Glass Maze Every jumbled pile of person

Bad Caretakers

I just saw Christopher Hitchens — author of God Is Not Great — give a pretty amazing answer to a question about why the US is so much less receptive to atheism than Europe:

I think it’s hugely exaggerated. Everywhere I go, I find that everyone who comes to the meeting thinks that they’re the only other atheist, and they’re amazed to find that everyone else is one too.

Whereas if I’m in … my country of birth, in England, the queen is the head of the church as well as the head of the state. You have to pay for both. And when she dies, her slobbering weak-chinned dauphin of a son will be the head of the Church of England … and in Germany, you have to pay a tithe to a church, whether you want to or not.

We are very lucky in this country, we have a better tradition: we have Jefferson, we have Thomas Paine, we have the first amendment, we have the Virginia statute of religious freedom. We are the only country in the world that says that the state can’t back religion. We should appreciate it more.

I do a lot of bitching about Bush and his cronies, and with good reason. But the fact remains that all of their criminal insanity obscures a pretty amazing system of government. I’m not big into the cult of the Founding Fathers, but there’s no denying that they laid a foundation that institutionalized levels of freedom and tolerance that the world had rarely seen before. And that the constitution they wrote still reads very well, two hundred years later.

Yes, that original vision has been systematically subverted over the years — but it has always survived its batterings, more or less, and occasionally done better than survive. When the old dudes with the wigs said that all men are created equal, they may have been whispering “Except for black people, of course” under their breath — but what survives in our document is the original, unblemished proclamation, and the civil rights movement grew up and triumphed¹ under its aegis — despite the efforts of all the evil bastards who struggled to circumvent the constitution’s mandate, even as they claimed to be upholding it.

But even a framework this enlightened is only as viable as its executors allow it to be. The constitution has certainly survived some pretty terrible caretakers in the past. My fear is that it won’t survive Bush.

Update: In comments, Carlo tells me that Hitchens’ allegation about tithes in Germany is untrue — you only have to tithe if you’re officially Christian.

Being from Germany, I can tell you that the statement “in Germany, you have to pay a tithe to a church, whether you want to or not” is actually untrue.

Only if you’re religious in an official way (i.e. if you are officially a Christian) you have to pay a tithe. If you’re not, than you don’t.

Yikes … thanks for the heads-up, Carlo. I’ve updated the post.

Yes…the nice thing about self-critical democracies is that they’re self-critical. The bad thing is that sometimes they don’t recognize how amazing they are. It’s natural for the most powerful elements in any society to want things their way, to run it the way they believe is right. Democracy is a fragile thing, built on a balance of forces that all would subvert it if they could.

I just read today’s (October 2nd) comic at http://www.somethingpositive.net/ and it reminded me of this post, because I’m currently reading Hitchens’ book. If you have a sense of humor about religion, and/or you’ve ever been to a con, you should check it out.

When the framers of the Constitution said all men are created equal whispering “except black people” they likely included women in that same breath. It took an amendment to the Constitution to allow women the vote about 150 years later. That’s why strict constructionists have it all wrong – the Constitution should be a living, breathing document with guiding tenets to steer the republic as circumstances present. After all, the framers’ ideas evolved from the Age of Enlightment in Europe – new ideas for a new era. We could use another one of those soon.

Not only were women not intended to be included in the original “created equal,” but they weren’t even supposed to be included in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. White southern male senators added gender to the Act in order to make the whole civil rights movement look so ludicrous that it would be defeated. I’ve always loved that. But seriously, I think you’re right that we flaming liberals do forget, sometimes, how amazing our government has been, and can be. We’re quick to point out that the founding fathers owned slaves, started the revolution over taxes, etc., but forget that Jefferson wrote bills for his state of Virginia protecting “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindu, and infidel of every denomination.”

HELL YEAH BUSH IS AN IDIOT. I TOTALY AGREE! I THINK THAT HE SHOULD GO SUCK A TOE! HE IS SO MEAN. BIG MEANY PANTZ!! I JUST WISHED HE GOT OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE, I THE GIRL PRES OR THE BLACK PRES WOULD DO MUCH BETTER THAN HIM. GO HILARY CLINTON!!!