What to give thanks for

First, the right not to give thanks

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/tday2007,htm
11/21/07

Perhaps one of the best gifts Americans gave themselves was the ability, on Thanksgiving Day, to NOT give thanks if they don’t feel like it. Nobody has their knee on your throat, demanding that you give thanks to their god for everything including stuff that is flat-out embarrassing to feel grateful for, but which the fundamentalist will demand of you, such as being glad that god didn’t flood the earth this week.

Similarly, if you believe in a god or gods, nobody is saying you can’t give thanks. You can’t use tax dollars to do so, but aside from that, you have complete freedom.

The greatest irony of freedom is that the most startling beneficiaries of freedom are those who would destroy it. You have the right to argue that people shouldn’t have constitutional rights. In a tyranny you might have the same ability, but you wouldn’t have the personal choice that leads to it.

On this thanksgiving holiday, the papers are full of stories about how Dominionists (people who believe that god and not the people have sovereignty in America) and other religious bullies have been pressuring and punishing a goodly number of our military personnel who don’t want to worship their version of god. Police in San Diego want to mark “Muslim neighborhoods” as potential terrorist hotbeds, despite the fact that there are probably a lower percentage of terrorists there than one might find in Idaho. Simultaneously, you have stories of religion trying to impose itself on the state, and the state trying to impose itself on religion.

The first amendment, the wall of separation of which Jefferson spoke, works in two directions. It protects us from religious coercion and subjugation. It protects the religious from pogroms and ghettoization.

Religion and politics always make a bad combination, since you have Immutable and Perfect Truth coming up against the Art of the Possible, and they corrupt the strengths of one another. Religion adopts the shifting moral paradigms of politicians, and Politics adopts the brittle and unyielding certainties of the fundamentalists.

James Madison, leading author of the Constitution, wrote, “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”

Thomas Jefferson, whose life achievement of which he was proudest was the creation of the first specifically secular government for the state of Virginia, “In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose.”

Benjamin Franklin, whose name is synonymous with sobriety and piety, wrote, “Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.”

Anyone who tries to claim that America was founded on Christian principles is either profoundly ignorant of America’s origins, or quite simply lying. Thomas Paine fell a bit short of ambiguity when he said, “Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the
worst.” Paine, like most of the founders, wasn’t looking to reestablish tyranny.

The founders understood the need for religion for most people, and in turn, most people understood the need for the state to be apart from the church. It was an experiment that was long overdue and it succeeded gloriously. Indeed, the only places in the world where it has failed are where the state attempted to abolish or supplant religion, as happened in Revolutionary France, or in the Soviet Union.

Throughout most of Europe, in Canada and the UK, one can find “state churches,” but they are politically relatively toothless, and while they can influence, they cannot compel. And as a result of that, these countries are, for the most part, happy and stable democracies that have considerable individual liberty (sometimes more than is in the US) and are careful to not infringe on the rights and freedoms of non-believers.

Just as any country that attempts to subjugate religion is doomed, any country that attempts to subjugate only the “wrong” religions is similarly doomed, and any religion that gains the power to subjugate will promptly proceed to do exactly those sorts of things.

If the Dominionists were to win, and put Jesus above the constitution, then those who purport to speak for that particular brand of Jesus would waste no time in changing the laws, privileges and rights of the citizenry to reflect the “virtue” of being religiously right minded, and from there proceed to attempt to enlighten the rest of the populace, usually with increasing amounts of coercion and force.

Unless you were lucky enough to be in the “right” religion, or at least intellectually and morally compliant enough to be willing to fake it, your life would be miserable. Jesus may love the little children, but when it comes to being a part of Rome, he develops a distaste for Catholics, Mormons, Jews and non-believers. It’s all part of growing up and becoming the establishment, you see. Suddenly the camel can slip through the eye of the needle, and Jesus remembers what all he said about lakes of everlasting fire.

It gets messy. It isn’t just Christianity, either. Any religion endowed with state power becomes corrupt, manipulative, vindictive and vicious, and before long, people start vanishing into state prisons or just vanishing.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in one of his Letters, “"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”

And be thankful, or at least glad, that you have the freedom to follow that advice.