This video moved me to tears. Can you tell me exactly what was fought for at Omaha Beach? Was it so that we could discriminate against people? So we could lynch and roast people alive? Was it so we could act like moral busy bodies and holier-than-thou-arts? Was it so that religion could take over our government and run it as a theocracy?
Or was it so that everyone could have life, liberty and pursue happiness? So that the Constitution of the United States could be upheld? That everyone would have equal protection under the law.
"I have seen with my own eyes the consequences of caste system and it makes some people less than others or second class, never again. We must have equal rights for everyone. It's what this country was started for."And I too have seen the depths of human depravity (just read some history). It is often masked as religious piety or national pride. Do not forget that it wasn't just Jews who were massacred by the Nazis seventy some years ago.
"As many as one-half million Gypsies, at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons, and more than three million Soviet prisoners-of-war also fell victim to Nazi genocide. Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats, Communists, partisans, trade unionists, Polish intelligentsia and other undesirables were also victims of the hate and aggression carried out by the Nazis." citationAll that it takes for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing. Why is equal rights even a question? It's the United States for godsake! WHY?! So that some religious fanatics can feel better knowing that preventing Joe and Jack down the street from getting married makes their deity happy? WHAT. THE. FUCK.
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- CS Lewis
Where are the C.S. Lewises of today, people who are strong, committed Christians but who really understand what Christianity actually is, and by extension what its applicability involves? I've been a fan of this man for a long time, even after leaving the faith of my youth.
ReplyDeleteGreat quote.
Compartmentalization. That is where your neighbor, who is otherwise decent, who mows their lawn, and is kind to the kids, and feeds the birds, can justify in their minds, why this or that group of people doesn't deserve freedom.
ReplyDeleteThat is what Equal Rights are all about--Freedom.
That Compartmentalization is what allows people to hide the evil of prejudice behind the banality of everyday life.
Seeing Eye Chick, you hit the nail on the head there. I remember reading an account by a woman who lived through the war in the 1990s in what was Yugoslavia. She said that she knew some of the people prior to the war who committed crimes against humanity, they had been her neighbors and she had witnessed the things that they had done, and she had seen them since. They went back to living their life like nothing had happened. They raped and murdered people, and somehow they manage to act like it never happened.
ReplyDeleteZirgar, to understand what *real* Christianity is requires critical thinking skills and an education, which most of the people who claim to be Christian don't have. They've never read the Bible, it's too long and too hard for them to understand, so they take whatever their church leaders tell them as fact.
ReplyDeleteAnd I too love CS Lewis, and I'm not Christian. The man had brilliant ideas and I loved reading The Chronicles of Narnia repeatedly when I was a child. Indeed, I found it amusing that the fundies were raving about how great The Chronicles of Narnia was. Speaking of not bothering to read a book, I don't think they've read them, or at least they haven't read The Last Battle. If they had, they'd probably want to burn it.