Has anyone else seen this Audi commercial, where Shining-style people intone, "I've been told to desire a red sports car..." and "I've been told hollow status symbols define my worth" or some such hokum?
Text appears on the screen: "The spell has been broken."
In other words, now that you are being told you can buy an Audi, that's somehow different? Freakin' ridiculous.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Who Cares How Christian the Founders Were?
How Christian Were the Founders?
In this moderately terrifying Times Magazine article, Russell Shorto takes us to Texas, where an ultra-religious bloc of conservatives on the school board are trying to re-write American history books, to the tune that America was founded on Christian principles. Perhaps more upsetting is the attempt to push American exceptionalism: the notion that America is somehow 'better' than the other nations of the world.
While I take countless issues with listening to a man who self-identifies as a "Christian fundamentalist" and believes the earth is only a few thousand years old, and was created in six days, I am more concerned with this obsession to figure out what the Founding Fathers may have meant, or wanted.
I do not mean to cast any aspersions on the (often great) men who founded our (often great, but often not-so-great) nation. But they were doing their thinking and writing in the 1770's and 80's, for Christ's sake! (ha.) Two hundred thirty years have passed, and, in case people haven't noticed, things have CHANGED! Whatever the founders intentions, they could not have had the forethought to imagine a country stretching from sea to sea, with an absurdly heterogeneous mix of 300+ million people. They set some good ideas in motion, but to think they meant for their thoughts and words to literally shackle their great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren is the height of insanity.
The article goes into detail about Thomas Jefferson's phrase 'the wall of separation between church and state.' As the religious zealots are quick to point out, this phrase itself does not appear in the constitution; TJ wrote it in a letter, explaining the purpose of the first amendment. But, as several sane people have pointed out, TJ wrote the first amendment, so it's quite sensible to trust his interpretation of what it means.
But I feel the need to point this out again: Jefferson penned those words more than two hundred years ago! The population of America has changed. The ideas of Americans have changed. And the complexity and interconnectedness of the world has grown, seemingly faster each year.
So who cares how Christian the founders were? Let's look at America TODAY, and the problems and issues facing us NOW, and address them with TODAY'S solutions, and ideas that might well have been born sometime during the last two hundred years. America didn't stop evolving (and don't let us get started on evolution) when she was created. The Declaration of Independence, and, a decade later, the Constitution, were big, bold first steps. As a nation, we must keep walking.
In this moderately terrifying Times Magazine article, Russell Shorto takes us to Texas, where an ultra-religious bloc of conservatives on the school board are trying to re-write American history books, to the tune that America was founded on Christian principles. Perhaps more upsetting is the attempt to push American exceptionalism: the notion that America is somehow 'better' than the other nations of the world.
While I take countless issues with listening to a man who self-identifies as a "Christian fundamentalist" and believes the earth is only a few thousand years old, and was created in six days, I am more concerned with this obsession to figure out what the Founding Fathers may have meant, or wanted.
I do not mean to cast any aspersions on the (often great) men who founded our (often great, but often not-so-great) nation. But they were doing their thinking and writing in the 1770's and 80's, for Christ's sake! (ha.) Two hundred thirty years have passed, and, in case people haven't noticed, things have CHANGED! Whatever the founders intentions, they could not have had the forethought to imagine a country stretching from sea to sea, with an absurdly heterogeneous mix of 300+ million people. They set some good ideas in motion, but to think they meant for their thoughts and words to literally shackle their great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren is the height of insanity.
The article goes into detail about Thomas Jefferson's phrase 'the wall of separation between church and state.' As the religious zealots are quick to point out, this phrase itself does not appear in the constitution; TJ wrote it in a letter, explaining the purpose of the first amendment. But, as several sane people have pointed out, TJ wrote the first amendment, so it's quite sensible to trust his interpretation of what it means.
But I feel the need to point this out again: Jefferson penned those words more than two hundred years ago! The population of America has changed. The ideas of Americans have changed. And the complexity and interconnectedness of the world has grown, seemingly faster each year.
So who cares how Christian the founders were? Let's look at America TODAY, and the problems and issues facing us NOW, and address them with TODAY'S solutions, and ideas that might well have been born sometime during the last two hundred years. America didn't stop evolving (and don't let us get started on evolution) when she was created. The Declaration of Independence, and, a decade later, the Constitution, were big, bold first steps. As a nation, we must keep walking.
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