Look, this is a real simple thing. The country was founded by mostly-Christian individuals who were possessed of the foresight, maturity, and wherewithal to understand that the edicts of the religions and religious denominations had no place with an operable role in government. In fact, they made incredible sacrifices to distance themselves from their European church-states. In fact, they made great sacrifices, including their livelihoods, the lives of their family members, and in many cases their own lives, to ensure the separation of Church and State. The Mike Huckabees in the world that want to interject specifically religious dogma into the the Constitution have it exactly wrong, and every time they spout those desires, they prove that their eclectic version of America is not what America was founded to be, or has ever been. It’s not the America that our soldiers have fought and died to preserve. And it’s not an America that would have any hope of participating in a future in which the human race survives.
The Blogswarm Against Theocracy starts today and ends this Sunday. I will be attempting to have unique posts on these four blogs:
{this opening post has been cross-posted to my three blogs as a way of saying “yes, i’m here, and no, i’m not going to let the bizarre mortgage triangle we currently living under adversely affect my ability to post this weekend!}
The premier liberal/progressive blogging event of the year is just EIGHT SHORT DAYS AWAY! If you’re interested in participating, catch the details over at BlueGal’s site or at the blogswarm’s blog. And if you haven’t already, make sure you bookmark the Blog Against Theocracy website so you can easily stay in tune with the swarm throughout the event (and after!)
The logo above is provided courtesy of Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors. He also has a presized “sidebar” version for your convenience. Tengrain reminds us:
The theme, like always, is the Separation of Church and State — we are for it. But the variations on the theme are many, and we scored the widest range of responses. This is not a bashing of religion - peeps can believe what they choose, however they choose — but it is a reminder that the Government should keep out of religion, and Religion should keep out of the government. A great resource for ideas can be found at our good friends, First Freedom First. Many of you know FFF already. They are not sponsors of the Blog Against Theocracy swarm, but they should be beneficiaries.
I will go one step further to point out that the anti-theocratic movement is one point of agreement between atheists, agnostics, humanists, and persons of various religious beliefs, all of whom recognize and appreciate the need for government’s firm separation from specific religious doctrine and preferential treatment. Not only do I firmly support the premise that this blogswarm is not about bashing religion, but I hope to see a strong community grow out of this endeavor over the years: A global community of like-minded critical thinkers who can respectfully, but adamantly, argue against the practice of inserting any form of preferential treatment for any religious belief into our governments.
I will be participating in the blogswarm from the otherwhirled with my usual image-based snarkery (because it’s okay to be snarky about this, provided the snark isn’t meaningless or antagonistic), from perpetual dawnne (with some real-live bona-fide actual thoughts written down and stuff that I’m already working on because it takes me that long to write meaningful stuff), and I am also hoping to participate photographically from Synthaetica Digitography (because, seriously, why do anything but blog? blogging is all there is! blog!!! blog!!!) Some of my contributions will be cross-posted to Mock, Paper, Scissors, but I am also hoping to write at least one unique thing for the mighty SCISSORHEADS.
I hope that you all will make some time to participate and read the many insightful posts that the swarm will have. You’re welcome to use the button below to subscribe to the blogswarm’s feed!
that some basic things have changed over at the otherwhirled—that other meta-incarnation of Dawnne that keeps him from going crazy.
as a result of coming out of the closet in terms of my atheism over there, some things are going to change over here, just probably not at the same level. one reason for the difference between the two is that functionally, in my personal life, my agnostic atheism is of no tangible import. in other words, between myself and my family, who share my worldview, it’s “eh, big deal”, and rarely ever discussed.
on the other hand, my agnostic atheism is exactly what drives my quest—my philosophical investigation, in truth—for better self-understanding. and that’s largely because i recognize the need for self-understanding before one can feasibly attempt to understand others. but you could also exchange the word “philosophical” above for “spiritual”, and that sentence would basically read the same, in my eyes.
and i’m tired of not including that quest here. it has only partly been because of the inherent juxtaposition between time allocated to blogging and time allocated to work. but the reality is, my work life isn’t very likely to get any less time-consuming within the next decade or more, so i might as well just schedule some time in and devote it accordingly.
which, i have done.
the snarkery side of it will remain on the otherwhirled, but given the diverse readership and the gross amount of visitors on the otherwhirled compared to perpetual dawnne, the otherwhirled was the proper place for a formal announcement of the matter. however, as i begin sharing my path to this point, such posts will be here on perpetual dawnne, because of their relevance to who i am, and their general lack of cathartic expression.
make sense? i hope so.
i imagine, because of the depth of time involved (a near-eternity in comparison to her normal communications when i have managed to contrive a what-the-fuck moment), that i have managed to offend at least one long-time reader and friend of these blogs. sadly, all i can offer in that regard: please try to think beyond what you’ve accepted as truth, because you know there’s little basis for it as “truth”.
seriously.
but i will continue to love, admire, and respect you regardless of how you ingest what i wrote over there.
we’ve been without hot water since Monday morning. we got a company to come over and look at it, but they couldn’t come until Tuesday afternoon, and the guy didn’t come with parts despite having been told that manufacturer and model of the water heater. he did come with some sort of cock-and-bull story about how we’re supposed to have some overflow reservoir in there for the way we’re set up, in order to meet “state code”, and he wasn’t “supposed to leave a house that didn’t have that done.” since he didn’t have the parts or equipment for that, either (in his little 1-ton pickup truck), i generously let him leave without kicking his smug ass.
i don’t know why the Spouse Unit called that particular company, anyway. today, we’ll call the guys who came out and worked on our furnace a couple of years ago. they were cool, and one of their managers is the brother of our next-door neighbor.
but yeah, anyway, it’s sub-20 outside and we have no hot water. brrrrrrrrrrrr…… and i’m going to leave out some serious gripes with this company without elaborating on them in the spirit at least attempting to be positive today.
{there, i got the bitching and moaning done first, because there are some great things to celebrate today}
Celebration #1:
First and foremost, a heartly congratulations goes out to Tramplingrose, on the birth of her baby boy on January 3, 2008. I hope Rachel and Alexander will continue to do well, and will accept my apologies for not getting around to other blogs much of late. In fact, I’ve been really bad about that for the past several weeks, so I’m really sorry Rachel. I hope you’re feeling better. And Jay, go have a beer. It’ll help. Not much, to be honest, but it’ll help. I do know how it feels from your perspective, my friend. Best of luck to all three of you!
Celebration #2:
Yesterday, the Spouse Unit received her first formal job offer for a position that would employ her to perform work here in Sioux Falls, comes reasonably close (very reasonably, I might add) to paying her what she’s worth, and would allow her to continue on in the most recent augmentation of her career track, the usability testing and analysis. Even better, the offer is from a former manager of hers out in California who told me, when that company laid her off, that his next big problem at the time would be to find three people for very little money to even replicate her work for him. In other words, he’s been missing the Spouse Unit as an employee ever since that happened, and literally jumped on the chance to get her to work for his new company. They talked on Friday and the offer letter came yesterday. The only down-side, in fact, is that she’d be having to learn how to work from home, which would almost make us co-workers, at least in terms of proximity. That might really be interesting, though!
Celebration #3:
Well, this isn’t much of a celebration per se. We did have our most successful bridal show ever this past Sunday, however, and it really turned out to be a turning point for me, attitude-wise. I’m looking forward to the wedding season now, instead of dreading the work I’ll probably have to be doing alone again this year. But the clients we booked at the show seem to be really great couples, and the ones we’re meeting with from the show over the next couple of weeks are all in the category of ‘very strong’ leads. It helps that I did a better job this time around in communicating what my services actually are and being candid with how they compare to others. But actually, all my clients thus far this year seem like really great people, and we have gotten along quite well in our meetings. This is going to be a fun year!
We’ve got some minor repairs and cleaning up to do yet before we put this house on the market, but moving from here is something that would be good in many ways, as sad as it will make us to leave here. One of the other oddities in that upcoming move for us is that we’ve never move made a ’simple’ in-town move before. It’s always been from city to city. And with at least one wedding reception at the golf course that’s about a mile away from here, driving past here will be kind of sad when it happens, and of course I’ll miss just looking out the back windows and seeing the hawks. Nothing I can’t live with, of course, but still….{sigh} At least we can now move forward with finishing up this little bit of work (plus the damned water heater, now, of course) knowing that at least one serious (in my definition of that term) offer exists for the Spouse Unit’s (and thus our) future. I do believe we’ll be okay, and maybe even in the short term as well as the long term!
That’s really it as far as catching up with where I’m at. Please go browse my blogrolls here and over at the otherwhirled.
The folks at First Freedom First have some powerful new advertisements out, posing some interesting questions to be considered during this election cycle. I include a couple below, because I think they’re both worthy of listening to.
Here are some of the questions FFF believes we should be asking candidates when they come to our areas. These are just suggestions, of course.
Here are suggested questions that you can use at Town Hall meetings or other locations where candidates for office will be gathering. You can copy and paste them into an email message to the candidates. Or, use these as suggestions to help formulate your own questions to candidates, to find out their views on safeguarding separation of church and state and protecting religious liberty.
Leaders on the religious right often say that America is a “Christian Nation.” Do you agree with this statement?
Do you think Houses of Worship should be allowed to endorse political candidates and retain their tax exempt status?
Do you think public schools should sponsor school prayer or, as a parent, should this choice be left to me?
Would you support a law that mandates teaching creationism in my child’s public school science classes?
Do you think my pharmacist should be allowed to deny me doctor-prescribed medications based on his or her religious beliefs?
Will you respect the rights of those in our diverse communities of faith who deem same-gender marriage to be consistent with their religious creed?
Should “faith-based” charities that receive public funds be allowed to discriminate against employees or applicants based on religious beliefs?
Do you think one’s right to disbelieve in God is protected by the same laws that protect someone else’s right to believe?
Do you think everyone’s religious freedom needs to be protected by what Thomas Jefferson called “a wall of separation” between church and state?
What should guide our policies on public health and medical research: science or religion?
Questions that I might ask:
Status Quo is often cited by the religious right as a reason for continuing the nation’s “business as usual”. Would you support the “Status Quo” after the example of the current administration, even when “business as usual” over the past seven years has proven harmful to our economy?
Our nation is comprised of many peoples, religions and creeds. Do you feel that politicians should be allowed to campaign on specific religious issues and promote specific religious platforms while continuing to draw benefits from the government (security details, etc) while campaigning?
Do you believe that when a veteran’s service is over, the government’s responsibility to the veteran ends, or do you believe that the government shares an ongoing obligation to veterans to provide qualified health care and psychological services to all veterans with no strings attached?
Category: 
Look, this is a real simple thing. The country was founded by mostly-Christian individuals who were possessed of the foresight, maturity, and wherewithal to understand that the edicts of the religions and religious denominations had no place with an operable role in government. In fact, they made incredible sacrifices to distance themselves from their European church-states. In fact, they made great sacrifices, including their livelihoods, the lives of their family members, and in many cases their own lives, to ensure the separation of Church and State. The Mike Huckabees in the world that want to interject specifically religious dogma into the the Constitution have it exactly wrong, and every time they spout those desires, they prove that their eclectic version of America is not what America was founded to be, or has ever been. It’s not the America that our soldiers have fought and died to preserve. And it’s not an America that would have any hope of participating in a future in which the human race survives.
