Ten Commandments Reflections

THOMAS JEFFERSON'S RELIGIOUS CONTRADICTIONS BY DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS Thomas Jefferson, the most popular founding father of the United States, learned much and said much about various subjects during the course of his illustrious career, and he naturally contradicted himself from time to time for one reason or another. Perhaps he changed his mind, just as people change or amend their constitutions. Perchance his opinion was unsettled. He might have been unaware of certain contradictions. Or maybe he found it politically expedient to reverse himself for a greater or higher cause. Therefore we are, fortunately for our independence as individuals, given a number of occasions to employ Jefferson's corpus to contradict each other: to cite him, for instance, in support of free trade; yet, on the other hand, or at least for the time being, he says trade must be restrained. We claim our founding fathers as we do our gods, with all their goods and evils - and we often disagree over which ...

WHO NEEDS THEIR PREHISTORIC GOD BY DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS A Clamor from born-gain, right-wing authoritarian personalities, to put the Terrorist Almighty back into government again, arises to a high pitch during the Third World War on Terrorism declared by their born-again, right-wing president. He, like his presidential father before him, makes war on Iraq and throws the economy into the customary downward deficit while exploiting the poor to maintain the kept class in their accustomed luxury. Now who needs a god in heaven when a devotee of Old Testament Texas justice is in the Oval Office? Has he not replaced maculated dresses and oral orifice misplacements with righteous respect for the foundation of private property in woman, whom he and he alone crowns? What more could the religious right clamor for than this sublime power who has shocked and awed those whom he has crushed with the almighty might of the one and only superpower in the world? Why, this awesome reigning rainmaker made t...

THE FIRST TABLE OF THE LAW BY DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS  The sort of religious fundamentalism that would really or virtually conjoin church and state in unholy matrimony that they might live in the sin of theocracy is obviously the greatest threat to human liberty and world peace today. From that ungodly constitution certain legitimate Christian fundamentalists disqualify themselves by rendering unto Caesar his worldly due and unto their god their spiritual faith, wherefore we exclude them so that we may speak only of the monstrous offspring of the marriage of church and state, called by Thomas Paine a "mule-animal." "All religions are in their nature kind and benign," quoth Paine in  Rights of Man , ".... How is it that they lose their native mildness, and become morose and intolerant? ... By engendering the church with the state, a sort of mule-animal, capable only of destroying, and not of breeding up, is produced, called  the Church established by Law . It is a ...