I received a disturbing e-mail message today. You know, one of those mass-mailing, "pass it on" jobs. Here's an excerpt to give you an idea of what it was like:
It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, it is very hard to understand why there is such a mess about having the Ten Commandments on display or "In God We Trust" on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the other 14% to Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!
My response:
Hey, why don't we carve the Ten Commandments on every public building? And make school prayer mandatory, too! All those non-believers who think they're real Americans aren't feeling alienated enough already.
While we're at it, why don't we go back to the good old days and make slavery legal? Heck, we could take away women's right to vote, too. We could start taking the commandments literally, and lock up all the Jews, Muslims, pagans and atheists. We could even arrest people for swearing!
What makes the Constitution a great foundation for our country is not that it is based on the religious principles of the people who happened to establish it. It is great because it protects the rights of the minority to have a dissenting opinion and a voice, so that people with different views can express them without fear of being persecuted. It is great because it established a court system that is supposed to protect the rights of any citizen who comes before it seeking justice, regardless of his or her political and religious beliefs. It is great because the law can evolve along with the society it holds together.
Love your neighbor, don't kill, don't steal, don't cheat on your spouse. Those are solid principles, and appropriate pillars of our system of government. But they are not exclusively Judeo-Christian principles. I don't know of any religion that isn't pure nonsense that doesn't hold them to be of central importance. But the world is too complicated a place to fit all the rules on two stone tablets, and they are not the law of this nation.
Telling people to "sit down and shut up" is not going to make this country a better place. That's fascism, and it's ugly.
By the way, I don't know why Andy Rooney's name and picture are on that message, because I've read that, like me, he is an agnostic. He did write the following, however (and you can look it up): "I don't differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural."
I wish more people would focus on our current problems here and worldwide (wars, overpopulation, gross disparity in wealth, human rights abuses, limited resources going to waste) instead of railing against anything that challenges what certain powerful people wrote down as gospel or law 2,000 or 200 years ago. Think about all the things you thought you knew when you were a child or a teenager. Do you still believe them all? Don't you think it's possible that as a civilization it's time for us to grow up a little, too?
Bill Ackerbauer
Follow-Up: Here is a link to an excellent analysis of the truth and lies contained in that e-mail message (the original text, not the plagiarized and fanaticized version falsely attributed to Andy Rooney):
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