A Matter of Convenience

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , on February 7, 2010 by RJ Evans

(Editorial Comment from the American Heathen® radio show – Air Date 02/05/10)

Opposing viewpoints aren’t always welcome here.  It really depends on the strength of the opposing argument.  Unsubstantiated rhetoric, lack of credibility and integrity, play a large role in my decision as to whether an opposing viewpoint makes it to my blog.  Religious dogma does not qualify as a valid opposing view.  Otherwise, it’s the same old arguments, sometimes with a new twist, but never backed up by anything more than the Bible and someones “feelings”.  Excluding dogma, I make every effort to recognize opposing views by evaluating them carefully and with an open mind.  I don’t sweat publishing an opposing view on my blog if it is void of dogma.  Ever.

A couple of weeks ago the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU.org) blog page disappeared.  If anyone tried to visit it, they would get a message that said the site was down due to technical difficulties.  I suspected from the get go that AU.org was most likely making a change to the way the blog is used by readers.  I was sure an effort to quell, or even deny the opportunity to publicly respond to AU blog posts, was in the works.  Why?  Well, the blog’s comments section had seen some very heated exchanges between hard-core fundamentalists and non-believers for several months.  These exchanges became a one-sided insult fest initially, the fundamentalists taking charge of the ad-hom arena as usual, unable to argue on facts and evidence.   But soon, even the non-believers and secular crowd jumped on the insult bandwagon.  Although, to their credit, the non-believers weren’t nearly as nasty and brash as the fundamentalist crowd.  Most of the non-believer retorts were benign jabs at the intelligence quotient of the fundamentalist mentality.  In any event, it became apparent that AU.org was growing concerned with some of the vitriol and decided to post a disclaimer at the head of the comments section of the blog.  Censorship also played a role as some words like “socialist” and “socialism” found their way into a dirt pile of other objectionable words that were apparently considered unproductive to the AU.org agenda.

The AU.org blog comments section is now gone.  None of this is surprising to me.  While AU.org strives to defend freedom of religion, they are doing so as an absolute matter of survival.  They are, in fact, founded by the Reverend Barry Lynn, and as such are concerned with religious freedom and faith as opposed to freedom from religion.  Indeed, it is this very idea of freedom of religion that is the main focus of the organization.  It is about freedom to believe in a myth.  While as a matter of course AU.org is compelled to defend their religious agenda, they certainly do not go out of their way to embrace the non-believer any more than they have to.  They simply must  support their skydaddy belief.

Comments posted to the AU.org blog by non-believers that defended Separation of Church and State, but at the same time were critical of religious belief, may have been the impetus for shutting down the comment section.  I say may have been for I do not have evidence to substantiate this.  Indeed, there is also reason to believe that the vitriol of the fundamentalists may have been a contributing factor as well.  I choose to deduce that the decision to shut down the comments section was the result of both camps, and the politically correct way for AU.org to walk away from controversy.  But is it really surprising that a political organization, designed to defend freedom of religion, runs scared when fundamentalist bullshit, and non-believer facts and evidence threaten to undermine their particular skydaddy vision?  No.

Herein lies the problem with religion.  Selective belief and selective exclusion.  AU.org really has no choice but to defend itself and its moderate interpretation of a skydaddy.  That’s also why it embraces other moderate Christian versions and other moderate religions.  But, in order to further its agenda, it also has to grudgingly embrace non-belief.  I say grudgingly because after several years of reading AU.org articles, the non-believer is always referred to as an afterthought.  An example of this is a common statement  in a large number of AU.org articles – usually in parentheses – that reads “…and those who don’t believe”.   It’s kind of like having a little brother or sister.  You can’t stand them, but you tolerate them because Mom and Dad (read the U.S. Constitution) says so.  You have to take them in tow, or you’ll be grounded.  But, once again is this really surprising?

AU.org has an agenda.  And, even though they may support the Separation of Church and State, they do so because they believe in a skydaddy and MUST defend their right to do so.  The only reason they defend the non-believer is because they have to, ultimately for their own benefit.  Period.  To expect anything otherwise is ignorant, and unrealistic.  Keep in mind that skydaddy worship is a pick and choose proposition, and it comes with blinders.  It can’t take criticism, and it doesn’t work through proofs of evidence.  Ultimately, any support for Separation of Church and State, from any religious organization, is not concerned with reality, but with the survival of  fiction.

AU.org really doesn’t care about non-belief.  To them, it is a little brother or sister that must be defended out of self-preservation.  While they claim to love all beliefs, they only tolerate non-belief as long as it keeps them from being grounded.  As far as freedom of speech… AU.org is a private, political, non-profit religious organization.  They can do whatever the hell they want.  Yeah, we don’t have to like it, but that’s the way it is.  Just as my blog has an agenda of facts, proofs of evidence, science, reason and logic, AU.org’s agenda is to further belief in the absence of facts, proofs of evidence, science, reason and logic.  Keep that in mind.  For AU.org  it’s simply a matter of skydaddy convenience.

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Proofs of Evidence, Hypocrisy and Lies

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on January 30, 2010 by RJ Evans

(Editorial Comment from the American Heathen® radio show – Air Date 01/29/10)

Hypocrisy runs rampant in the faithful.  Not only do they preach a superior moral dictum, but they declare that any political or religious world view, other than their own, is invalid without proofs of evidence.  When presented with mounds of evidence supporting the opposing position, they reject it all and at the same time, and with a straight face, demand so-called “real” proof.  Not surprising then that the words “proof” and “evidence” do not possess any “real” meaning in their reality.  They are quick dispose of any rebuttal to their dogma as biased, tainted, skewed, left, bogus, lies.  They easily discard facts in favor of pre-selected, pre-screened, pre-determined, pre-ordained, carefully crafted “truths”, tailor-made and finely woven by like-minded minions whose sole purpose is to win at all costs and proofs of evidence be damned.

It really is about winning.  To the zealots, lies in the name of a skydaddy are merely a means to an end and are absolutely justifiable in their use against an “evil” world.  It’s the faithful against the godless.  It is the pure against the tainted.  It is fighting fire with fire in hopes of driving the unrepentant to hell.  There is no real logic to any of it.  But, then again it isn’t supposed to make sense.  It’s the greatest “baffle them with bullshit” crusade purposely designed to give the believer the advantage.  They make the rules as they go along.  And, that is how the  religious, and religions, survive.

For thousands of years, as long as religion has existed, men have sought to rule other men.  In their quest to dominate and subjugate the masses to their whims, these men have mastered the art of myth and human ignorance to their advantage.  Whether these self-appointed leaders of men have suffered from delusions of gods and goddesses, and as a result somehow felt compelled to conquer out of these psychotic visions, is reasonably debatable.  Chances are that many have, and continue to, travel such a path.  But, the primitive idea of a supernatural being, all powerful, all knowing, all seeing, has to be the most self-serving psychosis of all time.  What better way for a small group of men, or even a single man, to hold absolute power, to declare total dominance, than through a flood of fear, magic, and trickery that is religion.

Lies, lies, and more lies… layer upon layer of lies, repeated for centuries.  The gods and goddesses of the past most likely met their fate in the tangled web of lies the faithful spawned that eventually couldn’t stand up to the forceful winds of knowledge and progress.  Lies were exposed, treachery was lost to proofs of evidence, and yet somehow, another human ego would step forward in defiance and weave yet another tangled web of religious lies that would, again,  be broken from it moorings on the winds of knowledge and progress.  But, as time has gone by, the moorings of each successive religious web have grown stronger, but only by shoring them up with more lies.  Layers of lies… layers and layers of bold, defiant, utterly ignorant, sometimes ridiculous, lies.  Lies that bind religion to the frame of life and create an alternate reality for the faithful.  It’s the only way religion can stand up to the winds of knowledge and progress, proofs of evidence.  Religion must create more and more threads of lies.

We all know that when caught in a lie, the worst thing we can do is to cover a lie with another lie.  Religion ignores this fact.  It just keeps pumping them out, and then forgets what its last lie was.  Eventually religion lies itself into a corner, and then concocts another tall tale, another lie worse than the one earlier but nonetheless effective enough to distract attention from the one previous.  It’s a game of misdirection, smoke and mirrors, magic and deception.  The answers are simple,  without proofs or evidence.  Yet, the lies always catch up with religion.  The lies are revealed in religion’s hypocrisy.  And it is hypocrisy that lays final judgment upon religion.

When I demand evidence for a skydaddy, religious hypocrisy always reveals the lies.  The religious backtrack, dodge and weave, jump and duck, do the rope-a-dope.  They make every effort to distract and divert.  And when all else fails, they throw in the towel, head for their corner, wipe their wounds, ice their knots, and call a press conference afterwards to claim they were robbed, cheated… that the ref was bias, bought off, part of a conspiracy.  Yep, persecuted.  The truth is they have been caught in another lie.  The religious do not do what they say, nor do they say what they do.  And, their hypocrisy reveals the lies of their dogma.

That’s what religion’s hypocrisy shows us.  It exposes the lies.  The layers and layers and layers of lies used to weave the web of religion.  Even the most devout believer will strangle themselves in the web of deceit that their religion weaves.  Any interpretation of any holy book is hypocritical.  It requires the believer to interpret, ascribe to, and live by a constantly changing view.  One that is re-defined with each moment of worldly interaction.  Why must one interpret the words of a being that is supposedly intelligent, created us, and wants us to worship it?  Why isn’t this entities’ existence painfully obvious to the entire population of the planet?  Why has this entity turned life into a game show?   You see, there is no sense, logic or reason here.  And, with each interpretation and declaration made by the faithful, the playing card deck of lies grows thicker, deeper, and more complex without any adequate explanation.   After 2000 plus years of the big three dogmas, and who knows how many hundreds of re-writes, how many guesses does it take to get to the center of a skydaddy anyway?  With each interpretation comes fragmentation, more bias, discourse, and lots and lots more lies.  Ultimately leading to the logical, reasoned question, ‘Who is telling the truth?’  Religion isn’t.  But, science, reason and logic DO tell the truth.  And, it is evidence and proofs that uncover the secrets of life’s questions.

Evidence, proofs… this is for the honorable, the dignified, and the noble.  Proofs of evidence speak loudly, with credibility and force.   Qualities of honor, dignity, and nobility will never come from the religious.  And they know it.  It is therefore imperative that all of us who trust in the proven ideals of science, reason and logic, continue to expose the hypocrisies of the religious and of religion, wherever and when they show themselves.  Demand proof, demand evidence, demand logic and reason.  And when the lies of the religious become too much to bear for them, they will retreat to faith, and faith is yet another hypocrisy, and hypocrisy always exposes the lie.

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ShockNet is Iced In

Posted in Uncategorized on January 28, 2010 by David 2

ShockNet Radio is currently offline due to the winter storm hitting the Oklahoma City area.

The online broadcast will return when power is restored to ShockNet Studios, although it may not happen until sometime Friday.

UPDATE: 8:48pm ET – RJ contacted me and says that the power has been restored and the phone lines are back up, but the phone is iffy right now.  He wants to play it safe so he won’t bring ShockNet back up until he knows everything is stable.

Stay tuned for updates.

UPDATE: 10:00pm ET – ShockNet Radio is back up and running and all should be fine for American Heathen® tomorrow night.

UPDATE – 1/29 11:55am: The power went out again at the ShockNet Studio, so the station is again off-line.  Hopefully this is temporary, but please stay tuned for more updates as they are available.

UPDATE – 1:00pm ET: We’re back up and running again, and pending any more outages we should be good for tonight’s show.

2 Comments »

We Need Your Help!

Posted in Uncategorized on January 24, 2010 by David 2

RJ and I have been doing everything we can to help spread the word about ShockNet Radio, the blog site, and all of the shows.

But unfortunately we both hit plenty of roadblocks, because a lot of the places that we try to spread the word to will NOT allow us to promote ShockNet. When we do it, it’s considered either “self-promotion” or else it is treated as out-and-out SPAM. Either way, we are turned away because we cannot promote our own projects.

That is why we need your help. We need you to help spread the word about ShockNet and the AH blog site. If you see one of the stories here that you really like, please share it with your social networking groups, or with any Internet-based news services you may have access to like Current.com or any various newsgroups or message boards.

RJ and I can only do so much to help spread the word. It really is up to you to help do the rest.

4 Comments »

On the Demise of Air America

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on January 24, 2010 by David 2

(The following is a rant by David 2 on his January 23rd broadcast of “Brutally Honest“. It has been posted here with his permission.)

On Thursday, January 21st, Air America Radio announced that they would be closing their doors and shutting off operations.

Tonight, as this show is airing on ShockNet Radio, Air America is running repeats of previous programming.  Their staff has already been let go.  As of 9pm Eastern time on January 25th, Air America will be officially off the air for good.

And with it the last liberal syndication network will disappear.

Conservative and neo-conservative talk show parrots are reveling in this news, of course.  They know that their icons still have a job.  Their dominance on the radio dial is still intact.

What they FAIL to comprehend, though, is that they NEEDED a liberal syndication network like Air America to be on the air even more than the liberals needed it.

You see, the key to the success of conservative and neo-conservative talk radio has been the abolition of the FCC’s anti-American policy fraudulently known as the “Fairness Doctrine”.  It was a policy that neutralized political discussions on radio and television as long as there was no “equal time” provided for opposing viewpoints.  For every Gene Siskel giving a “Thumbs up”, you HAD to have a Roger Ebert to give a “Thumbs down”, or else you weren’t allowed to give either one.

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, and all the others would NOT be allowed to give the kind of shows they provide today if the “Fairness Doctrine” was still in place.  They’d still be doing ZOO Radio, hawking prefabricated Top-40’s bubblegum music, or playing morose country music about losing your home and your dog to a cheatin’ heart.  Or else they would have to actually work WITH and give equal time to their liberal counterparts, watching as their collection of cleverly-worded cheap shots and intellectual twisters are sabotaged on the spot.  They certainly wouldn’t be the shinning superstars that they are now.

And the eternal response to the criticism of talk radio has always been to simply follow their example.  Okay, if you don’t like conservative-dominated radio shows, then do what they did!  Go ahead!  Find a backer, set up your own syndication network, get some affiliates, and do your own radio shows.

Never mind, of course, that the big syndicators gave away the candy store for a few years, offering their headline shows at no cost to the potential affiliates in exchange for getting the audience hooked as well as listening to plugs from their national sponsors.  Never mind that this was done at a time when there really was such a thing as local radio stations and not corporate-owned corporate-cloned puppet stations.  Never mind that trying to get liberals to do anything as a collective group is like trying to herd cats, while conservatives are more prone to the cultish mindset.  NEVER MIND those things!  Just do what the cons and neocons did and liberals should be fine!

And that is what the people behind Air America did in 2004.  They found a backer, they set up shop, they got some affiliates, they brought in talent like Al Frankin and Randi Rhodes, and they launched Air America Radio.

And right from the start, the cons and neo-cons were saying it won’t last.  They don’t have a message.  They don’t know how to do a radio show or how to retain an audience.

Unfortunately they were proven right.  Air America couldn’t survive as it was.  Even when a second liberal radio network, Nova M Radio, was launched, it too lost money and went out of business.

But Limbaugh and others shouldn’t be laughing about this.  They should be worrying.  They should be regretting poking fun at the liberal stations and wishing them ill.  Because with the fall of Air America Radio, liberals now can go back to their fallback position of trying to restore the anti-American policy known as the “Fairness Doctrine”.  And with a Democrat in the White House and the Democrats in control of Congress, they have a chance of pulling it off.  Because if THEY can’t succeed in talk radio, then they want to make sure that NOBODY succeeds in it either!

And I gotta tell you folks, despite my own ongoing criticism of conservative and neoconservative programming, despite me calling them out on their cultish partisan tactics, despite me calling them trained parrots and paid puppets, I understand and appreciate that this has been a highly successful business for them.  They rake in MILLIONS in contract deals and book sales and speaking tours.  I can’t help but be envious of their success.  I would love to get even a fraction of what they make in a year.

But even though I continue to condemn the message as well as castigate the messenger, I certainly would not wish ill upon the MEDIUM itself.  Because the MEDIUM itself is a powerful tool, no matter which political faction uses it.  The key is being able TO use it.

Even though Air America failed, they still were able to get their voices out.  They still managed to raise enough of an audience to help get a comedian like Al Franken elected to the US Senate.  They provided the platform for Rachel Maddow to go on to be a star on MSNBC.  They gave a voice to groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  They reassured like-minded people that they’re not alone, that they’re not crazy when they saw all of the lies and hypocrisy of the cons and neocons, that they don’t have to listen to an endless parade of the same recycled talking points and the same cultish mantras being churned out by the cons and neo-con talent in-between commercials for diamond dealers and gold marketers.

That is why I make this appeal now to any liberal who is hearing this show: don’t give up on the medium.  There IS an alternative to the conservative and neoconservative propaganda machine.  There IS a platform that the conservatives and neoconservatives cannot claim as their exclusive monopoly.  You are listening to that alternative right now.

Let’s get brutally honest here… whether you know it or not, and whether the conservatives and neoconservatives want to accept it, Internet radio IS the next generation of this medium.  And it is a digital OCEAN full of messages and ideas that CANNOT be co-opted by the conservative and neoconservative propaganda machine.

Sure there’s digital satellite radio… Sirius/XM… which is a government-endorsed monopoly already contaminated with conservative and SOME liberal programming.  But that method is and always has been a temporary measure.  A stopgap idea.  A corporate-run way to fill the gap between the Internet and terrestrial radio.  It goes where the Internet could not… in cars and in homes without a computer.

However that gap is closing.  During my visit to the ShockNet Studios last November, I was riding around the streets of Norman and Oklahoma City with ShockNet Radio coming out the car’s speakers.

Yes, you heard me. ShockNet Radio, an Internet-based radio station, was being heard INSIDE A CAR!

And with more and more vehicles being made with Internet access and smartphone access, it was only a matter of time before it would be possible to hear Internet radio stations from your car.

Anyone who has an iPhone or any other smart phone that has web-browsing access to the Internet can now hear ShockNet Radio’s live streaming audio feed anywhere they have coverage.  This is not hypothetical.  This is not the fleeting fantasy of futurists.  This is real.  This is happening right now.

WE ARE THE ALTERNATIVE!  WE ARE the answer to the conservative and neoconservative domination of terrestrial radio.  WE ARE the future.  They are the past.  They are the dinosaurs, and eventually they WILL go the way of the dinosaurs.

My challenge to the former listeners of Air America Radio… my challenge to the former listeners of Nova M Radio… my challenge to any liberal out there who feels like they’re being shut out of the medium is this: forget about the “Fairness Doctrine”.  Let it remain the closet monster for conservative and neo-conservative media personalities.  Don’t turn to the government to resurrect some antiquated dictatorial rule that belongs in the same trashcan of history as the Edsel.  Turn to us.  COME to ShockNet Radio!  Come over to Internet Radio itself!

This is MY definition of a “Fairness Doctrine”: if you don’t like what you hear on Internet Radio, you can always create your own show.  You don’t need an FCC license.  You don’t need to worry about broadcast towers.  You don’t have to worry about speech restrictions.  You don’t even have to worry about ratings or sponsors.  When I got started in Internet Radio back in 1999, I worked with a low-end computer, low-speed computer access, two Walkman players, and ten-year old audio equipment that I bought at Radio Shack.  ANYONE can start their own Internet radio show.  ANYONE.  THAT’S FAIRNESS!  THAT is “equal time”!

If you don’t like what you hear on ShockNet Radio, you can always come up with ideas for your own show and speak with RJ Evans about hosting it.  You don’t have to be live.  This show is proof of it.  You don’t have to be in the studio if you’re not living in the Oklahoma City area.  Again, this show is proof of it.  The beauty of the Internet allows you to broadcast anywhere and to be heard anywhere you have access.  And I mean ANYWHERE on the planet!  THE ONLY limitations are access and your willingness to actually BE the voices that you so desperately want to have heard.  And that access is spreading more and more as technology allows us to be heard from smart phones, from smart cars, and even from smart homes.

But more importantly, if you hear something that you like, then you need to HYPE IT UP to your friends, to your family members, to your neighbors, to people that you know.  That’s the real reason why liberal talk radio fails.  Even if conservative syndicators did cut a few corners to get where they are, that just means you have to work twice as hard to make sure that you can beat them at their own game.

Yes, I do mourn the loss of Air America Radio, like I mourned the loss of Nova M Radio, because they helped to provide the alternative to the conservative and neo-conservative propaganda machine.  But just because the networks couldn’t survive the harsh realities of business doesn’t mean that the medium needs to suffer for it.  The alternative exists!  You just have to step up and embrace it.

3 Comments »

Respect Religion?

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , on January 22, 2010 by RJ Evans

(Editorial Comment from the American Heathen® radio show – Air Date 01/22/10)

Respect.  It’s something that is earned.  It is acknowledging something or someone that is deserving.   Built in character, experience, history, truth and honor, it is a nod of the head, a wink of the eye, a firm handshake, a warm hug, or a gentle kiss.  Respect is not given lightly or in excess, and it requires no extraordinary effort.  It is given freely as it is labored for.  It is not a mandatory requirement, nor is it a law.  Respect is given on equal footing, balanced by its deeds and its words.

I respect my friends. They have earned my respect.  My keen eye has judged them to be worthy of my respect. Through careful observation, conversation, and character analysis, I have measured my friends with the ethics of humanity and their contributions to it. I measure them by their honor, integrity, and loyalty to human principles.  I measure them on their honesty, forthrightness, and strength of character.  Indeed, they have earned my respect.  They do what they say, and say what they do.

This brings me to religion.  Should religion get a free pass when it comes to respect?  Simply for existing, does religion warrant special treatment, absent of all requirements because it claims a supreme being as the world’s master?  What has it done to earn my, or anyone’s respect?  Deeds?  Religion feeds the poor.   Religion shelters the homeless.  Sure. But, don’t forget the fine print.  There’s always a catch.  Much like a weekend for two at a luxurious resort, all expenses paid… all you have to do is sit through the high-pressure presentation.  But, more importantly, deeds are hollow without honor.  Deeds are hollow without integrity. Deeds are hollow without loyalty.  Deeds are hollow without truth. Deeds are hollow in the arms of hypocrisy.  Religion thrives on deeds in order to compensate for its lack of truth, and then demands respect for those deeds and its ego to cover its fallacy.  Religion has no integrity, nor truth.  If it did have integrity and truth there would be evidence to prove its claims.  But, there is none.  Religion has no loyalty.   If it did, it would embrace humanity freely, without exception or expectation, demand or condemnation.  But, it does not. Religion has no honor.  There is no honor among thieves who seek to steal away human freedom, and rule those who do not ascribe to their thievery.  Their is no honor when fairness is left in the wake of bigotry.  There is no honor when there is no foundation in logic and reason.

Non-believers are constantly under attack for not “respecting” religion.  We are maligned as intolerant.  Indeed, we are intolerant.  Religion, in and of itself, is a despicable, vile, reprehensible cancer on the face of humanity.  It deserves no tolerance.  In the absence of evidence and reasoned logical thought… in the face of hard science and intellectual scrutiny, religion has stood defiantly against humanity.  It does so out of spite, malice and fear.  It champions bigotry, hatred, and racism.  Religion promotes cultural and racial superiority and dominance.  It claims a moral and ethical high ground as its foundational canon out of the same mouth that pukes the bile of its own hypocrisies.  I no more respect religion than I do the child molester, serial killer, or a megalomaniac tyrannical dictator.

Religion deserves nothing.  No respect, no free pass.  And those who claim religion as their foundation will always fear these words.  I do not respect your religion.  Period.  I no more respect your beliefs in a skydaddy than I do in anyone who believes in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the Boogeyman.  They are all myths.   Religion is not sacred, special, or untouchable.  It is not above reproach.  Today’s religion is a fallacy, no different from all religions of the past, of the gods and goddesses that came long before the big three, and who – not incidentally – are easily disposed of by you, the believer, in favor of your monotheistic skydaddys of today.   Religion is religion.  Your “beliefs” are irrelevant, insignificant, insufficient and repulsive.  They do not deserve, nor will they ever earn, my respect.

I will continue to mount an assault on your religion, all religion.  To me, religion is the enemy of freedom.  But, not you.  No.  Not you as a person.  As a fellow human being, I will not deny you your right to believe.  That would be wrong.  Why?  Because that is telling someone what to think.  But, I will challenge you any time you try to tell me what to think.  I will challenge you to produce testable, scientific evidence.  I will meet your babble with reason and logic.  I will endeavor to put the smack-down on your ancient anachronism and show you the gaping, cavernous flaws of your dogma.   I will force you to look into the mirror and see the hypocrisy, bigotry, and hate your religion harbors, and how it is manifested in your self-righteousness.  Then, when I have finished breaking you down to the core of your humanity, I will reach out with my hand and offer you my friendship. And if you reject me, in the absence of verbal confrontation… in the absence of your civility… I will still stand by your right to believe.   I respect humanity.  I have seen civil, compassionate, empathetic, ethical, reasoned and logical humanity.  It does exist in all of us, somewhere.  It does not come from religion.  And, it is not the product of a skydaddy.  It is the product of evolution, knowledge, and hope born of ambition to progress.  I respect your human rights,  not your beliefs.  And, I will defend your human rights, and mine, at all costs.

Religion.mp3

4 Comments »

David 2’s Special Comment: “Supreme Court, Incorporated”

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on January 22, 2010 by David 2

(The following is a special comment by David 2 as provided on the January 22nd broadcast of “American Heathen®” on ShockNet Radio.)

I want to take a minute or two to address something that came out this week in the Supreme Court.

In a 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that corporations were free and clear to spend as much money as they want to on political campaigns, essentially nullifying twenty years of campaign finance reform.

Not all reforms have been removed, of course.  Corporations still cannot sponsor political action committees directly, but certainly big money has been able to work around that limitation ever since it was created.

Some people are shocked by this decision.  Some people believe that the United States has now been bought and sold to big corporations.  They are a little late in this assertion… by about two hundred years.

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following to Senator George Logan of Pennsylvania: “I hope we shall… crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

In 1823, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, writing for the majority, declared that corporations – non-human entities – were afforded the same rights and privileges as individuals.  This concept of an “artificial personhood” status was created by the courts four years previous, but in this particular judicial decision – Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts v. Town of Pawlet – here the actual legal assertion that declared corporations to be on the same status as human beings was officially made.  A status that the government REFUSED to give to African Americans for a few more decades and to women for almost a century.

Precedence, my friends.  If there is one thing that the justices of the Supreme Court are a sticker for – especially in a conservative-leaning court such as our current one – it is precedence above anything else.  These justices would just as soon cut their own arms and legs off with a pocket knife than to break with precedence.

Indeed the power-grabs of corporations, the abuses and excesses that went hand-in-hand in the Industrial Revolution and in the Industrial Society that followed it, were allowed to go on because corporations were considered by the government to be on the same level – if not more so – as human beings.

But that still does not make it right.  In fact it can be said that the course of freedom itself had been on the steady decline BECAUSE of that decision back in 1823, as well as its previous decision in 1819.

There are three elements needed for actual freedom in any society.  The first element is choice.  Humans make choices, both good and bad ones.  Corporations, through its executives and associates, make choices as well.  The second element is responsibility.  Responsibility not only means punishment, but it also means rewards.  Corporations have certainly shown that they too can reap the benefits of their decisions, but not so much the burdens of them.

But it is that third element that humans uniquely possess and that corporations, by their very nature, cannot.  That element is INDIVIDUALITY.  A corporation is NOT an individual entity.  It is a collective.  It is a combination of people, talent, and resources.  You change any of those three things and you change the corporation.  You cannot do the same to a human being, though.  A corporation can be restructured and reorganized; it can be bought and sold over and over again.  A human being is not supposed to be bought and sold, even though we did just that until 1865.

So what better way to dismantle freedom than to start with the premise that an inanimate collective entity has as many rights and privileges – if not more so because of their financial largesse – as an ordinary human being?  That rights and privileges are mere luxuries that can be given and taken way at the discretion of government?  After all, if government can interfere in the affairs of big corporations through various regulations, why not also do the same to human beings since they are – at least in the eyes of the government – on the same level?

In fact all of the fear-mongering being waged by people like MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, namely the idea that the Republic is now DOOMED, fails to take into account that this particular problem goes back two hundred years to the time when private entities were given the kind of legal status that we categorically refused to give to certain other human beings.

The remedy, then, is not in passing more laws and more regulations that merely tiptoe around the matter.  Even amending the Constitution, which a herculean task in and of itself, would not resolve the matter if it does not reassert this simple fact: that as long as we FAIL to recognize that freedom is an INDIVIDUAL concept, we will continue to make the mistake that non-human entities should be treated as no different than human beings, and thus give them a preference that we will consciously refuse to give to our neighbors.

By the way, there is one more aspect of corporations that individuals cannot do.  Corporations are able to pass on their responsibilities to others.  If they are hit with a fine or a fee or taxes – like the kind of fines, fees, or taxes that President Obama wants enacted – then they are allowed to pass the cost of that penalty down to their customer base as part of their overhead cost.  In other words, WE, as INDIVIDUALS, are the ones that end up paying for the negative responsibilities of corporations.

Bear that in mind as you ponder whether or not corporations should be considered no different than human beings.

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Atheist Comedy!

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on January 21, 2010 by RJ Evans

Yes!  This guy is brilliant and funny as hell!  And, he’s Atheist!

4 Comments »

Amercian Heathen® RETURNS TONIGHT!

Posted in Uncategorized with tags on January 15, 2010 by David 2

“American Heathen®” returns TONIGHT! 8pm Eastern, 7pm Central, LIVE on ShockNet Radio, Freethought Radio, and on the iTunes radio player! If you have a smartphone (i.e. an iPhone), you can listen to ShockNet ANYWHERE you have coverage!

And we have something new for 2010!  We have FOAD!   What is FOAD, you ask?  FOAD is YOUR way to tell off anyone you choose.  It could be a politician, it could be a celebrity, it could be your neighbor, it could even be someone in ShockNet Radio!  Just bear in mind, of course, that FOAD is an equal-opportunity offender.  Interested?  Tune in tonight for more about this and to hear who gets the very first FOAD.

So stop wasting your time wondering how to spend your Friday nights!  Come join RJ Evans and David 2 TONIGHT at 8pm Eastern, 7pm Central, 5pm Pacific, and bear witness as “The Evolution of a Godless Revolution” continues!

1 Comment »

The Christian Nationalist Doctrine of Exceptionalism

Posted in Politics with tags , on January 13, 2010 by David 2

From the man who correctly categorized the GOP Healthcare Plan as “Don’t Get Sick or Die Quickly”, we have the new “Doctrine of Exceptionalism”.

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