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."
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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):
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"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!
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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).
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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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