favorite message film.



Groundhog Day explores the everydayness of life with an ingenious premise worthy of Kafka, Camus, or Ray Bradbury: an arrogant newsman from Pittsburgh (Bill Murray, named Phil, as in "Puxsatawny Phil," the groundhog) finds himself trapped in Puxsatawney, PA, where, over and over, he wakes up at 6:00 a.m. to Sonny and Cher singing “I Got You, Babe,” and he and his producer (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman have to do the same local-color Groundhog Day story, day after day after day.

At first he can’t believe what’s going on. When he does catch on, he uses his newfound “power” to learn more and more about an attractive local woman (who’s always meeting him for the first time) and get laid. Of course, that’s what any guy would do.


Coping strategies


He then decides: what the hell? He becomes a libertine, a freedom-abuser. He consumes large quantities of sugar; he smokes. He even tosses a live toaster into his bathtub.


He realizes he can do anything – even kill himself -- and still wake up to Sonny and Cher the next morning. There’s no way out.


So bit by bit, his coping strategies turn positive. He starts to acquire wisdom. His Groundhog Day broadcasts become more thoughtful and philosophical. He starts to take piano lessons (every lesson is the “first” one for the teacher) and gets better and better. He rescues people from predicaments that he knows are going to happen.


He makes many attempts to bed his beautiful producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and, after many slaps in the face, sheds his arrogance and snarkiness, becomes a real person…and one day awakes to Sonny and Cher – with Andie in bed beside him. Something has changed!


Existential message


Just as Secular Humanists have begun to adopt Festivus and make it a festival of their own, so should we consider co-opting Groundhog Day as a celebration of the predictability of life as a context in which it is WE who must change.


I see it as a pan-Humanist festival. It wouldn't matter if you were Jewish, Chritsian, Muslim, Hindu...we could all watch the movie and celebrate our own power to change.


Same old, same old


Think of it: you will awaken tomorrow morning, with the same fundamentals all in place: the same mind in the same body with the same partner (or no partner) beside you, in the same house, with the same job and relatives. The people around you will continue to be who they are. If your boss was a demented tyrant yesterday, he/she will still be one today.


The macro environment changes a little, but it doesn’t affect many of us directly. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, politicians will preen and spar, insane religions and political doctrines will still have the same powerful grip on the human mind. Muslims will still be killing each other, Christians will still be trying to take over the US, and people of all "faiths" will continue to believe literally in their holy texts.


Ancient superstitions and rivalries will be as strong and destructive as they were yesterday. The battle between scientific truth and religious fantasy will continue unresolved. At least one Muslim will blow him/herself up, and Americans will continue to die in foreign wars.


People will continue to blather about saving the planet even as they destroy it. Politicians will promise change, but the only change will be that government will get bigger, and there will be more war.



Reactions to life


Marvelously predictable, isn’t it? And we react just like Phil – we can’t believe it (SURELY my wife/kid/boss/situation can change; it MUST!). We can't believe there's no way out.


We try all kinds of things to get away from it. We go to bars, football games, churches, and casinos. We run away to addictions of all kinds. Anything to “get away.” We even try to kill ourselves, quickly (suicide) or slowly (drugs, alcohol, work).


But perhaps on Groundhog Day, we can realize, as Phil eventually did, that through it all, the only thing that we can certainly change is our own mind and behavior. Like Phil, all we can do is keep at it until we get it right.

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Alan M. Perlman is a secular humanist speaker and author -- most recently, of An Atheist Reads the Torah: Secular Humanistic Perspectives on the Five Books of Moses. For information, go to www.trafford.com/06-0056.