Peter Singer -- A Different Song: In response to Jeff Jacoby's March 4, 2009 op ed article in The Globe "Intelligence is No Guarantee of Goodness" even I a 150% supporter of abortion rights and free choice have a hard time accepting an ethical argument of Peter Singer that parents along with doctors have the right to determine whether the life of a newborn child with severe disability can be ended. That is, indeed, to me, a right for which it is difficult to argue. Ideas such as that, while in theory seem to have humane intent, in practice are very hard to employ. When does even a doctor much less a parent consider a child born with severe disability unfit to live? I envision the abuse of determinations of that fact as families think about the financial costs incurred supporting that child through its life even when the parents are not there.

There is a line, as a free choice advocate, which must be drawn. Full term human life is not the issue for me. Life in utero solely dependent on the mother to sustain it is for me the essence of the abortion debate. Adults have the ability through health care proxies to let others know what they want. An infant, however,
has no such ability and to think of euthanizing it after birth is too much for my moral psychology to bear. Singer's thoughts reinforce my support for abortion rights more than ever. It allows me to conclude that the freedom to choose abortion is, in reality, pro life. It is a right which could often eliminate the need for a dastardly deed to be done after a full term human child is born.

The Anathema of Yoo -- a letter to Chapman University Law School where, John Yoo, one of Bush administration's lawyers who wrote memos to George Bush justifying torture and other breaches of civil liberties, is a visiting professor at Chapman from the University of California Law School at Berkeley:

I have read your law school's rationalization for the employment of John Yoo as visiting professor of your prestigious university and find it abhorrent. John Yoo has treasonously subverted the very essence of who we are as a nation. He helped undermine the very foundation of our sacred Constitution and subverted our most cherished legal civil libertarian values. He wrote opinions some of which were enacted and some of which were not. Those that were enacted with respect to the advocacy of torture possibly could indict Mr. Yoo for crimes. Torture, as I do not have to remind you, is ILLEGAL in this country.

Employing a visiting professor who harbors a hint of complicity in the advocacy of such policies should be an anathema to you no matter what one’s political persuasion. Those policies he helped justify meant the overthrowing of the entirety of our nation’s system. His opinions try to justify the very tyranny of presidential power we profess to abhor. They serve to justify the imbuing of the executive branch with so much power it COULD have meant even the apprehension of many in your law school, many in the University of California at Berkeley Law School, many in Harvard Law School, indeed, many in any law school, any university, any home, anywhere and at any time. That person could be jailed, literally, forever with no ability to redress his grievances and worst of all he could even be a citizen of our country. The decision to do so would rest with only one man. In Jon Yoo’s universe that decision would rest with George W. Bush alone. Would YOU have wanted your fate determined solely by him?

Our Founders were dedicated to avoiding the pitfalls of tyranny and eschewed the idea that one man would be able to exercise so much power that he, on a whim, might use that power to levy punishment on anyone he chose. That person selected, no matter how innocent, would have no right of trial and no right to face his accusers to state his case. This should be an egregious affront not only to ALL those within the hierarchy of most especially a law school but to all of us, too, who love our Constitution and our country's form of government. Mr. Yoo’s memos constructing ideations of presidential power took the history of humankind’s hard slog toward civilized conduct and reversed it centuries. He did not bend, as Dr. King so eloquently iterated, the long arc of the moral universe toward justice but he twisted it to an unrecognizable shape of injustice so that any man occupying the highest offi ce in our land could do whatever he wanted without fear of consequence.

He ignored our separation of powers system. If our Founders wanted the system for which Mr. Yoo advocated in the memos he produced they would have let King George III remain as colonial overlord and the colonists would have been required to endure whatever injustices he wanted to bestow. The abrogation of those civil libertarian values, so necessary for our democracy to flourish, makes our country the laughing stock of the world when we attempt to tell totalitarian governments how they should act.

If our civil liberties cannot be maintained even in the harshest times then that must mean they apply only when times are good. Our cherished civil liberties are NOT simply for times that are easy but for also times that are hard. Mr. Yoo, in my opinion, should not be teaching at an institution that values the rule of law and his employment there or anywhere else in an institution of higher learning should be repugnant to those who value the essence of our nation.

The Fatal Fatwa: The article entitled "The Yoga Fatwa" in the February 27, 2009 The Boston Globe op ed written by Renee Loth says it all. She excellently explains why America, even with its frailties, is preferable to many other cultures. I am not an American exceptionalist impervious to American shortcomings or bad policies but a story such as this which talks about countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Egypt banning something as innocuous as Yoga drives home that point. How can banning something as benign as Yoga or for that matter blowing up ancient statues of the Buddha, or killing someone because they paint a cartoon be defended in any way? Loth takes aim at Europe, too, with their culture clash and the banning of Islamic head scarves. She even admits to our own, at times, American intolerance.

Who in this county would even think, though, to file a bill for the government to ban yoga, blow up Buddha statues, or make the wearing of an Islamic veil a criminal offense? Religious secularism, despite attempts at times to reverse it, still prevails. Multiculturalism is the essence of who we are.

For all of our shortcomings I agree with Ms. Loth. I'll take this country and its secular tradition -- albeit compromised at times -- any day over any other place on earth!

Forgot to add -- The President's Speech -- one word -- BRILLIANT! Now let's hope he can implement it AND I hope the banks do not fail, and Pakistan does not explode! Beyond that I feel safe.

Dowd Does it Again: Maureen Dowd hits yet another home run. How true her thoughts are. This one is entitled "I Ponied Up for Cheryl Crow"
Great reading link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25dowd.html?_r=1


I particularly love the line:

"The bank cloaks itself in a philanthropic glow while wasting our money, acting like the American Cancer Society when in fact it’s a cancer on American society."

While I am at it and do not have much time today -- to sum up the president's first
speech before a joint session of Congress: BRILLIANT !!! This man, if all he says works, yes, will walk on water.

This was written in response to an article by Betsy Hart in the Metro West News entitled "When your child sasses the principal.

The Vulgarization of America: Steve Allen wrote a book entitled "Vulgarians at the Gate" where he talks about and criticizes the vulgarization of contemporary culture. As an attendee of Boston University (the Berkeley of the East) during the turbulent late 1960's I often nostalgically look back on that time as the first time in my life I experienced purpose and hope. That era brought necessary change for blacks, for women, for the environment, for the understanding of sexuality and it encouraged a new found freedom of inquiry and verbal exchange.

I also look back on that era with some profound sadness, doubt, regret and even some guilt. I fear that maybe some of those changes brought with them a variety of dysfunctions. The new found freedoms of critical analysis ushered in a violence, a promiscuity, addiction and a general lack of civility for what is permissible and what it not in the course of human relationships. It became okay to say anything, do anything, sleep with anyone and treat one's superiors like they were not superior at all.

We felt we should get along with everyone BUT we really didn't have to if we didn't want to. I feel so old when I say in my day but I will say it anyway -- In MY day in high school we would NEVER EVER think of "dissing" a teacher even IF that teacher was consummately wrong. We held our breath at the ones who dared. Is is right to be in such fear of after all mere mortals? No, I think not. We must, though, if we are to remain civilized TREAT each other, most especially those who are trying to educate and/or protect us with respect. It is that respect which is missing and I fear the genie can not be placed back in the bottle. There is, indeed, a crudity, coarseness, outrageous behavior and speech which is sanctioned now but never would have been in bygone eras.

When I visited the old South High School over a decade ago the lockers were defaced, doors removed from the bathrooms and there was, I felt, a general sense that the respect WE once had for not only the building but what the building represented, was gone. It made me cry and wonder if our generation ushered in something terribly wrong. Perhaps it did. Still, I would not want to return to the days of yesteryear when we did not question and we were not critical of a system that begged for criticism. I wonder, though, if we could not have done that in a kinder, gentler and more civilized way. Something good, civil and right has, I think, gone and my fear is that we will never be able to get it back.

Why I am what I am: READ this article link below appearing in the Metro Section of the Globe today. THIS is why I cannot let what the Vatican has done go. This is the example extraordinaire that sets my blood on fire. This is the story that makes me feel explosive and shapes my views and is responsible for my furiousness at the fate of the Jews. This story says EVERYTHING about a deep seeded endemic view sewn into the bowels of Christianity that makes a POPE -- a POPE mind you -- want to embrace priests within this horrifically antiSemitic Order to try to in humanitarian fashion "bring them back" into the fold. The Pope has the audacity to say that he did not know Williamson's views when it is clear even from laity who KNOW his views and have heard them first hand or any kid who can use google what those views are. Read this article below and see the spewing told directly TO the people who know Williamson and served him and YOU TELL ME how you are able to defuse an awful anger at the HORRENDOUS injustice that for centuries STILL lives in a part of the Christian and especially Catholic verbiage and belief. Not only does it live there I submit that despite a few Christian fundamentalists who claim to love Israel there are STILL many who are antiSemites of the worst order blaming the Jews for the death of Christ. IF the pope did NOT know this then WHY did not someone in his entourage CLUE him in? Why? Because I submit they are in sympathy with people in this Order and want them taken back.

This putrid belief has legs. Their perpetration of the fundamental basis of the stereotype of the Jew as the archetypal planner, schemer, and owner of all things of money and power in the entire Globe bent on raising himself and annihilating innocent Christianity if not God himself must be held accountable. This they believe is the Jew who is the only one who could perpetrate a fraud of such huge magnitude to get even scholars from Harvard to believe it. It is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for everyone to view. Israel naturally is swept up into this poison of 2000 years. Arabs all over the world use these rancid beliefs, spread them and sell antiSemitic literature and transmit it especially to youth so that THEY believe it is justified to eliminate the Jew. It goes on and on and on and on year after year, century after century and leaves NO room for reconciliation or peace.

Now when I wrap my head around the massive six million -- SIX MILLION -- number I cannot let it go. I can't let it go, I WON'T and I strike out verbally. This link should be spread everywhere. You should read it because it says something and those who have been critical of me and want me to let the strong feelings I have about the Holocaust and those who are responsible for it by belief and deed can see why I just simply cannot. The memory of the six cannot die. It must go on from generation to generation, parents MUST tell their children and their children's children for all time.

Further, the world and Christianity in particular must own up and NEVER forget its assistance in the transmitting the necessary preconditions and dogma for the greatest murder in this history of man. The Vatican MUST be held to account for its part in those beliefs forever as should EVERY religion who holds these ugly tenets. Those bishops who still hold those disgusting beliefs should NOT be allowed "back into the fold". To the contrary they should be RE-EXCOMMUNICATED until they recant those beliefs which
have been in part responsible for the murdering of millions.

Just cut and paste it and send it on.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/20/bishops_vexing_beliefs_have_deep_roots/

Revolutionary Road a Revolutionary Experience: This film has become another in my own personal favorites. If a film makes it to my personal hit parade it means that it is, in my opinion, of intrinsic depth and phenomenal quality. It is so, I believe, in its content and in its acting. Both are superb! Kate Winslet's performance is simply riveting as is the performance of Leonardo DiCaprio. I was enthralled from the first moment the film began to its end.

There is so much in this movie to discuss and I will try to do so limiting and without revealing any crucial information. I could relate to Winslet's character who simply could not, within that time period, fulfill her desire to be something extraordinary. I could relate to DiCaprio's character, too, who wants success, sees the futility of a boring occupation and life but cannot quite allow himself to dare take the plunge into more exciting but unknown waters.

Their marital relationship is torturous because neither can give to the other what each so desperately needs and wants. It is a tumultuous and explosive relationship to say the least as each tries with futility to fill the void in the other's life and be what the other wants. Neither can deliver that. As Ratso Rizzo says in “Midnight Cowboy” there are "gaps" in life. The question here, I think, is can another human being fill those gaps or are we all responsible ultimately for our own satisfaction? What role, too, does society play in allowing us the freedom of movement to fill those gaps and live our happiness?

Too often, I think, one looks to another for the way to ultimate satisfaction only to be disappointed as one human being simply cannot do that entirely for another. The era of the 1950's and early 1960's with its rigid sex roles and unnecessary rules placed women and men too in the difficult position of looking to their mate to satisfy the emptiness in each other's lives within a stricture that does not allow for movement. If one’s happiness is not the other’s what does one do in a culture such as that? Truly, it is an impossible task for both characters to attempt. They are two different people trying to live a singular relationship that a marriage of that era demanded. Irrespective of when they first met, their relationship seemed wrong from its start. They were, however, trapped by the conventions of marriage and of the time in which they lived.

The antiseptic yet underlying combustible aspect of the 1950's is evident. It is somewhat reminiscent of the series “Mad Men” when during this ever-so-conventional time human beings submerge their feelings for the appearances of propriety. In that era one simply did not talk usually about uncomfortable psychic issues unless and until those feelings became a Vesuvian eruption seeking outlet somewhere and even then their depth was either misdirected or avoided entirely.

Without giving away the difficult end of the film it made me ever grateful I live in an era which enjoys the benefits of the revolutionary road of the late 1960s. It truly made me appreciate how necessary those changes were as we all strive for our own pursuit of happiness and because of that time have a bit more flexibility within which to move.

This film left me breathless and I fear my opinion above does not do all of it justice. Kudos to two other characters: Kathy Bates gives her usual excellent performance as the 1950’s prototype of a seemingly superficial woman selling real estate within very complex familial issues underneath the surface. Kudos also to Michael Shannon as Kathy Bates’s emotionally disturbed but very savvy adult son. It takes his pathological character to throw into view the depth and pathology of the Wheelers' feelings about themselves and each other. His character was a revolutionary road which threw open the window into the Wheelers’ soul and ignited the appropriate and only end which the film could have had.

This was a marvelous viewing experience.

This was in response to a Feb. 17, 2009 Daily News Story

Pardoning the Unpardonable: The article in Daily News about the now uneasy relationship between Bush and Cheney because of the Libby scandal was interesting. Link below.

When I read it it was as if I were Alice In Wonderland where down is up and up is down. How one could ever justify or promote in any way policies which led to the Libby conviction, I will never understand. How those in the Bush administration view the world and how I view the world is like we are living on different planets.

I believe George Bush is entitled to the last spot on the good president hierarchy. I think he should be judged after James Buchanan for a plethora of reasons. I will not make you endure my recitation of them. Finally, though, I found one thing to laud about George Bush and that is his refusal to pardon Scooter Libby.

Cheney, Rove and others should join Libby in all that has befallen him and more. These men were complicit in outing a CIA agent. To say that what he did is treason is, I believe, putting a good spin on the egregious crime that was committed. He should not even have had his sentence commuted. He should be in jail. The fact that Libby was not pardoned gives George Bush one plus point and one point only in determining the utter failure of his presidency.

Outing this CIA agent compromised our ability to get intelligence on nuclear weaponry. Who knows what Valerie Pflame may have found had her cover not been blown. I do NOT think that it is too extreme to suggest the outing of Valerie Pflame compromised the acquiring of intelligence by our country which could, over the long run, have proved vital. We will never know. Worse they exposed her to justify their own lies perpetrating a war that should never have been waged and which has killed, wounded, and displaced hundreds of thousands including causing the deaths of over 4200 US soldiers and counting. Worse still, if that is possible, it has upset the balance of power in the Middle East handing Iraq a bloodless victory and the Taliban an emergence in nuclear equipped Pakistan providing at least the possibility of nuclear war which could escalate uncontrollably.

Most, if they had done what the Bush cabal did, would suffer an unyielding fate. Those who have committed treason have been tried for much less!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/02/16/2009-02-16_exvp_dick_cheney_outraged_president_bush.html

Iraq the Worst and George Bush dead last: Most of the analysis one reads makes it ever so clear Iraq was the biggest blunder, probably, in US history. The political consequences of Iraq are huge. It put Al Qaeda in Iraq were it was not before, it commands a US presence for decades to come, has killed over 4000 plus of our soldiers, cost our treasury billions if not a soon-to-be trillion, it empowered the extremist religiously fanatical Iran, and worse it made us take our eyes off Afghanistan where the real action against those who perpetrated 911 really was. Worse still is the nuclear threat that comes not ONLY from Iran but more worrisome Pakistan, which already has 100 nukes, as the religious extremists and Taliban knock on the Pakistan door of power. Zadari, I think,is not up to the task. This is what George Bush the incompetent, unqualified and intellectually bankrupt president has wrought. It instructs what can happen when the man in the White House is cerebrally not up to the task. No excuses, we the people put him there.

I would argue the historians wrong to put George W. Bush as number 36, one of the worst presidents. I put him dead last as the threat he manufactured was not simply conventional war but nuclear. He went to war based on a lie and a neocon unquestioned whim to supposedly transform the Middle East. His rationale for war was to prevent WMD's and Al Qaeda in Iraq where each did, heretofore, not exist. Now, ironically, he brought the horrendous potential of WMD's to our doorstep and placed Al Qaeda in Iraq and beyond. He destabilized the entire Middle East.

We suffer the potential of those consequences at the worst possible time. Our economy is in shambles manufactured on his watch and our defenses vulnerable.
One hopes we have something left as we are surely going to need it. Things in the Middle East look very dire, indeed, and our prior gambles there have failed dismally.

I pray for President Obama. He was handed a bombshell.

This was a response to Reg Henry, a syndicated columnist's, article http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinions/x201660953/Henry-Darwin-and-the-evolution-of-religious-feeling about Darwin which appeared in the Metro West Daily News. I commented.

The Evolution of Evolution: Reg Henry's article in the February 13, 2009 Metro West Daily News "Darwin and the evolution of religious feeling" article WAS humorous as he wanted it to be. I agree with most of it. I think he covered the bases of what should not, I believe, even BE a debate. However, I have a few critiques of some of his thoughts. He says 'While the existence of God can't be proved scientifically, it can't be disproved either.' Of course, the answer to that oft quoted rationale for god is one cannot prove a negative. Moreover, the fact that he says 'Charles Darwin is buried in Westminster Abbey must be proof even Darwin believed in god.' This is proof of nothing but the fact that Darwin is buried in Westminster Abbey. My family is buried in Sharon Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery near Boston, but that does not mean everyone buried there all believed in god. Even if Darwin believed in god it still would not prove the existence of god. He is right, though when he says 'searching, souls do find the essence of goodness in myriad places.' There are probably 6 billion different interpretations of god and they find it in many places. Sometimes one can find goodness even by reading the atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkin's book, The God Delusion.One of Dawkins's disciples once said to me when I discussed with him my fear of death and the bleakness of eternity without a belief in god, that it is too bad we cannot accept life as it is and find the beauty in life as it has developed, as it existed over billions of years and as it exists now without having to be all consumed by the worry of death and the nothingness of eternity.

Darwin has had a monumental implication for man and science. His impact was multifaceted and absolutely unequivocally correct. Darwin's influence for the good is undisputed and only increases over time. We see evolution at work all around us. Archeologists uncover hundreds of millions of years of it every day, biologists see it in the lab among viruses, the AIDS virus did, if nothing else, prove it by showing us how cleverly the microbiological world can outwit even the smartest guys in the room by morphing so that man cannot develop a vaccine to prevent its poison. We see it when bacteria do the same so that our most heretofore potent antibiotic weapons against infection are often rendered useless as the bacteria changes to avoid its own extinction. We see it, too, as the world adapts to the external phenomenon of global warming. All life on earth is changing and adapting because of it. Evolution is real and it is true. It occurred in the past, occurs now, will occur in the future and can be proven endlessly. It will be true until the end of our time on earth as evolution dictates we all must die and it will be true even after that although we will not be around, singularly, to witness it. One necessary ingredient for evolution is time and planet earth has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to have had plenty of that in its 4.5 billion year history. Happy 200th birthday, Darwin, we literally owe the explanation of life on earth to you!

I sent this to Rachel, Keith and Chris Matthews about Congress's grilling of the CEO's yesterday. Not very well written but it gets my point across.


Theater of the Absurd -- Grilling of the CEO's: Interesting post I found on the Huffington Post blog. I must say I rather agree. Although I like Barney Frank he is counting on people to have short memories or NO memories at all of his utter support and entrenchment with Fannie Mae until it was not politically expedient and he turned. THAT is the kind of thing that makes me sick. You may want to talk a little about that or when you have him on nail him on that issue. And you may want to talk about the opinion below. It is at the heart of the sick feeling the majority of Americans have I do not know who posted it but I thought it worthy of conveying.

Here is what someone said:

"What great theater -- many Academy Award performances by the politicians of both parties. There were many Firsts.

Academy Award for Screaming at the People You Enabled Through Deregulation Legislation to Cause the Collapse While Accepting Their Campaign Contributions -- For the First Time Awarded to the Whole Committee, Both Parties.

Academy Award for False Modesty While Simply Renaming "Bonuses" Something Else (like "Awards") So the Good Times Can Keep Rolling While the Middle Class Sinks into Poverty -- Awarded to CEOs of the Major Banks.

Academy Award for Passing Legislation That Lacks the Necessary Protections for the Taxpayers, Such as Criminal Provisions for Misusing the Money and Reregulation So That They Can Appear Like They Are Doing Something While Making Certain the Campaign Contributions Keep Coming In -- Again, the Whole Committee, Both Parties.

Brilliant Performances All."

Eight is Enough: Jeff Jacoby in his February 11, 2009 editorial in The Boston Globe "The choice to have 8 babies" seems to equate the morality of a mother having eight babies plus the 6 she already had with that of the loosening up of society's moral standards which allows abortion, gay marriage, single parenting and the like. I submit he misses the point. It is not the fact that the mother had the eight babies with which I quarrel. I don't care if she has 20 babies or 30 babies or none. That part of it is not my business. I believe it is rather like smokers' rights. Smokers' rights end where my nose begins. Where my nose begins smokers have no rights. Likewise, rights of the mother of 14 to have multiple births end when the taxpayer has to pick up the food stamp, home care and medical bill tabs. Have as many babies as you like just do not ask me to pay, over decades, for any of them.

Reversed Course: Kudos on the dismissal of the Holocaust denier Bishop Williamson as the head of the Argentine seminary where he officiated. One must give credit where it is due. Bravo to the Church for its rejection statements of that bishop and its attempt to repair, yet again, its near irreparable schism with the Jewish people. It shows one what can happen when large numbers of people protest and reject in outrage historically inaccurate and damaging comments.

The promulgation of the 1965 Vatican II first by Pope John XXIII and then by his successor Pope Paul VI condemned historical and modern day anti-Semitism. It showed what a positive effect the Church can have on long entrenched virulent human behavior. The Church's document Nostra Aetate within Vatican II changed, hopefully forever, the Church's relationship to the Jews. It ultimately lead to John Paul II (a Bishop at that time) who recognized and ultimately atoned for whatever complicity the Church shared in the events that led up to the worst horror in human history, the Holocaust. Surprisingly, a then Father Joseph Ratinzger -- now Pope Benedict VI -- was a theological consultant to it. The statements of a heretofore excommunicated Bishop Williamson and his acceptance back into the Church by Pope Benedict the VI threatened to overturn that arduously achieved reality.

It must have been, indeed, a huge outrage which would force the Vatican to reverse course so quickly as it is rare for it to change in such short order and, indeed, is often slow when change does, in fact, occur over time. I do continue to question, too, whether the Vatican, as it claims, did not know Bishop Williamson's views. In the age of Google that is, indeed, hard to believe. Nonetheless, I accept a reverse course and laud them for it. This time the Vatican and the Argentine seminary from whence Bishop Williamson emerged did the right thing.


I post the link to the New York Times story below:


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/world/europe/10pope.html

Ever Vigilant: I just picked up my morning Boston Globe and I see the headline that says:

'Vatican tells bishop to recant views on Holocaust. Pope reacts after criticism worldwide ...
The controversy has damaged the reputation of the German-born pope'

I have not read the entire story yet but the headlines I think say it all. The satisfaction I feel cannot be expressed verbally. Suffice it to say tears are rolling down my face as I feel in some very small way I, through my writing in many publications about this event, have contributed to the chorus of voices world wide who were furious at the papal behavior besmirching the veracity of the Holocaust a tragic event which is holy to Jews and many others. I feel like I and others like I DID something for the memory of the six million and something for our oft beleaguered and besieged people!

I will read the story but it seems, at least from the headlines, that the Pope did the correct thing. I laud him for that and hope he monitors carefully what he says and even more carefully what he does. I applaud him for THIS necessary act. I remain ever vigilant.

A Reinforced Belief: I was reading my thoughts about my anathema of Pope Benedict's decision to reinstate a Holocaust denier Bishop Williamson. It was incomplete. In addition to what I said is the actual liturgy of New Testament texts which has sealed the fate of the Jews. Christians simply cannot get around its tradition. The current Pope Benedict is a traditionalist. I believe, more than that, he really has one part of his heart in history when the church was a vicious advocate of its literal text. That is why those three bishops, members of a fanatical Latin oriented Catholic sect and the one who denied the gas chambers of the Holocaust existed, Benedict "rehabilitates" and reverses their excommunication. Other popes, while most all traditionalists, had an element of reform like John Paul II and especially Paul VI in 1965 who promulgated nostra aetate which changed the culpability of the Jews for the death of Jesus.


They tried to bridge the gap between Christian and Jew. John Paul II very much tried to reach out to everyone. Benedict, though, talks a good game but then does things or says things that reverse it such as his indictment of Muslims. He KNOWS perfectly well what he is saying. He says these things and then comes out with an apology and says oh no I'm sorry I didn't mean that. Meanwhile people died because of those words. One cannot put the genie back in the bottle, though, and the words he says he KNOWS mean something. Former Cardinal Ratzinger aka Pope Benedict DID mean what he said about Muslims just as he means to reinstate the Holocaust denier. I think he agrees or wants to put forth that thought by his actions but then says oh no he doesn't believe it. John Paul II was Polish and saw his friends who were Jews just vanish. Benedict is a German and a former Nazi youth but dismisses that fact by saying he was forced into it. I maintain, this is still part of him even to this day. I always knew, if the church picked him as John Paul's successor, what he would be like.

What does it all mean and does the Vatican really have power? Catholics, and there ARE a lot of them, are followers NOT debaters and usually adhere to whatever the pope says no matter who he is. What he says means something to those Catholic billions. Personally, I think he is fraudulently deceitful. He says things and then takes them back and thinks it ameliorates everything. Well it does not ameliorate it with me. I have sent letters to many including Cardinal O'Malley of Boston in fierce opposition to reinstating the Holocaust denier Bishop Williamson. I will and ALL Jews should NOT forget this episode. It should not die with time.

Although many in Christianity have repudiated the indictment of the Jews for Jesus' death it exists in the New Testament, it is in there whether you deny it or not. Others such as Muslims who have NOTHING to do with New Testament text use it, too, as proof that the Jews are INTRINSICALLY bad. Indeed, they are not just bad for their policies but that their very ESSENCE is bad as Europeans said for two thousand years. The baton of anti-Semitic thought passed on to new hands but the old hands still carry its stain. False texts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an old Russian and European anti-Semitic fabrication, are now number one best sellers besides the Koran in, for example, Egypt, Syria and I'm sure elsewhere in the Arab world.

In my opinion, the etiology of anti-Semitism rests with that original document which indicts all Jews everywhere for the killing of the Christian god and not just then but FOR ALL TIME. That is a very heavy indictment to shake off and the behaviors it induced over two thousand years leads us to our current problematic disastrous situation in which Jews, especially in Israel but elsewhere too, exist. In my opinion, the existence of Israel and all of its dimensions IS because the Holocaust WAS. The etiology of the Jewish state is really, I think, basically that simple. I fear the controversy is with us until the end of time OR may be responsible for homo sapiens end of time on this earth.

I CANNOT forgive and I CANNOT forget and I cannot turn the other cheek. I am cognizant of ALL hypocrisy and ALL espousal and behaviors of inhumanity no matter who does them, Arab or Israeli alike, but to the end of my time on this sad earth, I will ALWAYS remember the bodies ... six million of them ... a number that cannot be conceived and cannot be erased. There has been NOTHING like it ever in the history of man's violent stay on earth. The history of anti-Semitism is unique. Its unique in its length of time on earth, its spread over vast geography and its cross cultural transmission over time. It is about a people who are less than one percent of the world's population (0.2% to be exact). The six million are NEVER, not for one day, out of my mind and Benedict, by his reinstatement of a Holocaust denier, reinforces all that I believe.

"From Hitler to Hollywood": I highly recommend seeing on PBS "From Hitler to Hollywood." Link below. It TRULY is an amazing work yet again that PBS, the station of incredible excellence, does. This is such a masterpiece documentary of an interesting, and, perhaps, little known time in Hollywood.

It is amazing HOW MANY actors, screenwriters, directors, producers musicians, score writers and the list goes on and on and on who were Jews who fled Europe those terrible years and came here. One by one from around 1936 to 39 when they COULD get out some did. This documentary is about those people...those brilliant and talented people who were swept up in the tsunami of the destruction of Europe of that era.

In a way, Hitler did the US a favor because they came here and contributed to our culture in unparalled ways. People like Peter Lorre, Fred Zinneman (Directed Julia) and a ton of others, Billy Wilder, Ditriech, Heddy Lamar, Paul Heinreid, and a thousand more who contributed so much to the arts especially film. Films like Casablanca, Double Indemnity, The Killers, The Sweet Smell of Success, Citizen Kane, Some Like it Hot, and THAT list goes on and on. I did not realize and have just RECENTLY become interested in film noir that it was almost entirely influenced by the German, Austrian, French, Polish and other Jews and some others of conscience who fled when they saw the handwriting on the wall. Noir is their experience in that they saw the dark side of life, man at his worst and film noir comes out of that.

Some who fled never saw their family again, mother, fathers, etc. Some could never quite adapt well to America but some did. The whole thing is fascinating and I guess
it is an example of why the Holocaust utterly CONSUMES me despite being born after it. It is the intellect of these people makes the depth and the breadth of the Holocaust which is dumbfounding and the people ... these people who were NOT
orthodox Jews but SECULAR Jews but it didn't matter. None of it. It mattered not that they were secular, patriotic, unpolitical ... it just mattered if someone somewhere knew you were a Jew. It becomes SO personal and it wasn't like these people were uncultured, did not like learning, dragged a culture down or were so different from the masses. To the contrary they lifted a culture up, loved their countries and were brilliant men and women like Einstein ... imagine EINSTEIN was forced to flee Europe to the US.

The profound character of those years in every domain whether, arts, literature, science, religion, philosophy, had an impact. It shaped MY own personal politics my entire adult life. After first learning about the Holocaust at age 8 in a movie theater newsreel which they had in the 50's, I became so literally nauseated as an 10 year old after seeing those pictures of bodies heaped on a pile I nearly threw up
not figuratively but literally. So I knew when I was older and became political I would NEVER be a part of the right wing. I knew the right no matter in what form I would be the opposite of what I was. I knew then Nuremberg must apply everywhere OR it applies nowhere.

This web site of PBS if you are interested is:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/cinemasexiles/

The Middlesex News carried a story today about the funding disaster of Framingham High. It is simply a sad story and a reflection of our times so I wrote to the News:


Framingham High -- a Time to Weep: I am a 1966 graduate of Framingham South High School. My heart aches to see such negative news about it. It is trying to plod its way through the quicksand of inadequate funding, a catastrophic layoff of teachers and, because of that, students are now sitting in study halls since there are not enough teachers to provide more classes for them. It is tragic. I am staggered by the extraordinary rise in taxes over the years which were supposed to go to fund educational facilities. Where did that money go?

It was a brand new school in 1962 when I first entered and I was awestruck. It was the best and we considered ourselves so lucky to have had the first “language lab.” I remember nearly all of my teachers. I still use Latin phrases, and words I memorized in Miss Vancavage's Latin class. I loved that school and my town. My heart breaks and I believe it is nearly criminal that it is so desperate for adequate funding. It saddens me when the quality of what I knew seems utterly diminished. The difficult times in which live and many other things engender such a story.

I went back to see the Framingham South building, which is no longer the high school, over a decade ago and found lockers defaced, bathrooms destroyed, doors gouged with graffiti and a general atmosphere that reflected disrespect for the wonder of a school and a community that would offer a person such a unique opportunity to learn for free. The desecration of that building was nearly a blasphemous experience for me and I was angered.

I cannot say one bad thing about a school that gave me a first rate education for free. I proceeded on to college. A family member went on to Harvard and Harvard Medical through the avenues of the Framingham school system. What I learned there I still carry with me. It was a time when students cared, when few brazenly spoke back to teachers, when there was no such thing as graffiti on lockers or bathroom doors and it was a time when no one heard of a lack of funding for classes. It was a time of respect for our school and the teachers in it.

What happened to that wonderful time when we did not know the ways of a depressing the world? For some, I know, it was not an idyllic era but for me, educationally, it was. I mourn that time's passing. I mourn Framingham High, all the other schools in Massachusetts and our nation that have suffered such a fate. I weep for schools that are a maze of mess where lockers are defaced, the rooms filthy, and the bathrooms overflowing. It is a reflection that few care and, I believe, not many do.

This story is larger than Framingham High, of course. It represents, I think, the vulgarization of our culture and it represents parenting at its worst. Add to that cacophony a lack of funding because of, most importantly, the Wall Street disaster and the brew is toxic. Where has our culture, our state and our country gone wrong? No one has cared and our country reflects just that.

My letter to Newsweek about the Bush White House stonewalling Congressional subpoena claiming executive privilege extends to the president even AFTER he has left office and therefore no one he deems exempt because of it need appear before Congress when he or she is subpoenaed by it.


A Government of One? Thoughts about the Rove Subpoena:

Either the Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution with separation of powers or they did not. If they did, which I think they did, and that document no longer applies, as Cheney is to have said "F" the Constitution, then it would be nice for the people to know the mechanics of their government has changed and the executive branch is an entity in and of itself responsible to, in essence, no one. I suspect President Obama does not think that is the case or at least I HOPE he does not and ultimately Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, Josh Bolton and others will be forced to testify before Congress through its subpoena or face contempt charges which will be enforced.

If everything in the Bush White House was done so legally why are they going through hoops trying their darnedest NOT to have to testify? Bush is really spitting in the face of Congress rendering it powerless over the Executive branch. That is not QUITE what I think our founders had in mind. Perhaps, President Obama, too, is thinking long and hard about this as who knows if, after he leaves office, someone will want to take him to task for something or other. That is NOT the way this republic, at least I THOUGHT it was a republic, is supposed to work. The executive above all entities in government must be able to have its singular power checked. The legislative branch is a body of many with built in checks and the judiciary likewise but the executive stands alone with awesome power invested in one man or woman. Either we are a government of the people and our representatives, including and most especially the executive, are responsible to us or we are not. I wish someone would let the people know.

Vatican Verity:It is infuriating, to say the least, that Pope Benedict has reinstated previously excommunicated bishop Williamson in light of this bishop's loathsome Holocaust denial comment. A price, in my opinion, needs to be paid. I read today that the rabbinate in Israel has severed its relationship with the Vatican and has canceled a meeting for next month with it. I laud those actions and would go even further.

I believe the State of Israel itself should send a profound message of opposition to Pope Benedict's actions and should concur with the rabbis in its dismay. I believe the State of Israel, too, should threaten to sever, in view of this egregious act by the Vatican, its relationship with it. The Jewish people and the State of Israel can never again allow such a preposterous slight to go unpunished especially by a Catholic Church whose behavior historically towards the Jews was more than reprehensible -- it was criminal.

Other popes, most especially John Paul, made inroads to greatly repair the damage which reflected a two thousand year church legacy of deplorable actions against the Jews. Benedict, a former Hitler youth, apparently has not forgotten and, indeed, I suspect is still influenced by those roots as he throws cold water on the Jewish people through the advocacy of a number of incendiary policies which knowingly inflame. He utters those thoughts and perpetrates those actions just the same. Pope Benedict slowly but surely is undoing much of what John Paul tried to accomplish by his uncaring comments and spiteful actions which serve not to unite but to divide, not to build up but to destroy, and not to encourage but to discourage decades of hard work by people of good faith. The reinstatement of Bishop Williamson is one insulting policy among others he has advocated. The Pope can make all the audibly pulchritudinous comments he wants but his actions tell a different story.

The State of Israel itself, in no uncertain terms, should STRONGLY condemn and threaten to sever its relationship with the Vatican as well IF it does not demand an immediate apology from and reversal of Bishop Williamson's beliefs. In lieu of that the Vatican should impose Bishop Williamson's excommunication once again.

The Truth and Nothing but--a response to the Palestinian segment of CBS Sixty Minutes: I thought your segment on the Palestinian conflict was incomplete. While there is no doubt the Palestinians who were in your piece were not a fabrication, there is much more to the story then what you presented. If Arabs had not invaded in 1967 that land would not have been appropriated. In some ways it has been Israel's curse. It has been the experience of Israelis when they give back land they get rockets to kill them for a thank you. Gaza is a prime example. No doubt Israeli policy toward Palestinians in many instances should be reviewed and humanely changed. A man should somehow be allowed to return to the city of his birth and soldiers should in no way be allowed to be quartered in a man's house, his children detained all without his permission. This is basic Constitutional Bill of Rights law. BUT there is no doubt, too, that many if not most Palestinians are from a very young age imbued with fanatical beliefs to eradicate the Jewish state and all Jews with it. Jews have historically had bad experiences everywhere they went and Arab lands were no exception to the rule. Jews were kicked out, killed and life made unbearable. Some still remain Jewish in Arab lands at their peril. Let's be fair. The Jewish state is an advanced western style country which treats even homosexuals with dignity. Where in any Arab land can you find THAT? Both sides have their axe to grind but Sixty Minutes showed only one. Maybe next week you will show the other!

The Long Goodbye II to a local paper: I have heard some decry the derisive goodbye chant sung with its accompanying booing as Ex-President Bush left Washington. Some have said it not only disrespects Bush but defiles the office of president itself. I could not disagree more. The entire presidency and honor of our nation has been desecrated by the policies of George W. Bush. Ex-president Bush is responsible for being asleep at the switch before the 9/11 attacks occurred failing to heed and, indeed, cavalierly ignoring warnings of it. He is guilty of invading and lying about the justification for the invasion of a country which did nothing to us thereby implementing the so called Bush Doctrine of preemptive war never before implemented by a democratic state. This has resulted in the killing of over 4200 Americans. The death count will go up, of course, as long as American forces remain on Iraqi soil and, moreover, as long as they are on that soil the threats from Al Qaeda, heretofore no threat from Iraq at all, will exponentially grow. The extrication from that quagmire will take the Wisdom of Solomon to perfect. The Decider, George W. Bush, slaughtered, ashamedly, in our name, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and displaced over a million more. Worse still, he has fractured a Middle East tinderbox. The list of his murderous policies besmirching, soiling and, indeed, blaspheming the sacred Constitution itself goes on and on and on.

George Bush deserves a lot more than simply a few boos and a derisive chant. All those in his entire administration who were complicit in these horrific war crimes deserve investigation and accountability for the crimes they have committed. George W. Bush is lucky if all he receives is boos and a derisive chant. What he really deserves is a cold bed in a cell. If The Hague does its job that may be, if he decides to travel anywhere outside of the US, what he so deservedly could get!

The Long Goodbye: To John F. Malloy in his Letter to the Editor in the January 24, 2099 Globe which says that the uttering of a derisive rock song goodbye chant as Ex-President Bush left Washington and its accompanying booing "marks a new low that not only disrespects Bush but defiles the office of president itself" is in error. I say the entire presidency and nation itself has been desecrated by the policies of George W. Bush. Ex-president Bush is responsible for being asleep at the switch before the 9/11 attacks occurred failing to heed and, indeed, cavalierly ignoring warnings of it. He is guilty of invading and lying about the justification for the invasion of a country which did nothing to us resulting in the killing of over 4200 Americans. The extrication from that quagmire will take the Wisdom of Solomon to perfect. He slaughtered, ashamedly, in our name, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and displaced over a million more. Worse still, he has fractured a Middle East tinderbox. The list of his murderous policies goes on and on and on.

George Bush deserves a lot more than simply a few boos and a derisive chant. All those in his entire administration who were complicit in these horrific war crimes deserve investigation and accountability for the crimes they have committed. George W. Bush is lucky if all he receives is boos and a derisive chant. What he really deserves is a cold bed in a cell. If The Hague does its job that may be, if he decides to travel anywhere outside of the US, what he so deservedly could get!

Yes, we did it and we are witness to it: I am not a praying person but I prayed last night and today that our president stays safe, and that he undoes the damage that was most especially the past eight years. We cannot underestimate the difficulty of what needs to be done. I pray for our new president’s greatness and I pray for all of us to be safe to enjoy this history. We will never, I suspect, see this type of historical moment again.

I have been watching people congregate on the Washington Mall since 6:30 a.m. The media is saying the crowd has been building up since 5:00 a.m. I will be watching through late evening when my eyes will simply not stay open any more. Celebrate my lovely, beloved family and friends (even if some of you do not support our choice.) Celebrate that we are free. It is the greatest gift of all.

More religious debate:

To answer Dennis's questions with I HOPE brevity. I believe science has answered some of the questions (ONLY SOME) of physical truths that early man did not know and the bible therefore got completely wrong. Therefore the bible in most instances cannot be treated as fact because it gets all manner of scientific truth phenomenally wrong. Early man did not know the sun was the center of our galaxy. The church fought that fact tooth and nail because is made man and his earth not the center and maybe not so important and went against biblical thought. Early man did not know that bacteria/virues caused infection and disease. I believe early man had NO idea regarding human sexuality. Early man did not know evolution is FACT and that our earth is BILLIONS of years old. Early man did not know dinosaurs roamed the earth before they. The list of the mistakes of early man and biblical mistakes is infinite. There are too many errors to enumerate here.

As for moral law, I beleive every culture even if polytheistic ones has to have moral rules. Even Communist cultures while we know they are worthy of critique had a moral law. Our own culture which is Judeo/Christian bastardized and still does morality by the slaughter in history of innocents but it does have a code of moral law. Every culture transgresses their moral law. George Bush the touter of biblical morality supreme crushed moral law.

I think people can obey certain strictures without god. A society functions much better if it does not cheat, steal, kill, bear false witness i.e. lie or do the nasty with everyone a human being meets. They can remain faithful to their spouse without god as many many if not most atheists or agnostics do. We see the most religious in our culture fool around infinitely. I believe the respressive nature of the Judeo Christian tradition makes for a crazy culture that does not know what to do with its sexual appetites. Just look at the Catholic church. My goodness just look at it over the centuries. There were many cultures before ours which had a moral law. Whether they obeyed it or not is up for discussion. To err has ALWAYS been human.

I do not say god is anything because I do not believe a sky god exists. Am I awed by the universe YES completely. Do I know what created it all -- as BIll Maher says in his EXCELLENT film Religulous -- I do NOT know. Religionists THINK they know. They don't.

I believe man is an evolved being. I believe life evolved from one celled organisms over BILLIONS actually TRILLIONS of years. Evolution needs one important ingredient: TIME and the right set of circumstances. To say anything else is sheer nonsense and science proves it so over and over and over again. Evolution is at work constantly. If religion had as much proof as science does they would be screaming it from the rafters. They don't and I think most except the supremely dumb realize it but try like hell to prove otherwise. They cannot.

Another in a series of dialogues I had with an individuals on a local newspaper site:

Religion and Truth -- I sympathize with your comments although I am not Catholic I sprang from a people whose influence on the New Testament was profound. The beliefs about Jesus are that which the human mind says they are. The New Testament Gospels are a compilation of different writers. It was written in Greek long after the so called death of Jesus. Even Jesus himself may be a compilation of many stories and ideas of the area at that time and significantly before that time. There is NO evidence that meets historical scrutiny that he even existed. There is nothing on Roman coins or artifacts depicting him or in writings which site him, with the exception of the Gospels, which have an agenda (and Josephus doesn't count either because it too had an agenda), whose historicity is accurate and believable indicating that someone so profound to the populous and such a threat to the Roman state ever existed. No consequential EVIDENCE exists. One would think a man of that impact would be mentioned historically, as other historical events surely are, in ancient Roman writings, artifacts or even on Jewish artifacts or coins. There isn't any. The ONLY things of historical identification which jet propelled this religion are human beings' cerebral synaptic connections which included the dream of an emperor Constantine before a battle and his wife's influence of him in 300 or so AD.

Likewise, the Hebrew Bible, too, was written by a number of different people. An excellent and scholarly book with NO agenda was written and entitled 'Who Wrote the Bible' by Richard Friedman. Some of the proofs, among several, that the Old Testament -- the Christian appellation. It is called the Hebrew Bible by Jews -- is written by multiple men are that (a) the writing styles of the Old Testament are significantly different (b) contain different accounts of the same event and (c) in the Five Books of Moses -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy -- Moses, the attributable author of those books, is writing after his own death; highly unlikely. The Bible emerges out of an assortment of pagan and oral mythological lore from a variety of cultures at that time and by those who preceded them. Some biblical stories are nearly identical to other pagan stories which preceded biblical text.

If someone tells me and then writes that my leg is paralyzed because of bad humors or because of a witch's spell or because a man named Mephistopheles came down and infused it with green slime, or because a supreme being hated me, I can believe that sure ... if I want ... but is it TRUE? When science became sophisticated enough it could unequivocally determine that a viral entity called poliomyelitis unequivocally caused that paralysis and it was not caused because someone hated me, or because I planted my crops in error, made a god mad by doing some trivial thing like eating a shrimp or by a witch's spell. I believe that simile is a good one.

Religion takes natural, physiological and psychological phenomenon and attributes it to some mystical, mysterious and inexplicable super power which defies the laws of science. That's ALL religion is ... ALL monotheistic religion everywhere -- is a compilation of men's (I emphasize men) BELIEFS, superstitions and mythological creeds which morphed into some cohesive (sort of) entity to explain the complexities and inexplicabilities of life. That does NOT mean that any of it is factually true. It is a shock to my system in the age of technological and scientific advancement that human beings capable of intelligent and rational thought still persist and rely on documents written between 5000 and 2000 years ago to justify just about ANYTHING they want to believe. It simply means human beings are capable of diverse and illogical thought because men fear illness, hard times, ultimately death and need to explain catastrophes which they do not understand to get through this life with significantly less anxiety. That does not, as my atheist friend says, make it true as much as most of us (including me) would LOVE to make it so. If one wants to take religion as allegory or metaphor that is acceptable but to pass it off as unequivocal truth is simply unequivocally wrong.

More responses to blogs others wrote to try to convice me of the veracity of belief.


You cannot prove a negative. I have read the New Testament and find it utterly ridiculous as a factual document. As metaphor ... maybe it's a nice story which can have meaning. Worse, however, the New Testament provides the rationale for Antisemitism and is saturated with it especially in the later gospels as decide is its accusation NOT against Rome but against the Jews for Christ's alleged death. It was the necessary precondition for all antisemitism which followed it up to and including most especially the Holocaust even until contemporary times in Europe today and without question in the Middle East. It has wielded MUCH negative for the Jews.

Each entity of the Gospels was written by different people in Greek and well after Jesus' alleged death. I do not believe in defying the laws of nature and physics and therefore I do NOT most especially believe in most anything which exists biblically. If you do then fine. By all means do. A person cannot walk on water unless there is a flotation device or a walkway, cannot rise after being dead for three days as the body decays and rots. Since Jesus is alleged to have been at least part human he would succumb to the laws of nature as he supposedly did when he was allegedly crucified. Certainly all those surrounding him would be subject to those laws as well. Moreover, even the fact that a man named Jesus existed is subject to distinct question. There is no evidence, absolutely nothing, nil, nada, no way nothing in Roman coin or artifact or literature which talks about a man whose death was mandatory because he posed a significant threat to Rome. There is NOTHING. Do NOT say Josephus because his historicity is not a credible.

New Testament and Hebrew Bible stories too are not new and grew out of much that was believed in that place at that time and well before in time. Much can be shown in Egyptian, Greek, Roman mythological lore, pagan beliefs which comes close or mirrors the stories of the New Testament virgin births, walks on water, healing the sick and rising from the dead is STREWN throughout ancient history among mythologies of various peoples.

CS Lews proves NOTHING and Chuck Colson, Nixon aficionado and ex-con, proves even less. These people have had life experiences, as most of us have had, which are difficult. I would say a jail sentence gives one much time to think there must be a reason for my suffering. Yes, there is. He broke the law. Try NOT breaking it and stay out of jail. All these books prove nothing. The only rationale for what you believe is that you believe it. It is NOT provable or scientifically verifiable and bears no resemblance to fact.

I am NOT capable of belief which has no capacity for scientific veracity period end.

WBUR broadcast a discussion of belief. I added my two cents.

Doubt: I have waged war with religion and on religion my entire life. Richard Dawkins's book "The God Delusion" was excellent as was Christopher Hitchens's book "God is Not Great." They sold me. I did not, however, need much convincing. At 60 years of age I suppose I define myself as agnostic but throughout the years I have religiously been all over the map. I was born Jewish, had a flirtation with Christianity in my early 20's, wavered like a ping pong ball for decades even returning to some semblance of Jewish ritual trying to maintain some tradition. The ball is at rest now. I am an agnostic. I do not believe there is a sky god but truly do not know if there is some other initiator of world being. I simply do not know. I envy, somewhat, those whose faith in God is solid as, I think, perhaps their fear of death is not as profound as mine.

I cannot believe there will be a time when I do not have cognizance of how history plays out. While I know I have not always been here it seems as if I have. So, death is not only frightening it is unacceptable to me.

Just because, though, I want something more to be true does not, my atheist friend always tells me, make it so. As Richard Dawkins once said it's too bad we cannot appreciate the grandeur of life as it is and not wish for something more than what is. Well, being placed in the ground, six feet under, my body decaying and my bones remaining is NOT my idea of a good time. So what else can I do? I live with those facts and merely hope I can experience many more presidential elections to come!!

Another editorialist Jeff Jacoby reply

Food Fables: I follow Jeff Jacby's pearls of wisdom. I BELIEVE I heard him on NPR. He was talking against the latest Massachusetts Governor's initiative which would have calories posted at restaurants. So called conservatives are so loath to have government control anything except maybe bombs or sexuality and oh yes, they LOVE to overhear our salacious conversations. Somehow in the conservative mind the government is so bad EXCEPT when they think it isn't. The truth is when conservatives so please they are MORE than happy to have government intervene and when they don't all of a sudden government is the pariah and their laissez faire credo screams for attention. If it has to do with sex or snooping sure conservatives are chaffing at the bit to use government to control it but guns, tobacco or food no way.

If conservatives have to put "compassionate" as an adjective to conservative then conservatives REALLY are NOT compassionate. IF it were up to conservatives I have no doubt there would be NO warning labels on cigarette packages, no tax on cigarettes, the government would have halted efforts to show how poisonous tobacco is and they would simply aver the tobacco companies are just selling a product and the individual has his right to make that choice for himself. Tobacco is so perfect an example. Putting heavy restrictions, labels and taxes in addition to HUGE civil actions against it has kept that poisonous leaf from killing even more than it kills today. Recent statistics suggest simply limiting smoking even outdoors is making the death from lung cancer drop. Outlawing a parent smoking in a car with their children will save lives .. kids lives...maybe even YOUR kid's lives. Many in my family of prior generations at a young age have a grave somewhere due to the effects of smoking. Thank God the government took the action it did. The Surgeon General's report on the effects of smoking in the 1960's began this hard fought campaign to educate about a product which the glorious tobacco corporation and ALL the political hacks associated with it were perfectly happy to sell and LOATHE to regulate. Government worked. Smoking rates have gone down throughout the years and deaths have gone down with it. I would still be smoking today and maybe even dead if I were not bombarded by the 1980's with medical government sponsored studies which made the realities of that disgusting product hit home.

Likewise, labeling of food products has been the best thing for me since (if you'll pardon the pun) sliced bread. The swill that the lovely corporations try to sell us in the guise of food is legion. From high fructose corn syrup to artery clogging hydrogenated oils, they take the BEST like whole grain out of food and give us the worst. Why? It is easy, tasty, has a longer shelf life and is cheaper to make. The public be damned. When my cholesterol in 1988 hit a high of 285 the understanding of nutrition was in its infancy and my eating habits started to change because of it. I read EVERY single label now and want to know the contents and calories of everything I put into my hallowed body. Think of how much money I'm saving the insurance companies and the state the longer I stay out of the emergency ward. They don't have to pay for my hospitalizations due to stroke, heart attack, a host of cancers and God knows what else. At least at 60 I am trying to avoid that. So far so good and I have the labeling and the government to thank for its monitoring of food (with the exception of course of that thing who was in the White House for the past eight years). Government CAN work for the good of the individual and yes, often to the cost of corporations. Tough. So the CEO in some corporation makes 50 million a year instead of 100 million. Makes my heart break.

In addition, I like places in which I decide to spend my scarce money to give me an option to look at ingredients and calories. Not everyone is computer savvy or has one to look up restaurant menus and calorie counts. It can't hurt and it just may help AND if they don't want to look DON'T cover the menu up or turn your head away.

I think you are dead (pardon the pun again) wrong the individual OFTEN is not savvy enough, does not have enough time and is too besieged by other things in their life to know what is quality to eat and what isn't. We are getting fatter by the second. My family has a significant history of obesity and diabetes. My mother, most of my aunts uncles and many other of my close relatives were and are obese. Numbers had heart attacks, strokes and othercardio issues. One cousin died several years ago of obesity related diabetes and I KNOW others will follow. So far I am 110 lbs because I am the healthiest eater in my family. I have the numbers to prove it. If an enumeration is not on the menu when I eat out I ask. Since I had polio it is a damn good thing I keep my weight off as I have had three fractures of my polio affected leg so the older more disabled a person is the more he/she MUST keep weight in control and how nice it is that we will be able to monitor the calories of that which we eat. So many who have Chinese food, for example, have NO idea the sauce is LOADED with sugar and often coconut saturated fat oils. They don't ask and the restaurant surely does not tell. Now they won't have to ask they will be able to see. I say GREAT!

Too bad it's costing companies money. Let them absorb it. There IS a place for government. In the long run I predict it will be well worth it for everyone. Health care will save money AND the individual might just be helped, a life saved and a quality of life maintained in the process. So what's so wrong with a little government intervention and TRUE compassion. I'll forgo THAT freedom if government gives up tapping phones and denying habeus corpus. Now that is TRUE government intervention. Truth is some humane government intervention WORKS often for all of us and may will even work for you and your family too!

In the Dark: Mr. Bennett's article "Dark Green" about the Medea Hypothesis of Peter Ward in the January 11, 2009 Sunday Globe was phenomenally interesting . I love it when new theories arise which tug on the reins of credulity and say wait a minute not so fast. Things may not be as one thinks they are. I had heard of the Gaia Hypothesis which seems to be the prevailing thought that the earth's contents (minus man) work in some earthly harmony to produce life until evil man ruins everything. It seems so rational. Yet, when one thinks about it the earth has experienced upheavals threatening its existence long before man appeared on earth. Moreover, one sees the destructive nature of our planet's power in times when man's influence was not so dramatic.

My own totally unscientific thought is that our planet is influenced by both things humans do and things humans do not do. I suspect it is neither all one nor all the other but both. How interesting it would be to live to see what happens. One wonders if man will control his own harmful influence on the planet, which I believe does exist, and, perhaps, even right the wrongs the planet perpetrates on itself. It is simply fascinating science theory. No matter what one believes it proves one thing; life is, indeed, precarious.

My Eternal Dilemma:This opinion below – with some edits – was one I left on the Metrowest News blog. I often have exchanges (sometimes heated but not always) on controversial issues with regular bloggers on that site. One blogger said and I quote what he said in pertinent part:

“ … except that I said in a previous post, Palestinians
should assassinate Zionist leaders, and I still think
that is a good tactic …”

Throughout the exchange I tried to entertain a balanced view. As I have said on my blog and in discussion, Gaza is an anathema to the human heart. It hurts me to watch the news of it. I understand the Palestinian side and I understand the quagmire that has been Israeli fate.

In the final analysis, though, I tried to think about my most basic view which was that I could never oppose the existence of the State of Israel, acquiesce to the assassination of so called “Zionists” (in my opinion an anti–Semitic cover word), and I cannot separate most Islamic states from their fundamentalist religious fasteners. I will be free, as all are in Israel to criticize Israel’s POLICIES but I will not countenance its demise. So I said the following to the blogger whom I believed, decidedly, did not take into account the position of the Jewish state. Clearly, my own blogging posts are mixed on this issue. When I gave it even more thought and irritated by the other blogger’s call to assassinate all "Zionist" leaders I iterated my basic view by posting the following:

I said:

The Zionists, as you insultingly call them, either show strength or the State of Israel as a Jewish state will cease to exist. It is that simple. When explosives are placed among families and children, when children are armed with guns and explosives, when an army is fired upon by its enemy, when a culture instructing young children to take up arms and wear exploding belts then the Jewish people, as I call them, have the right to defend themselves and the right to fire back. If one is shot at by a 10 year old he will be just as dead as if he were shot at by a 28 year old. We KNOW Hamas does unspeakable things to their own people and to their own children by placing incendiary devices among them. I too as you consistently say and as I said before, had an Iranian friend whom I thought was absolutely lovely. I have a Pakistani friend with whom I have shared meals. They are wonderful people. When we keep our conversation light things are fun but if we chat about Israel things get tense. So I stay away from that subject when I am with them. I know other Palestinian people who are kind, wonderful and would not hurt anyone. I love them. However, that does not mean I am not aware that as a political entity the states from which those people originate would eliminate my people in an instant. This cannot happen. This WILL NOT happen.

The world must know, and Israel's enemies respect nothing else, that the Jew will no longer cower in fear, act like a sitting duck and roll over because either a 2000 year old document moronically indicts it for deicide OR a Muslim picks up that baton and says Israel will be destroyed and the Jews thrown into the sea. It is, I know, sometimes a shock, to those who for centuries have not been used to Jews fighting back but since 1948 a hard lesson was learned. The lesson is IF Jews do not protect themselves then they will cease to exist and the world will care nothing. The lesson is simple. The Holocaust is the lesson for the Jew. It is immutable, ever present and all consuming to the Jewish mind. It is the rationale behind everything. No, Arabs did not create the Holocaust but most Arab states especially radical Islamic ones would be perfectly willing to pick up where it left off. Jews cannot and WILL not allow that!

Does it pain me to see anyone suffer? OF COURSE it does. Gaza is heart wrenching. But, truth be told again, I love my people, I love the state of Israel because it is the freest state in the entire Middle East, it is a secular state and it is a state which governs by respecting the religious separation concept. The Jewish people MUST have their homeland and they MUST have it with no threat of annihilation. That is an uncompromising existential fact. If it were not for, as you call them Zionists, then the Jewish state would not be. Fighting back is all Hamas, Hezbollah and the like understand. If this is all they understand this is what they get. When push comes to shove I am in love with the Jewish people and I will NEVER be unmindful of that. The Jewish people cannot falter again and they must not fail.

No Exit -- The Existential Nightmare to Nowhere I agree with Jeff Jacoby's January 7, 2009 op editorial. I am always astounded at the pervasiveness of the two thousand year old viral infection that is antisemitism . The Jewish people cannot seem to shake its onslaught or find the antibody to it. I also cannot believe how those who would take the Holocaust's name in vain and perpetrate the same Nazi-like venom still overwhelm me with ire. They get to me. That is exactly, I think, what they want to do.

When I finished watching the news last evening, though, I thought it was a particularly difficult broadcast to watch. I worry that Israel, as much as I support it, is losing the public relations war. Gaza is so horrific that I simply do not know how it can continue like this despite what each side says the rationales for it are. It reminded me, staggeringly and ironically, of the Warsaw Ghetto where a huge number of Jews were jammed into a small area with no food, no medical supplies no electricity, and no sanitation existentially trying to live in an unlivable situation. As a Jew the Holocaust is burned into my psyche. It is with me every day I live because I think about it every day I live.

I fear, though, at this moment the Jewish people morally are losing the Holocaust high ground. The slaughter of innocents in Gaza, although surely brought about, in part, by the intractability of Hamas, is a moral disaster and cannot, I think, continue. The invasion of Gaza has become so disgusting that I cannot even watch it on the news. It is a moral conundrum to me because my entire left leaning political philosophical bent was molded in opposition to the Nazi era and the Holocaust. I truly now do not know what the answer is.

My cousin living in Jerusalem emailed that Hamas is hiding in UN houses with children and puts explosives underneath as they know Israelis will bomb them and fuel a public relations nightmare. I know that. Your editorial was excellent as antisemitism and its direct relationship to criticism of the Jewish state has veracity understood even by Martin Luther King. I know that too. I know people want to kill Jews and eliminate the Jewish state. Where does that leave us? What does never again mean? Is it only in relation to Jews or is it the broader implication that there are some human behaviors even in war that are so abominable they cannot be tolerated and must be rejected by the civilized world entire?

The three hour cease fire just ended and the dreadful killing continues. More bodies, many of women and children, will be stacked up. So now what? Where are we in this struggle? Will Jews be better off for this? I do not think so. Grimly, I think we are nowhere and there is, existentially, at least for now, no way out.

Gagging on Gaza: I just finished watching the news. It was a PARTICULARLY difficult broadcast to watch. I am thinking that Israel, as much as I support it, is losing the PR war. Gaza is SO bad and SO horrific that I simply do not know how it can continue like this. I'll tell you what it reminded me of -- it reminded me of the Warsaw Ghetto where a HUGE number of people were jammed into a small area with no food, no medical supplies, no electricity NOTHING. the Holocaust is burned into my psyche. It is with me every day I live because I think about it every day I live.

I am thinking at this second in time that the Jewish people are losing the moral high ground. This disaster cannot continue irrespective of what I know Hamas would do to Israel if it could. It has become so bad and so disgusting that I cannot even watch the news. I simply cannot. I do not know what the answer is but this can not go on. That's what I am feeling at this moment even though I KNOW this is bigger than Gaza. These people cannot be used this way it's simply horrific. I can't stand to watch it. I just can't. Now if I can't stand to watch it and I almost NEVER criticize Israel then you can imagine what the rest of the world is thinking.

There were assaults on Jews in various countries in Europe today...antisemitism rears its head again. I am beginning to think Gaza is a cancer around the Jewish neck.

To Cut or NOT: Okay, what do I know about economics but this is how I feel and sent the below on to Obama who has a web page for ideas. I cannot help but feel these tax cuts are RIDICULOUS and he is pandering to Republicans. I KNOW some will disagree. Fine no problem. This is not eloquent but just stream of conscious and obviously just my opinion. It springs from a feeling I have which I find funny because I hate economics but sometimes I get it right odly enough. AND on I think it was PBS someone else who knew what she was talking about said the same thing about tax cuts after I had thought about it awhile ago.

So I said.


Personally, I have a feeling that tax cuts will do NOTHING. The Bush tax cuts did NOTHING. In this type of systemic downturn people will NOT spend the few extra bucks they have from a tax cut except to pay a bill or two. When things are THIS precarious tax cuts are NOT the remedy. I am against tax cuts really for anyone but MOST especially am against tax cuts for the very wealthy. How many times do we have to get burned to realize this so called "trickle down" effect did NOT work. It trickled down alright and not to the average person or to the middle guy. Truth is trickle down means trickle down into the already wealthy's pockets to buy the wealthy's toys like a new boat or a new or two BMW'S or three or 17 houses. It does NOT necessarily go for more jobs.

The tax cuts are not enough to do anything. We need rather (1) STRICT regulation of financial markets (2) stop unnecessary wars (3) curb spending for new weapons and war which is hugely costly (4) pay down the deficit and not create more and (5) use government money to yes create infrastructure, repair roads, bridges etc and work on global warming, alternative energy and stem cell research, and MOST importantly health care.. THAT will create jobs. Tax cuts do nothing.

If anything we need a tax increases. THAT would do the trick in paying down the deficit, get more money for infrastructure, alternative energy. reduce need to borrow from foreign countries and reduce our need to print more money increasing scary inflation of the 1929 German Weimar Republic type.

How to sell it is the problem. People need to know we are in deep trouble and that we cannot just keep raising our debt. We must pay for our government's immoral decisions over the last eight years and even more. We simply have to if people want to enjoy the things that government can give us like infrastructure, medical advances, health care and alternative energy, stemming of global warming.

I believe the American people IF YOU TALK TO THEM can understand the WHY of things. Try a fireside chat. It helped Roosevelt it just may help us!

The Right to Survive: My comment appears on the Newsweek blog (with a couple of typos). I dashed it off the top of my head so it is not perfect. Some may not like what I have to say. I do not care. It is what I believe.


My mother had a saying. You lie with dogs and you get up with well you know. It astounds me that the violence plagued Arab world sits mainly silent when time after time after time after time atrocities and the most bestial of acts are committed by Islamic fanatics. Think about it for a second. IF the Arab world had let Israel be, just let it be in 1948 and more than that just think if it took the opportunity to work together and to use Israeli brilliance and western advancement just think they just might be living and working together in a good place for humans to be; in a place that everyone would want to visit. Their families might just be thriving.

Instead, no way, they just could NOT let the Jews be. And to this day the world especially the left wing (of which I consider myself a part) stays silent about the brutality the Arab world visits not ONLY on Israel but on their own people! If there were NO Jewish Israel do you think Israel would be at peace? NO WAY. Hamas would be splitting Fatah's head, or some other fanatical group's head who think they have the truth.

Where were the crowds in the street with fury about Mumbai, or Spain or suicide bombings EVERYWHERE? The silence is deafening. But holy cow when Israel tries to say no more and defend itself wanting simply to be left alone the world suddenly is screaming what they think is their righteous indignation.

The Jewish people will NEVER NEVER again submit to the world's onslaught. NEVER! You will reap what you sew. Believe it. The game has changed and the Jewish people changed it for themselves.

Beyond Our Differences: I was absorbed yet again by Bill Moyers Journal. Beyond Our Differences presented a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak religious scene. Just when I thought there was some hope I checked the news in the morning, as I always do, only to see that Gaza was in flames again. This time Israel struck in significant fashion. So far nearly 200 Palestinians are dead and 400 wounded. There are Israeli dead too. Hamas has been striking Israel consistently breaking the cease fire time after time after time. They must know the Israelis will not sit back and take an onslaught. So the beat goes on. Tit for tat again and again and again people’s bodies are dismembered and death reigns supreme. Nothing gets resolved except the willingness of each side to inflict more death and more destruction on each other ad infinitum until, I suppose, the end of time if necessary.

The hopeful aura of Bill Moyers Journal of “Beyond our Differences” showing the commonality of the religions of man to me this morning was rescinded as reality spoke otherwise. I know the voices of peace are out there. I know it because I am one and am no less a Jew than many who are more militant. Our voices though soften with the reality of the tears we shed, and by the incredulity and powerlessness we feel. How many more, for what and for whom? Is a life worth land, dirt, stone, pebbles, a 5000 year old text or a less than 2000 year old text? What is a life worth and who says so? Who wrote these edicts? Did a sky god come down from on high? Each group claims that He did and claims He did for that particular group and no other.

The criticism I have of this episode of The Journal is that for every sentence of peace in the Torah, the New Testament or the Koran one can find an equal and opposite sentence of violence. Those sentences of violence serve as justification for the never-ending mayhem inflicted by religionists. The Journal in its effort to seek common ground fails to state the very elements of those texts which are NOT non-violent and from which fundamentalism gets its fuel.
One of the statements on this part of the Journal said that 95% of humans on this planet believe in a Creator of our universe. 95% is very high. I must be among the five lonely percent who does not believe in a Creator who personifies himself and takes one side of man over the other. I am sure in the Middle Ages one could say 95% of all men thought the earth was the center of the galaxy and the sun revolved around it. They were consummately wrong. So what does 95% mean? As an agnostic I labor about the question of the first cause and as Bill Maher says in his wonderful film “Religulous” I don’t know. I just don’t know what the first cause for the creation of the universe was.

What I do know is one can pray until infinity and no god is going to answer your particular prayer. Why would He answer your prayer and not the other fellow’s? Why would he save one five year old from Israel and not another from Gaza? Could there have been some all powerful something that began our universe? I suppose there could have been but is that all powerful something going to reserve particular plots of land for certain people and not for others? Most emphatically NO He, She or It will not. That, man will have to do either by taking the land or blowing someone’s head apart for it and he does that very well, indeed, on his very own.

No Doubt about “Doubt” I saw the newly released film “Doubt” yesterday and loved it. This serious multi-faceted enigmatic film starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams was, in my opinion, extraordinarily thought provocative and perfectly cast. The film was excellent.

The movie takes place in a private Catholic school – perhaps in Boston -- shortly after the death of President Kennedy. It involves Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), the strict, sour, humorless nun and principal of the elementary school, who makes accusation against a humane and likable parish priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman). She accuses him of committing an immoral act and mortal sin with the lonely and lone African American student and, perhaps, somewhat effeminate, church altar boy whom Father Flynn has befriended.

It is thought that by the younger, sweeter, more innocent Sister James (Amy Adams) on Sister Aloysius’s order to “keep an eye on Father Flynn” because of his sermon on the subject of doubt. Sister James believes, on circumstantial evidence, that Father Flynn may have committed an immoral act with the boy. She has, though, no concrete proof of its occurrence. Sister Aloysius is happy to do the obligatory assault on Father Flynn’s character when Sister James provides her with this salacious ammunition however flimsy it may be.

As I watched this, other excellent films came to mind. I thought about Lillian Hellman’s “The Children’s Hour,” a film about a child’s lie and the suicidal consequences of that lie as well as that lie’s element of truth. I thought about Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” and its false accusation of immorality when people see things even when they don’t see them and what they will confess to seeing even when it is not there. I thought about how easy it is to bear false witness, to think we see what we do not and to believe false witness testimony, holding the fate of others (perhaps innocent others) in our hands. I finally thought of the Christian element of this film. It is about the possible accusation against a humane and potentially innocent man. It is about the surety of his accuser (Rome) and the torment of the accessory to the punishment (Pilot) because he knows he is condemning an innocent man.

This film, though, is not about certainty it is about doubt. Sister Aloysius is, perhaps, the most interesting character. What made her the Dickensian menacing character she was? It is hard to tell but we are told she had a married past -- a nun with a married past? That’s all we are told. Sister Aloysius is hard pressed to show an ounce of humanity and in true Dickensian fashion derives glee from whatever gossip she can acquire.

She, however, shows us another side. She shows us doubt. What does she, though, have doubts about? I do not know. That is one of the enigmas of the film and that is what the viewer must weigh. Does she doubt her own possibly false consequential accusations against Father Flynn or does she have her OWN personal doubts about her faith, the church and the existence of God. When she puts up "any old pope" on the blackboard despite the fact that it is not the right one she says oh who cares you just want to use it as a reflective mirror to watch the kids and "make them think you have eyes on the back of your head." This is not exactly what one would expect from one who is supposed to love the church and its hierarchy. She is really quite cynical about church hierarchy and knows how the power game is played. She is shrewd and smart as she lies to Father Flynn about her knowledge of his allegedly sordid past in other parishes. She has none but she told him she did. He never questions it. Why would an innocent man not question that? More room for doubt this time of Father Flynn’s innocence. We never really do know if he is truly innocent even though I rooted for him to be so.

The once innocent Sister James says she now never sleeps. I have no doubt that she does not. Sister Aloysius cries with doubt at the end. Why? I do not know. I have my own doubts. This film is about good and about evil, truth and lies and shades of gray. It is above all, I think, about doubt of all that we are and all that we know. There is no doubt in MY mind that “Doubt” is a film not to be missed.

This is an exchange between people in the Metro West Blog. It refers to an editorial in which the person chastised those who voted for Obama. We exchanged heated opinions....well theirs was heated .... and I responded again.


Yes, Iona you are right...the problem is there are so many who believe as I do such as you but they do not usually write responses so I get the ones whose ire I provoke and I DO provoke it. It's futile of course. No matter it's fun to see the fervor. That's why I write it. I KNOW what it's going to provoke and I find it enjoyable. Of course, I know we were ALL fetuses. Guess what I don't seem to recall that in utero experience do they?

They are right all those horrendous tyrants were atheists but for all those I can relate hundreds of thousands who were believers who were the most barbaric tyrants and did and DO the most despicable things. In fact, Hitlerian Germany while it was a perverted paganism, grew out of two thousand years of Christian Anti-Semitic brutality. Christian behavior brutal and extreme was a NECESSARY precondition for the Holocaust. It cannot be denied in any way as the Gospels especially the latter ones place decide at the feet of the Jews. There is no getting around it I do not care how much it is twisted. Six million full term human beings, men, women and ONE MILLION children went to their deaths because early Christianity fostered a poisonous creed. Without the illustrious history of Christian inhuman behavior toward the Jew the Holocaust would never have happened.

In addition, preeminent scientists who were and are atheists have brought the most advanced discoveries so religionists see what they want to see. MOST I say MOST scientists are agnostics and do not subscribe to a sky god or Biblical myth. We all need to feel good and we all fear illness, old age and death. As my atheist social worker humanitarian supreme friend said just because you want it to be so does not make it so. It's hard to be an agnostic or an atheist absolutely but I am a TRUTH person and I am a science person. I will ONLY believe what can be shown to work and be true. Other than that it's faith and I'm not good at nor do I buy that.

They ask ME why I am afraid of god believers I am NOT afraid of the god believers except if they try to destroy my rights which they have for decades. The question, I think, is why THEY are afraid of people who doubt or who have no belief or question belief through logic. It obviously threatens their entire system. If somehow god flew down from on high, showed his existence and eliminated immense human and other suffering THEN I would be happy -- MORE than happy -- to reverse course. Until then I am a confirmed doubter.

To my good buddy Jennie: Our country, while those who set foot on its shores in 1620 were of a self flagellating grim Calvinist Christian witchcraft believing variety, thank fate by the time our Founders arrived most were emphatic in church state separation for the very reason that exists in our exchanges. Religion spells anger and historically often war. They knew it as evident in Europe's religiously violent past. Sure religionists do some good, no doubt about it. So do Hindus, Buddists and oh yes so do atheists. It is in the human DNA to do good. It is better for the advancement of one's DNA to ensure the species survives. I will agree with you on one thing Christopher Hitchens would do well to eschew his profanity. It does, however, NOT make him wrong it simply makes him profane. Well, violence among religionists IS profane but of a different variety.

And by the way, Sheila, please do NOT waste your time praying for my sister or me for that matter. The answer your question is a RESOUNDING NO if the situation were reversed, I believe, I would have NO idea NONE, NIL, NADA, NOTHING about what occurred less than 10 days after birth. My very first memory of self is at age 3. Praying, I believe, does nothing. As Dawkins said in his email to me one day, it is too bad one cannot find joy and ecstasy in the universe as it is. Gloomy is NOT a word he uses to describe the awesome nature of its existence. However enjoyable, this, happily I am sure for some, is the final installment of the debate. I rest my case.