Exposing Civic Ignorance
  by Phil Stahl

A recent situation at the Air Force Academy has occasioned many letters in the local press. When I criticized the Air Force Academy's discrimination against non-believer cadets by preventing them from attending off campus Freethinker meetings while allowing Christian cadets to go to their church groups, a defender of religion was quick to respond. He advised my "atheist brethren" not to feel they are above being subjected to religious messages from government entities whether or not they pay taxes.

Also, he insisted that to think otherwise "reflects a kind of tyranny of the minority that even the most prescient of our Founding Fathers could not have contemplated."

That statement is a most execrable, unsupportable delusion. Indeed, the Founders, including Jefferson (to whom we credit the idea of the "wall of separation"), were more profoundly frightened of a tyranny of the MAJORITY. If the religious detractor had been more knowledgeable of civics, he might have recalled Jefferson's words in his "Bill for Religious Freedom" (1779):

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."

In other words, Jefferson is clear that compelling a non-believer to provide tax support to a government that abets religiosity is tantamount to imposing a brand of Christian domination on dissenters. Exactly what the Founders and their fellows came to this land to escape!

So how did governmental Christianity begin? Also, how did it become bound to hyper-individualism and capitalism? Over the past few years many people have asked me how evangelicals can so strongly advocate for religion in government yet actually be opposed to helping the poor and most vulnerable with its tax dollars.

The historical confluence of free market capitalism (exalting rugged individualism) and evangelical Christianity probably occurred in the U.S. ca. 1885 with the publication of Reverend Josiah Srong's book, Our Country - Its possible Future and Its Present Crisis, according to author Richard Hofstadter (Social Darwinism in American Thought, American Historical Association, 1955).


Interestingly, as Hofstadter notes (p. 179), Strong's work invoked a misbegotten form of Darwinism (since Charles Darwin never supported it) known as "Social Darwinism" to make its case. In this bastard variant sponsored by Herbert Spencer, the weak were to be weeded out using capital and economic competition. At the end of the economic blood bath, only the strong - and more important "godly" - survived.


Accordingly, American individual and economic success "demonstrated natural selection at work," as well as God's favor. Theis also explains why the same Christian critic felt it necessary to inpugn my particular Freethinker's vision of America as a "socialist nirvana with cradle to grave (government) protections."


In Herbert Spencer's world of natural selection, the weak or disabled were to be offered NO protections. They were deemed "unfit" if they could not compete for resources without state assistance. In his own words, from one of Spencer's 1882 tracts:

"The whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of them, and make room for better."


If zealous evangelicals get their way, this nations will doubtless succumb to their civic ignorance, starting with allowing government to mutate to a religious entity.

 

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