Note: This being the big Blog Against Theocracy weekend, I've decided to dust off and give some new face time to a few of my earlier posts on the topic. Watch for these recycled commentaries to pop up periodically over the next two and a half days.
It's a trend that's been building for a while, what with the fundo-evangelicals at the Air Force Academy and the disgusting antics of General Jerry Boykin, but now a group of general officers is being called to task by the Inspector General for appearing, in uniform and on duty, in a video filmed by something called Christian Embassy (which is affiliated with the notorious fundo organization, Campus Crusade for Christ).
Truthout.org has the whole story, along with a streaming video copy of the actual video. It's appalling to see what I consider to be a clear violation of the separation of church and state, and it's especially disturbing to have it come from the Pentagon.
I guess the next step will be "faith based" combat, where you pray that god will smite your enemies.
It kind of reminds me of a joke from the movie The Pursuit of Happyness: A guy is in the middle of the ocean without a boat, he's treading water, and another guy in a boat comes by and asks him if he needs help. "No, thanks," the water-treader says. "God will save me." A few hours later another boat comes by and the same thing, "god will save me." So finally the guy drowns and when he gets to heaven he askes god why he didn't save him.
The answer: "You freakin' moron, I sent you two boats!"
So I encourage everyone to join with me in supporting Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It's the premiere watchdog group that is instrumental in preventing this nation from becoming a fundo-Xian theocracy under the repressive iron heel of the American Taliban.
Friday, April 10, 2009
The Faith-Based Pentagon
[Originally published Monday, August 06, 2007]
Posted by Farnsworth68 at 7:30 AM
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2 Comments:
But Farnsworth,
What if there is no Church? What if there is no State? What is there to separate?
That sounds like a zen koan, but I'm sincere in my query.
Yep, that sure sounds like one of those "what is the sound of one hand clapping" questions.
I guess the glib answer would be that if there is nothing to separate, nothing will get separated.
However, human nature being what it is, there will always be some sort of social organization of people (i.e. 'the state') and some sort of active belief in some great power unseen and unknowable, be it Hairy Thunderer or Cosmic Muffin (i.e. 'the church').
So in my view, even in some super-primitive nightmarish Deathlands post-apocalyptic world there will always be a need to keep that wall of separation between the two. When they are conjoined and commingled, nothing good has ever come of it.
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