Chem. Warfare

As far back as the Eighties, many of us realized that we are all victims of chem. warfare, virtually all of the time. From Alar on apples to dioxins and furans, in the environment. Heck even banned pesticides are hanging around from back in the good old days before we had coined the terms mutagen and teratogen. Additionally over four hundred new chemicals are created each year and the regulations on them are similar to the way we treat human beings, innocent until proven guilty.  We collectively suck the fumes of agricultural and industrial warfare practiced by the ultra wealthy upon local populations. In the research that I did on my own location, I found that within just a few miles of my home, over 65 tons of hazardous metals, toxic compounds and poisons are released into the air annually, just from industrial sources. This does not include any thing designed to be spewed from mobile sources like automobiles, trucks and buses, nor are releases from small companies or home use of hazardous chemicals. Some may ask themselves who uses toxic chemicals at home? Well, one of my neighbors has a body shop in which he customizes cars for fun, another thinks his lawn needs to look like a green at an expensive golf course and yet a third loves to burn plastic to heat his garage. The chem. warfare pants that I used to sell in my clothing shop were Army issue, but the general public should demand to be treated at least as well as the expendable soldiers that are supposed to "protect" us.

Just because the concentrations are sub-lethal in the short term does not mean that they are safe. On the contrary, they are just as deadly and because of the small doses of many hundreds of chemicals that we get through our skin, our lungs and in our food, pining the damage on a single source or "attack" is impossible. We need to ask serious questions about our level of tolerance for these toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic agents that we are routinely exposed to. Cancer rates continue to increase, there has been a spike in several childhood diseases, each and every day we learn of ways that the current leaders allow us to be exploited. Just because we don't keel over and die on the spot, is not enough to prove safety. Even when we know that our jobs are killing us, as in the coal mining industry, the government subsidizes the destruction of families and "compensates" victim's families with black lung insurance. There has been a push in the arts community to teach young artists ways to avoid deadly contact with their materials and to try to reign in the hazards in and around art studios, but the fact is that many materials used for art remain dangerous to the people who use them. In iron work, welding, paint shops, pottery works, jewelry making and even pastels or other sorts of sculpture, fumes are most often vented out of the workshop where they contaminate the neighborhood.

Environmentalists have known for decades that dilution is not a solution to pollution, but our regulators and politicians, through consultation with the "regulated community" have seen fit to make up every sort of rule and excuse to allow continued poisoning of our neighborhoods. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions are dying right now, today from their poisoned environment. Who will avenge their deaths? When T. S. Elliot wrote that the world would end, not with a bang but a whimper. Perhaps he presaged our current plight. My regular readers know that this is not the end I will accept lying down. I have invested too much in making the world a better place, in raising exemplary children and reclaiming as much of the planet as possible so that future generations might enjoy the place after I am gone. Putting profits above people has always led to destruction and death. People places and entire cities have fallen victim to the fickle "markets" created by greedy people in faraway places.

We the people who have to pick up the pieces and carry on after the exploiters have left need to understand that corporate welfare is class warfare and that silence on this matter is complicity. We stand poised on the verge of another war. By every accounting the costs of war have never justified perpetrating violence against another. what I have spoken here in these few paragraphs is not meant to justify or lessen the heinous actions of a regime currently in power in Syria, nor is it meant to dissuade the rest of the world from taking those who authorized such barbarism to task for their actions, but what I do intend to do is to highlight the fact that we are doing the exact same thing to our own people around the planet. The ultra wealthy do not have to lay down the carpet of poison that produces their wealth, that is what their wage slaves are for. I beg the people of the planet to stand up and be represented, speak out in favor of another way and in each and every act bring clarity and focus to the art of living lightly on the Earth. We can stop the poisons that flow into our environment, but it will take diligence, creativity and commitment. We the people have these resources and the fickle expediency of amassing great wealth will buckle and crumble under the weight of public opinion if we all begin to stand together and say in unison, "No more!"

Duck, Duck, Goose

Today, I would like to write about some recent impressions about the timeless childhood game. I have just become informed about a piece of art that uses aspects of the game, which relies on a group sitting in a circle. This circle is then gone 'round on the outside by someone who is "it". In practice the game is meant to single out one person, who becomes the chaser. One person, in the childhood game walks slowly around the circle, pausing slightly and touching each person in turn, as they pass, they say either "Duck," at which point they continue around the circle to the next person, or "Goose" in which case the person they have touched has to jump up and give chase. If the person who is "it" can circle the group and sit where the person that chased them, had been, the chaser becomes "it". If the person catches them, they remain "it" for the next round.

In our own way, we live this as part of our daily ritual. We often let someone from outside our circle determine when and if we get to play. Our part in the game could be going to work, purchasing commodities, goods or services, or even to play the game in other ways. "The game", as we often speak of life itself is about chasing a dream or trying to get X or Y or Z. Sometimes when we do get ahead or catch our dreams, we can rest on our laurels or take some time off from the game, but inevitably we will be touched and hear the call, "Goose!" and we will be off and running again.

In the art piece, a series of chairs is arranged in a circle, informing the viewer about the group mind that can be called up by this sort of activity. Everyone feels the energy, the electricity in the room and when they hear the word "Goose" they all get a bit of the adrenaline rush that the chaser feels. Much like our society, we often get jazzed by what someone else is doing. All sport is more fun to play than to watch, but by watching, we get aroused in ways that are similar enough to the players that it can feel pleasurable. Just as this game is capable of creating a group experience, it is always at the cost/or expense of pointing out who the slowest and least nimble members are. That alone is a little disturbing, but as people take turns getting up and running about the circle, the group can lean in or out, or perhaps sit straight, changing the distance between the chaser and whoever had been "it" for the round.  This aspect is not a part of the art.

Please forgive me because I have only heard about this art, I have not seen it in person. Even so, it has had the power to move me. The exhibit that it comes from will be on view through September, 8 2013 at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It is an installation so you have to picture yourself in a room, it has the circle of chairs and the only other things associated with the piece are the title card and a noose hanging from the ceiling in the center of the circle. The title of the piece is Lynching Room. We have all been hung out to dry in one way or another, but the associations between power and control, group think and the sociology of psychopathy are rich topics that we must all wrestle with in our own ways. I hope that hearing about this piece of art will move you in many of the same ways it moved me.

This show is part of Thirty Americans and it will be touring the country, so if you miss it in Milwaukee, look for it on tour.
Milwaukee Art Museum

One Key Opens All Locks

It seems that, once again, we have allowed ourselves to be distracted by the issues. Turning the world around us over and over, inspecting it, the powers that be easily shake out a few distractions each day to take attention off the one true course that could lead us out of the jaws of catastrophe and into the next age of abundance and peace. Eternal love means caring for those in the Sudan who are experiencing some of the worst flooding in recorded history. It means sitting down with our children and letting them know how important it is that we look into their eyes each night and reinforce our love for them through meaningful conversation. Yes, it even means quitting the jobs that eat our lives up if we cannot impress upon our employers that family time comes first, no matter what.

Essentially, we bounce from topic to topic like an ADD culture, one by one the shiny baubles of "news" sting together our days. We have had our attention jerked so often that, like deer in headlights, we are unable to function. OUR DISTRACTABILITY IS THE ONE THING THAT OUR OPPRESSORS CAN COUNT ON. Therefore, they do not to answer any questions that arise with adaptation or functional solutions, the problems that seem inevitable are just pushed further and further off, preferably until after the next election.

It seems not to matter whether "the powers that be" are gentrifying China's largest and most historic cities, or formerly beautiful neighborhoods in the Midwest, both are results, not causes of problems. By the time we understand that multi-billion dollar firms are the only ones that make money from the suffering of others, the displacement of intact communities, the loss of architectural diversity and the filling of landfills with perfectly good structures, it is just another box canyon to run into trying to find a hidden solution. As we take on issues, piecemeal, it is like pushing on a water balloon. The thing we sought to stamp out or limit often moves to another part of our lives. The drug war has increased drug use, or at least the worst aspects of it. No child left behind has caused more and more schools to fail because they are teaching to the test rather than actually educating students. We "save" one species or another only to find that the same conditions that led to their endangerment (pollution and habitat loss) still exist and there are no places left to return these species to the wilds. Even the acts of trying to offer social services and food and housing assistance, rather than reducing the effects of poverty only seem to exacerbate them.

Why?

This is easy, once you begin to take stock of the reality that exists outside the media circus that passes as social and political discourse. Those who make their living telling us what is up have never once said that a lack of love and affection has led generations of leaders, in business, politics, banking, insurance, education, transit, energy, etc. to have lost their ability to love unconditionally. In fact, many public servants are explicitly instructed to never show emotion or affection for their "recipients". Love, which is the answer to all these ills and more is never on the table because too many misogynists have had access to our halls of power for far too long. The good old boys club operates and has seemingly nearly always operated with one prime directive, "Screw the other guy before he screws you." I have even heard this parroted back from the well-meaning adults who thought they were helping to usher me to success.

"Love one another" made absolutely no sense to the rich and powerful as well as any of the people who thought that one day they would like to be a little more rich or a little more powerful. Love has the power to vanquish many of our "ills" because the nature of love is to transform both the lover and the lovee. This one revolutionary change in our perspective can change the dynamics of whole situations, it can inspire change where there was no hope for change even one moment before. The power of this simple force of nature has the power to vanquish nearly anything and in time, it can change everything profoundly. whether we look into prison overcrowding or the high incarceration rate, love will provide answers. If we try to tackle drug addiction or criminality, love has answers. If we try to get hold of the graft and corruption of our political leaders, loving the people who have sold us out for money or power might be the only way to save them from themselves.

In my experience, when I have shifted my perspective to one of love, great things happen. when I concern myself with solving problems, very little ever changes. It seems that, like working on an old house, every time you dig in to try to solve a problem, the issues grow and the damage inevitably extends beyond the extent to which we projected. Trying to fix age old problems requires the perspective of a different age. We are entering the Age of Aquarius, the era during which we will need to follow the water bearers. Finding our way in the new environment will require us to be in a state of oneness with the world around us that can only be described as love. We can only transform the planet one heart at a time.Love in Action

Healing

This photo of an elderberry shoot helps to remind us that in life, tiny sprouts can lead to bigger and better things. Just as a series of tiny illnesses can lead to a bigger problem. Working to heal one another and the world around us rarely takes place in an instant, but instead flows through a series of incremental actions that evolve around the issue of health. what is good for the body also helps soothe the soul and what is food for our mental life also feeds the soul. May the blessings of abundance be upon you! Namaste'.

In our search for a new direction, we must take time to heal the wounds created by ecological damage, psychological affects and the physical trauma that has been perpetrated by both toxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic compounds and the physical assaults of all the non-food products that we ingest routinely.
Healers know that when true healing takes place it heals the practitioner as well as our clients. When wounds take place not only in our physical body, but in out hearts, minds and souls, the approaches that we need to use to start the healing process may look funny to outside observers.

In one of the major healing events of my own life, the situation entailed not wanting to let go of things I had learned in childhood. I was allowing a child, still alive inside my mind to dictate how the adult that I had become how to live. Many had tried to talk sense to me, many had tried to comfort me, but the thing that really allowed me to grow out of a bad state of health was someone allowing me to realize that the death of that headstrong child was in my best interest. No gentle suggestion, no coddling, that would certainly not have worked. Instead he said that allowing this misguided child inside to die was also an option.

I am not saying that to be good for us, medicine should taste (or feel) bad, but occasionally the trauma required to make sure we do not go down that rosy path to ill health again is not only necessary, but good for us, our families and community. It has been said that looking back at the start of a journey can be a bad omen, but in this context, all we have to go on is past experiences. We cannot say what the future will bring, but I can say without a doubt, great healing will be required. Who among us has found a stress free lifestyle? The most common effect that stress has on our bodies is to require more anti-oxidant food, more vitamin A,C &E and having a good B complex source as well can help deal with the oxidative effects of stress.

If you have been paying attention, you may have noticed that every few years a "new" source of anti-oxidants comes to the marketplace. In the old days, my maternal grandmother made elderberry wine. It was thick and sweet and loaded with anti-oxidants. Blueberries too are a great source. Acai, mangosteen, aronia, these all have many times the concentration of citrus and can reduce the damage caused by what science calls oxidative stress. It seems that every time a method for commercially producing a product based on a new "superfood" comes along, you can hardly swing a cat without hitting a few multi-level-marketers for it. The fact of the matter is that virtually every part of the planet has anti-oxidant rich plants or berries that can be eaten as part of our regular diet. I have always preferred elderberries but some like blueberries better. Both grow abundantly around here. Research what plants are available in your area that contain high levels of anti-oxidants and try them, see if you like any of them and get more of them in your diet.

Remember that shipping things in from far off lands has an ecological cost as well as an energetic cost that must be borne by the planet as a whole. If you can grow a plant or two in your own yard, it will allow you to have an important source of healing food close at hand. From the elderberry that grows in our yard, we have eaten the berries fresh, frozen, as juice, jam and we have even made wine from them like Grandma used to.

How we heal our hearts and minds gets a little tricky. Much of what ails us is the result of prior abuse or neglect and in our culture we are told that we have to respect, if not revere, our parents who, at times, had to ignore us or who may have hurt us in subtle or overt ways. Learning to forgive sounds extremely simple, but for most of us it is not as easy as it sounds. One thing that has helped me immeasurably has been to accept that each of us does the best we can with what we have. The vast majority of us do not have all of our needs met and this lack can have profound inter-generational effects. Adults in my life taught me since childhood that violence and abuse were not only justifiable, but necessary. Luckily, I was able to see the fallout in their own lives of living according to that belief and see through the sham of violence that they said was necessary.

I never knew how much hurt they had unleashed on me, until I began to raise my own children. My own violent outbursts were but a reflection of the lies that had been taught me as a child. In time I learned to grow and adapt my behaviors, but not before modelling some pretty bed behavior for my own children. Just because no one got hurt physically, I'm sure that some scars were created by cutting remarks and my own mal-adaptive behaviors.some people claim that without a bit of hurt and pain no growth can occur, but to use this as justification for hurting others is to miss the point. We are under such pervasive assault and our injuries are so vast, that we need to both take our own healing seriously and work to heal the damaged culture that we exist within. An African proverb states that it takes a village to raise a child, but when the village gets sick it takes all of us to heal it as well.

Machina de Morte

We are living in a time, a culture, a situation that has special qualities, like no other in time, like even a few short generations ago none could imagine and that we didn't even have the technologies to record or document. Many of the waves of discontent that have swept over the planet in recent years have been caused by tools, chemicals and technologies that were completely unknown just a half century ago. Each step we take on the hamster wheel of corporate greed affects the planet in subtle way, but as I have mentioned before, even a tiny number multiplied by a massive one has the capacity to yield a hefty product.

The gradient of the death spiral that virtually all of our systems are in  might not be so astounding until one factors in the combined affect of billions of tiny cuts tot he fabric of life that take place each day. If we just created the mythical Disneyland that corporate bigwigs are trying to foist upon the people of the Earth, a tiny handful could afford the admission fee and the rest of us could pick up the trash, climb inside the plush suits and try 24/7/365 to repair the damage caused by using the technologies of deception. However, the resource base available begs to differ with that plan. In sector after sector of the economy, skyrocketing prices for raw materials and higher costs of production are leading to scarcity and loss of meaningful work for millions.

We have entered an age where it is easy to see the malevolent intent and modus operandi of the greed mongers. Wal-mart has added "food" to their superstores, so target has had to follow suit. Costco and Whole Foods have used the same model in a slightly more humane way to raise the standards of living that are available to their workers, but the consumer dog is off leash and shows few signs of ever coming to heal. In the USA, we spend more energy and resources, more money and landfill space on our garbage bags than the gross national product of the hundred smallest countries combined. Still, we cannot find ways to take the trash out of our government.

We hear seemingly rational individuals espousing more and more heinous and ignorant policies every day. One news feed that I see from time to time (but don't waste time reading) is put out by well-meaning individuals but it is the collection of the seven most heinous and idiotic things that Republicans have said this week. This week, we heard from a republican governor from Idaho who believes that broadcasting radioactive waste evenly across the United States of America is the wisest way to "get rid of" it. Meanwhile, this week, Japan finally released the fact that each and every day since the Fukushima disaster they have used between 350 and 450 tons of seawater each and every day to keep the fuel remaining in the breached nuclear reactor from going critical. The "waste" water, contaminated with radioactive material, has been flowing directly to the Pacific Ocean. For future generations, the cost of this activity is more pain, more strife and higher death rates from cancer and birth defects. 

We continue to introduce an average of four hundred new chemical compounds each year and of these, we find commercial uses for a significant number. Yet, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) only regulates five compounds routinely released into the air, and they have been with us for many decades. In my state, Wisconsin, we have one of the highest incarceration rates in America and America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Crime and criminality continues, especially in the white collar sector, so as we are fleeced and our lives and livlihoods undermined by the wealthiest elites, the growing frustration and desperation of the poor will constantly create enough diversion for the law enforcement officers to have all their time devoted to squeezing minorities and poor communities even harder, looking for the penny ante criminals who are more likely to need public defenders, costing us money for both prosecution and defense. Meanwhile, the people with the power to create long-term, crippling destruction are left to their own devices which seem to be constantly ratchetting up the destructive forces on our lives.

The time has come for those of us who see the writing on the wall to stand up, share the information we have and call out the bad actors in both our political houses of power and those who drive the engines of industry, capital and exploitation that have consumed the last several generations. Remember, the bigger and more complex machines become, the easier they are to bring down. If we are to save the planet, our own lives and those of future generations, we cannot stand by and let the power structure that exists today have their way for even another minute.

We do have another choice. Work for peace, the environment and/or our communities; buy less, nothing or only things that are produced with integrity, compassion and fair labor and trade practices; kill your TV and it will be possible to live forever in the hearts and minds of grateful generations, forever. The natural state of the world is to support and sustain life through an elaborate life support system that cleans and renews itself. If we only learn to add our energy to enhancing the natural ecologic systems, rather than tearing at them like depraved and desperate psychopaths, things will improve exponentially. Our lives become easire and the future looks immediately brighter.

For ideas, exercises and techniques for doing these things, write or call and we will share more of what we know about living lightly on the planet. Another blog to explore is ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. at blogger.com

Crippling Political Debate By Design

As we see daily, the terms and phraseology that is used to "debate" issues is often more important than the content of the arguments. I have written a length about such legislative schemes before, but several examples have come and gone over the years that bear repeating. One of the first that I noticed was the Clean Water Act, which despite having a great name only codified levels of pollution that were acceptable or permissible. Even though we know that toxic and carcinogenic materials are still flowing into the nation's waters, virtually nothing is being done to stem the flow. The public was all for regulations and the wealthy elites that controlled the means of production of goods and services, our legislatures and the media were intransigent. They were adamant that any limits on their effluent would cripple their ability to fatten their wallets and have us pay for it with poisoned water. They were comfortable abusing us, so why would they want to change? The same scenario took place during debate on the Clean Air Act. Think of the wily child (industry) faced with his/her first roadblock to unbridled behavior (public opinion). Of course they would not want to have to do anything differently. Some remain obstinate, even though it has been shown that economic benefits can accrue from running a tighter ship that loses less toxic compounds to the environment, leading to increased profitability.  I understand that there was some resistance to having their freedom to pollute curtailed, but the tactics that were used assured that little progress would be made in the foreseeable future and that every opportunity for avoiding regulation would be tried, from re-defining the terms of the debate to outright refusal to comply. The lawyers had a heyday and the news was all too willing to play the part of mouthpiece for industry. It was plain to see on TV that the majority of those calling for an end to using the air and water as garbage dumps for industry were naive, idealistic hippies and yippies, ne'er do wells and those with too much time on their hands. I remember quite clearly because I was accused of being all sorts of vehemently spat out derogatory words. A favorite of mine was "do-gooder", as if that was a bad thing.

This says nothing about the scientifically proven hazardous products that remain on the market simply because the corporate elites that run our nation claim that said products are fun or necessary or "our right" to "enjoy". Coca-Cola comes to mind immediately.It isn't bad enough that pure, clear water, produced by the fine people at corporate headquarters is priced higher than their sugar-laden poison swill, but when the negative health affects of their drink are pointed out, there is always a new multi-million dollar advertizing campaign in the works to tell us how we cannot live without it. Every time the public gets an inkling to invest in shutting them down, and stock prices tumble, millions of investors turn tail and flee, leaving more shares available at bargain basement prices for our wealthy overlords to swoop in and pick up the pieces after our nervous desperation. In the stock market, unlike poker, our opponents don't even need a "tell", they see right through the rhetoric of public opinion, because many times they have manufactured it.

During the fights for clean air and water, regulators were left, like toothless dogs, nipping at the heels of industrialists. In the end, as often happens, the simplest and easiest (read cheapest) things were done to mask the deeper problems of toxic chemical contamination and we still have not addressed them in any meaningful way. What all of the insults, degradation and rhetoric are designed to do is make those who believe in the right to clean air and water (world class education for our children, healthcare or whatever the public wants) out to be socialists, communists or whatever colloquial term stands in for "people who do not matter". I remember, I was part of those other fights too.

When listing the hundreds of pieces of legislation that have come down the pike, not including the budgets laden with pork and add on rules that fly in the face of good sense, it is hard not to see the machinations of billionaires at work behind the scenes, the echoes and traces of capital guiding the debate, as well as the votes and pens of our "representatives" is in evidence. Wisconsin's Governor and legislature has gone as far as letting a minor player in the mining industry, one with a list of ecological atrocities as long as your arm, write the legislation that will guide state regulators who, try as they might, will no longer be able to reign in the assaults of toxic contamination wrought by that industry. In addition, frack-sand mining is completely un-regulated and requires no remediation because sand is not considered a mineral under Wisconsin's regulatory scheme. Anyone who has seen the scars left behind when removing subsoil knows that it will take hundreds of years to heal those kinds of wounds to the ecosystem.

The Patriot Act was one of these poor excuses for a law that we have become accustomed to. While undermining our freedoms, stripping away rights and spending billions that could never do anyone any good, or create anything worth having, our ruling elite assured that our lives would be thoroughly constrained and that nothing would/could be done about it. The stories we hear about terror plots being foiled from time to time, upon closer inspection, are most often entrapment schemes in which Federal Agents offer to provide a tiny slice of the lunatic fringe not only resources that were unavailable to them, or critical planning expertise so that pipe dreams seem to be coming to fruition. Then, the agents and their cohort of "law enforcement" friends swarm in and protect us from what? Some big talkers who had no resources, or even the hope of a plan, before the government's inside man started offering them explosives and expertise? It is a ruse of the highest caliber. Patriots would never have stood for exempting the federal government from so many checks and balances. The people who fought and died in battle to supposedly "save" America from all foes domestic and foreign would roll over in their graves if they saw what we have allowed our government to do to us.

I have written at length about No Child Left Behind, the laws that impose more testing (which never taught anyone anything) on an already staggering educational system. After the sustained assault of regulators on our educational system, the crippling effects of thirty years of meddling, it is amazing that any students learn anything. Now we have voucher schools in which teachers do not even have to have a degree to teach, yet we are willing to fund them just like public schools. With your tax dollars! The same public schools which are constrained in every respect by laws that have been passed over the years that dictate and mandate everything from how teachers are required to teach, how much of their time should be spent babysitting for the worst actors and what they need to do if they suspect any number of crimes have been committed by or against their students. Anyone who has followed the last thirty years of educational history in America has seen the slow erosion of quality that has come directly from teachers being overburdened with more and more requirements and regulations. The charter school subsidization has been both imagined and conjured up by well-heeled interests who still believe that separate is equal and that their children do not need to be mainstreamed with "those people". That is why the teaches had to be demonized, ridiculed and stripped of their rights to organize.

People who have enjoyed every sort of privilege have always sought to maintain their status, but in these times we have seen this become pathological. It is not that the tools of oppression, that have existed for generations, are not as lucrative as they once were.  The appetite for cash and power that comes with it is insatiable. In our system, the whims and desires of the 1% have never been sated by having enough. The uberwealthy have believed for years, and perhaps they will continue to believe, that the rest of us are sub-human and deserve their exploitation and the rhetoric that they control proves the fallacy. Recent work to bring the wealthy to heel has met rhetoric that labels the wealthiest corporate welfare whores as "makers" and the rest of us as "takers". The elderly, crippled, handicapped, destitute, disenfranchised and children, yeah, they are just out to bankrupt the bastions of industry, banking and information. WAKE THE FUCK UP! The richest people, worldwide, are the ones siphoning off potential earnings that could go to those people who slave their entire lives away making it possible for the wealthy to live in luxury.

Do I have to point out the fact that without the maids, the wait staff, the dry cleaners, the auto detailers and flight attendants, without the maintenance staff, the grocers and cops, without the teachers and military services to defend their wealth, these top dogs would have to get their own bones, clean up after themselves and make their own beds in the morning. We are the real makers and all the uber-wealthy seem to know how to do is take and guide the discussion away from how they might pay their fair share.

New Yorkers are finally getting behind a true patriot that is standing up to the uber-wealthy, asking for them to pay their fair share and it is making waves across the nation. I only hope that, in time, we will come to realize that giving them everything they want, all the time is just as bad for us as it is for them. Anyone who has raised a child knows that giving in always has unintended consequences. No one deserves to be ruled by a demanding child and that is exactly what the 1% have become. It is time to force them to grow up and develop a bit of compassion for the rest of us.

Dispelling the myth of a 'Christian nation'

Inside the First Amendment by Charles Haynes

Culture warriors, pseudo-historians and opportunistic politicians have spent the last several decades peddling the myth that America was founded as a "Christian nation."

The propaganda appears to be working.

A majority of the American people (51 percent) believes that the U. S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation, according to the State of the First Amendment survey released last month by the First Amendment Center.

Because language about a Christian America has been a staple of Religious Right rhetoric, it is not surprising that acceptance of this false interpretation of the Constitution is strongest amongst evangelicals (71 percent) and conservatives (67 percent).

 Even many non-evangelical Christians (47 percent) and liberals (33 percent) appear to believe the fiction of a constitutionally mandated Christian America as historical fact. Forgive me for being snippy, but read the Constitution. Nowhere will you find mention of God, Christ or any intention to found a Christian nation.

On the contrary, the only reference to religion in the Constitution-before the addition of the Bill of Rights-comes in article VI: "No religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

This means that political power in the United States may never be limited to people of one faith-a necessary condition for a "Christian nation"-but must be open to people of all faiths or none.

Barring a religious test for office sparked widespread outrage in 1787, especially in states with religious tests designed to make sure that only Protestants or Christians would ever be allowed to hold public office.

In their wisdom, the framers in Philadelphia knew that the time had come to break from the precedents of history and bar any religious group from imposing itself on the nation using the engine of government.

Even this was not good enough for Thomas Jefferson and other founders who wanted to prohibit any and all entanglement of government and religion in the new nation.

In 1791, the opening words of the First Amendment-"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof"-were added to the Constitution, further ensuring a fully secular state with a guarantee of religious freedom for all.

Of course, some of the founders worried that "no establishment" might lead to a breakdown in Christian values in American culture. Alexander Hamilton, for example, contemplated the creation of a "Christian Constitutional Society" to promote Christian virtues and principles among the people.

In spite of this anxiety, drafters of the Constitution took the radical step of founding the first nation in history with no established religion.

Truth be told, they had little choice. Religious divisions among the many Protestant sects in 18th century America were deep and abiding. Anglicans, Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists and many others fought bitterly over what it meant to be "Christian"-although almost al could agree that "Papists" (Roman Catholics) were followers of the anti-Christ.

In other words, religious diversity at America's founding made a necessity of religious freedom because no one group had the power or the numbers to impose its version of  true faith-Christian or otherwise-on all others.

It is worth remembering, however, that principles as much as practical politics inspired many of our founders to define religious freedom as requiring no establishment of religion.

Roger William founded the colony of Rhode Island in 1636 out of his conviction that only by erecting a "wall or hedge of separation" between the "garden of the church" and "the wilderness of the world" would it be possible to protect liberty of conscience as required by God. Religious freedom, Williams argued, is itself a Christian principle.

Any attempt to establish a Christian nation, therefore, always has been and always will be unjust, dangerous and profoundly un-Christian.

Charles C. Haynes is a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center. e-mail: chaynes@freedomforum.org. 

The Otherfish Wrap would like to thank Mr. Haynes for sharing the right to publish this article with us. In these times, we must find truth amongst a proliferation of lies. This article attempts to inject a little sanity into the discussion of politics amongst the people of the Earth.