Here are eight of the books that are on the docket for this year. I’m planning to continue in Civil War and revolutionary history but also have the urge to venture a little more into literature this year. I’m especially compelled to read some of the works that Christopher Hithens has reviewed in the last five or so years, reviews that were published in his most recent collection, “Arguably.”
Tag Archives: thomas paine
Beck’s sad rush toward gold, decline
So, out of sheer boredom and mostly for entertainment value, I watched about five minutes of Glenn Beck on FOX News tonight, for that’s about all I could stomach and, coincidentally, it only took Beck that long to begin quivering over some rags to riches tale of a fellow who was about to oust himself by overdosing on sleeping pills when, wouldn’t ya know, as he was walking into the drug store, the guy heard over the radio a quote from one of Beck’s books, The Christmas Sweater (available in fine bookstores everywhere).
According to a letter read from the man to Beck that he read on the air, the man immediately fell on his knees in tears and vowed to pull himself up and get his life together. He had fallen into drugs, lost his job, started living with his economically disadvantaged mother, you know the bit. First, and this isn’t what I sat down to write about (I’m getting to that in a minute), how egomaniacal does one have to be to shill your own book, of which he’s apparently performing some sort of stage show across the nation, at the expense of some poor sap’s tale of ascension, as if to say, “Sure, this man’s story is all about redemption, and that’s what the Christmas season is all about, but look who inspired him to turn things around? Me.” Also, Beck, most humbly, didn’t fail to mention that he plays eight different characters by himself. Viewers also saw clips from the production during this five minute segment. How many more self-advertisements viewers were forced to suffer through during the entire show is anyone’s guess. But, no matter. They probably think, ‘The more Beck the better’.”
The main observation that I wanted to make was that immediately following all the quivering and Beck nearly tearing up over the man’s story came a commercial about Beck’s often touted sponsor, Goldline International, Inc, and another shorter spot about U.S. Gold. So, essentially, if you are Beck, you are on the air telling all these stories of folks in need, some people just plain worried about the economy and others who have managed to pull themselves out of the gutter, what better way to tell people you are rooting for the common man by encouraging folks to stockpile gold, a la, a pirate on the high seas. The oxymoron of all this was so stunning that I nearly tossed my weiner dog through the window. But, of course, it’s only an oxymoron when you look at the content of Beck’s show. When you look at the viewership, yeah, it’s folks who have sipped the FOX News Kool-Aid from Day One, but it’s also the Reagan trickle down economic crowd, who somehow think that the upper 99 percent of the population’s wealth is going to flow like a graceful, cooling stream down to the proletariat masses.
But, of course, Beck’s obsession with the gold industry won’t be news to regular viewers. He’s been talking up gold for quite some time now, while framing it in the context that the American dollar might be on the verge of a collapse. After all, he’s got to make up some frame of reference. Here’s a full piece on this by Think Progress. To read this article is to see just how pathetic, and desperate, Beck has become after losing the lion share of his sponsors with his fringe notions that, contrary to what he contends, are quite at odds with that of the real Thomas Paine, who was a progressive if he was nothing else. It’s entertaining that so many on the fringe right, the Tea Party crowd, and the like, summon Paine every chance they get while forgetting, or probably without knowing in the first place, that Paine was a deist and certainly not a Christian. Further, he was most likely against nearly everything for which they stand. Again, he was one of the most progressive men of his day. Any serious student of history knows this.
Here’s a comparison of Beck to Paine by Chris Kelly, in the piece, “Glenn Beck is Thomas Paine, Except for Everything“:
Do you like estate taxes? Paine was pitching them in 1791.
How about progressive taxation? Paine wasn’t just for it, he made charts and graphs.
Welfare? Absolutely.
Government make-work programs? Yep. Pay for them with the estate tax.
Public education? Yes, please.
International organizations? Paine said we needed them. Thought they might be useful for preventing wars after we disarmed.
Feminism?
If a woman were to defend the cause of her sex, she might address him in the following manner … If we have an equal right with you to virtue, why should we not have an equal right to praise? … Our duties are different from yours, but they are not therefore less difficult to fulfill, or of less consequence to society … You cannot be ignorant that we have need of courage not less than you … Permit our names to be sometimes pronounced beyond the narrow circle in which we live. Permit friendship, or at least love, to inscribe its emblem on the tomb where our ashes repose; and deny us not that public esteem which, after the esteem of one’s self, is the sweetest reward of well doing. — T. Paine
Compare and contrast:
OK, so anyway, I was talking about ugly people. Ugly people, if you’re a guy, you can get past it. I don’t think you can as an ugly woman. I don’t — no, I don’t. If you’re an ugly woman, I apologize. Oh, you’ve got a double cross, because if you’re an ugly woman, you’re probably a progressive as well. –G. Beck
Animal Rights Nuts?
Everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty. — T. Paine
Religion?
Religion is under attack! — G. Beck
Priests and conjurors are of the same trade. — T. Paine
Thus, it’s quite a sideshow at this point that Beck and others know so little about the history they so often summon, or spin the Founders’ words to bolster their own ill-conceived arguments. But if they actually knew a wit about the Founders, they would realize that the Founders could take intellectual backstrokes around the current lot of fringe-crowd conservatives who are only attempting to elevate themselves, unjustifiably so, by calling up Paine or Jefferson or whichever Founder is, unbeknownst to them, their intellectual superior.
But, I was talking about gold wasn’t I? As noted, it’s sad and pathetic that Beck has so few sponsors left. It’s contemptible how he got to this point. He does have National Review, but wait, that’s a conservative outfit too, isn’t it? Real companies, like General Mills, AT&T, Walmart and Bank of America have all flown the coop. No matter. Beck still has his fringe crowd and others to ride the gold-colored Kool-Aid machine through some mythical history and future of their own making. Which makes me wonder. Did the aforementioned beneficiary of Beck’s sweater book become a client of Goldline as well? I’m willing to bet so. That would have been an entertaining twist to the story, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.
A year-plus in the books
Welp, folks, I just renewed the registration on this domain for another year. I had a free credit somehow or another, so it didn’t cost anything, and as an added bonus, you get to see me babble for another year! I know you couldn’t be happier.
I was watching a Christopher Hitchens interview today from 2002 (I know, I apologize. I keep harping on this crass Englishman, but I’m fascinated with the guy.) Anyway, he was saying that at some point in his life, he came to realize that he was a born writer and that he really couldn’t imagine doing anything else. That the career of writing was really decided for him, not by him. And that struck me as something I could relate to.
To present a brief sketch of my background, I began college at Lander University in South Carolina with no clue at all what I wanted to do. At first, I believe I was a music major, when I realized that if I continued on down this path, I would grow up penniless. So, I moved to a more lucrative endeavor: computer programming. I could handle Pascal, the language, not his wager, fairly well. I performed decently in the introductory Pascal class, as I remember. But as I transferred to Clemson University, I came in contact with this fast-speaking, fast-moving, coffee-overdosed programming professor blathering something about the Java language (who obviously took the title of the language too seriously), objects and functions and infinite loops, and it was all quite frustrating. Today, I understand some of JavaScript, a Web programming language, but at the time, my anti-math mind was not grasping this fellow’s speedily-rehearsed lectures at all. So computer programming was out.
English was the last gasp. I did not know what I would do with an English major, even after graduating college. I just took the wise words of a professor of mine. He told me to just study what you enjoy. And I did enjoy that, at least. I was inspired by John Milton, Shelley, Keats, Emily Dickson, Bronte, and others, and later, Thomas Wolfe, Jack Miles, Stanley Fish, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck and others. I had early aspirations of going on to becoming an English professor. This would, of course, require graduate school somewhere other than Clemson. And in order to stay closer to my family and friends, I declined that option and started working at a retail store in Clemson to make ends meet. But we’re getting bogged down. To make it short, a journalism instructor at Clemson University (S.C.) saw something in me, I suppose, and gave me a favorable recommendation, thus allowing me to get an interview with a local newspaper in Clayton, Ga.
My future aspirations would lead further than this blog and my current position. I would like to do some writing for a major magazine on the topic of either politics or religion or history … or perhaps, a well-read online publication, by way of a weekly or monthly column, if the opportunity ever presented itself.
But back to writing as a career. I think at some point in the latter part of 2007-08, I came to the realization that a writer is what I am, like Hitchens and others. I think before then, I was just trying to scratch by, have fun and the like. Although, I was attempting to write some (bad) poetry and fiction in high school, so the interest was there early on.
Today, I take a certain pleasure when I am in the company of fellow writers, like the editor at the paper for which I work. And I don’t mean pulp fiction writers who crank out 10 novels a day. Those folks aren’t writers; they are entertainers. I mean people who appreciate the language and have something meaingful to say through it, like Milton, Wolfe, Paine, Locke, Vonnegut and others.
At the expense of this getting too long and to catalog the renewal of the domain name and this site for another year, here are 15 of my favorite posts from the last year and four months, beginning in May 2008. Thanks for reading!
On Dobson’s ‘dissection’ of Obama’s June 2006 speech
Why I assume a god (I ironic to the core, since more than one year later, I would make an opposite case.)
2012 Olympics go intergalactic?
Comments on the presidential debate
On Cruise, thetans, Hubbard and Xenu
Limbaugh, unhappiest, most miserable person alive? Perhaps
The newspaper crisis as I see it
On ‘Milk’ and homosexuality (Revised)
The God question: My testimony
The debate on the god question has come up recently on Facebook between a couple friends of mine, and I thought it might be interesting if I laid out and clarified a few points about my own experiences regarding this matter to attempt to come around to an overall theory. Some family, friends, former church members of mine have probably noticed peculiar postings of mine regarding religion and God, and I thought an explanation was in order. This post took me a couple weeks to write (Thus the reason for no other recent posts), so bear with me. I’m not saying my conclusion won’t or can’t change, but my thoughts right now as they stand are recorded in this post. To borrow a religious term, here is my “testimony:”
First, as I have stated to a couple people in the last year, I set about in Oct. 2008 or so to the task of trying to figure out precisely why I believed what I proclaimed to believe. I will say here that I was raised in the Christian tradition, as most people in the southeastern United States are, and spent many years performing musically and otherwise toward that end. I sang with my grandfather, whom I miss to this day, in more than one Southern gospel group. I played acoustic and electric guitar for seven or more years in a contemporary-style church in Upstate, South Carolina. Until I reached college, I knew little of teachings other than what was in the Bible. Despite taking and passing a philosophy class and many English classes which served to, at least, introduce certain issues that would later challenge my faith, I maintained my core beliefs through college and even through numerous years after college.
Like so many with physical ailments who have wanted desperately to believe in a god who had the power to, not only save souls, but to physically heal, I tried my best to read the Bible and believe. In the years after college, my life was largely dominated by loneliness and despair over various issues, the most immediate of which would be emphysema.
I had heard stories that many people back home prayed me out of certain death when I was a baby hospitalized for 3 1/2 years in New York City, apparently saving me from dying from a critical immune system disorder. I don’t want to discredit or marginalize family members’ and friends’ efforts or concerns back home. They were doing what they thought was best.
So, poof, after much research and after three years of testing and poking and prodding at me, doctors came up with a way to give me an unprecedented unmatched bone marrow transplant to set my immune system on the right course. In the early 1980s, this was no small thing.
Now, I’m wise enough to recognize that science and research saved me in my infancy. I’m wise enough to know that, had I been lying in a crib inside my home in South Carolina, with the same prayers but without the same science and medical treatment, I would be a memory, and would probably not have even made it past my first year. So, at 4 1/2 years old, with medical research providing and setting my path toward adulthood, I set out on a vast world that I had never known cramped inside my little, sterile hospital-world.
And, of course, my parents not only gave me life … but a second life. I was a dead man, but they packed up their things in their early 20s at the time (I’m now 32 and can’t imagine doing such a thing at their age) and moved 900 miles north to a cockroach-ridden Manhattan apartment with their young daughter … all for me. For all my hard-boiled, emotional determinism, the thought of what they went through to keep me alive still brings a lump to my throat … and I’m thankful beyond words.
Back to religion, I decided a year or so back that it would be the most insincere and dishonest thing that I could imagine if I were to continue to lead the people in church worship without believing myself in the words of the songs I was playing (I think even believers can agree with me on that point.) I surmised that it would also be distasteful to not know full well why I believed in what the folks around me were singing, and not be able to articulate what I believed, and why I believed it. I concluded, even before I began questioning faith, that to believe and live my entire life and then die some day without knowing precisely why I believed such and such, without evidence and without a good explanation for any of it, essentially giving my entire life to something, sheepishly, was a most foolish and tragic thing (In fact, the word “tragic” probably represents an understatement).
Believing simply based on a “feeling” that we get on Sunday morning in the presence of nice music and other believers — which is all it is, since there’s not a stitch of evidence for any of it — was not good enough for me, and this was the realization that hit me between the eyes at some point last year. I can, perhaps, pinpoint the precise time. It may have been during a long car ride to Boston with my wife, when I had a fantastically long time to do a lot of thinking.
To catalog a few of the works I’ve studied thus far that have influenced me one way or the other since and before that particular trip:
- “Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God” by Jack Miles
- “God: A Biography” by Jack Miles
- “Mere Christianity” “Surprised by Joy,” “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis
- “The Case for Christ” and “The Case for Faith” by Lee Strobel
- “Godless” by Dan Barker
- “Why I Became An Atheist” by John Loftus
- “The Age of Reason” by Thomas Paine
- “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris
- “The Stranger” and “The Myth of Sisyphus” By Albert Camus
- “Notes from the Underground” By Fyodor Dostoevsky (To a lesser degree, “The Brothers Karamzov” and “Crime and Punishment”
- This does not mention, of course, most of the Old and New testaments, numerous Christian commentaries, two decades of Christian teaching from various workshops, sermons and classes, and many of the gospels and texts that did not make it into the “official” King James Bible as pieced together by various church officials centuries ago.
I’m under no illusion that my recent thoughts and studies are crushing to any possibility, or any fraction of a possibility, that I might supernaturally be made better physically some day (For I deny even the possibility of a being capable of such things … nothwithstanding his unwillingness). I dare say no one has called out more to God than I for answers, even for answers about his own existence. No one has pleaded more with God for help. No one has been on their knees more than me. But I’ve heard nothing. Not one thing but my own voice, until eventually I got the impression that my prayers were merely floating to the ceiling and falling back down like stillborn stars. So, I got off my knees and determined, like the human that I am, to find the truth.
Believers will probably question this, saying something like, “Well, you can’t just give up. God is faithful to answer prayer in his time on his watch” or with, “God answers all prayer with either a ‘No,’ ‘Yes,’ or ‘Maybe.'” But those are the only three possible options, aren’t they? We can write off or explain away any unanswered prayer (or perceived answered prayer) by that logic to help God escape an explanation for his own silence.
We have, indeed, for centuries, received nothing at all but silence from the God of the Old Testament, just as we have received no recent word from Jesus or Zeus or Apollo or Allah or Osiris. Thousands of years have passed and not an utterance. Does that not strike anyone else as peculiar? Believers, again, will say the Bible is God’s revealed word or his instruction manual and that he exists in the hearts and minds of those who are filled with the Holy Spirit because they have believed in him. Well, I have believed — I have with all my heart — and other than some hormones jostled around, stimulated by some inspiring tune in the company of believers, have felt or heard nothing but my own voice.
So, I know there will be those to whom these words are very troubling — family, friends, former churchgoers, etc. but please know that I expect none of the same thoughts from any of you and am not trying to convince anyone of anything. I’m merely stating my experiences, and don’t particularly want this to meltdown into a large debate. Again, I did not set out at the start to disprove anything. I set out to find the truth. And these truths we can’t escape: Earth is billions of years old, Earth exists on a spiral arm of our galaxy, an insignificant spot, and not the center of the galaxy as many of our forebearers thought (which, by the way, gave creedance to the argument that we are the special planet, and a special species, in all of creation). The Earth will one day be uninhabited by people once again, not by a rapture, but either by a wayward asteroid or gamma ray burst or by the sun losing power. The truth is the canonical Bible contains many irreparable self-contradictions; condones slavery, mass slaughter, rape, the mutilation or altering of children’s genitalia, among other things; and cannot even get the details straight about the events surrounding Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Again, when I set about my studies, I was not seeking hope or spiritualism or miracles or wishful-thinking, I was seeking the truth, which in the 17th century when John Milton was alive, “a wicked race of deceivers … took the virgin Truth (and) hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds.” But they are not at the four winds anymore. Truth is much closer to us in modern America. So, at least at this juncture, I have concluded that the ancient, contradictory books of the Old and New testaments, written in a time of widespread myth and legend, are not good enough to make me, first, believe, and second, to base my entire life on such things contained therein.
I feel compelled to say that I apologize to certain people (of whom I still hold a great deal of respect) for that statement, whom I know, would want me to conclude differently, but that’s how I feel. The Christian tradition is so embedded in this part of the country (the Southeast), that to say such things, is almost like seceding a second time from the Union. But again, I ask, what’s more important? The truth or wishful thinking? When I set out about this, I resolved to be comfortable with whatever philosophical pathway on which my studies took me down. And that’s what we all must do.
And at some point, all us of have to make a similar choice: Do we want to be complacent in living our lives for a faith that may or may not, in reality, be true, or can we mentally and emotionally handle another possibility: that we are an insignificant dot in a vast, vast universe. As a friend of mine was saying, we need religion. We do indeed. But can’t we be strong enough to move past it and accept our place in the cosmos? As one writer, John Loftus, said that we humans think we are so special that we can’t imagine a fate that would see us go extinct like all the rest of life on Earth. Yet, that is our fate. Our extreme intelligence compels us to think of other worlds or other dimensions like heaven or hell, but our humanity also compels us to surmise that we are on a small planet in an insignificant galaxy, of which, there are millions. It is quite believable to think other species in some undiscovered galaxy thought themselves self-important, like us, and then, saw their own existence come to a crashing hault.
Of course, we may never know 100 percent if there is a god or not and we may never know 100 percent how life began, but I think we can be pretty sure it did not happen as the Bible, with its self-contradictions, recounts. (Note: I do not cite examples of the Bible’s contradictions here because they are well documented and this post is long as is. Search Google for “bible contradictions” and you can view them for yourself.)
For me, the option that we are an insignificant dot in a vast universe, takes much more wherewithall, and frankly, is a quite liberating axiom, to know that we are, at the core, connected and interconnected with the universe, not just Earth, and everything in the universe is quite a beautiful thing, as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson noted.
Thus, again, I did not seek hope (specifically for my health conditions or otherwise) or karma or spirituality or wishful thinking. I sought the truth. For truth, should we reference the record of science, which says this planet has existed for billions of years and will again be vanquished or a book authored by superstitious people thousands of years ago during a time consumed with myth and legend? I have to side with the former.
Tea bagging at its finest
This is sort of a continuation of this post about the apparent phenomenon known as “tea bagging,” which is an action of protest against what some feel has become a government system of overtaxation vis-à-vis the Boston Tea Party, in light of the recent large stimulus package and corporate bailouts.
Reteaparty.com says this about the organization:
PEAC is a political action committee that campaigns on behalf of issues, candidates, and potential candidates that promote honesty and Constitutional leadership. Currently, PEAC has launched campaigns to draft three unconventionally honest candidates: Rand Paul, Andrew “The Judge” Napolitano, and Peter Schiff. Additionally, PEAC has launched ReTeaParty.com, to organize a national Tea Party and fundraiser for the Goodwill on July 4, 2009, to promote the cause of honest and Constitutional government, voluntarism, and to organize an historic display of protest against our lack of representation. At ReTeaParty.com, thousands of people sent their representatives a Tea Bag in the mail on April 1, 2009, as a sign of our unrest over D.C.’s foolish solutions and overspending. — reteaparty.com
And during a recent broadcast by FOX News, the organization’s founder, Chad Peace (PEAC?), had this to say:
It’s not a reaction to any one person in particular it’s not a reaction against Obama or Pelosi or against Dodd or Barney Frank — any of these guys in particular. It’s against the whole idea of Washington that they can take our money and solve our problems for us.
And here we come to the hang of it all: the very reason why the Republican ideals of personal liberty and small government married to notions of moral uprightness do not work. Many on the right attempt to coerce folks in leadership or pray for them or lobby them or whatever on social issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research, hoping federal or state governments would, indeed, solve our problems. They believe federal and state governments can and should solve what they perceive to be our social ills. Government should preserve the institution of marriage. It should uphold certain moral codes that would prohibit heinous dabblings in abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Government should get drugs off the streets and prosecute drug dealers to the fullest extent of the law. State laws should keep the sabbath holy by disallowing the purchase of alcohol on Sunday (and in some states, disallowing even retail purchases before 1 p.m.!) Government should more fully represent our moral values, they say.
And in the same breath, what do we see? The same folks turn an about-face, and speak out against gun control, against big business regulations and against taxes. Thus, they favor big government in some areas and those of moral or social concerns, but not others like taxes or gun control. But they can’t have it both ways, and the logic just does not add up. Small government taken to its fullest end would mean this: the legalization of controlled substances, the continued or even a relaxing of gun control laws, allowing states to decide gay rights, relaxing regulations on abortion and stem cell research and some states disbanning their ridiculous blue laws. True, big government would mean the opposite. But both Dems and Reps want to pick and choose which causes they will champion.
Now, I come to the issue of the tea baggers. Obviously, it’s ludicrous to fain any comparison to folks today protesting taxes to those of the Revolutionary War era protesting taxation without representation by the British government. We have taxation with representation, and taxes are quite necessary to get things done. If there were no taxes, the country as we know it would crumble. If the tea baggers are protesting the stimulus plan and the bailouts, fine, but I fear this movement is another incarnation of those who throw the word “freedom” around like it’s a Hacky Sack. Witness this video:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpKdZrIhSIE
Richard Behney, tea party organizer in Indianapolis, who clearly is trying to equate himself and piggy back on the fame of Joe the Plumber (By now, if phlegm is not forming in your gut and ready to spew upward, something is wrong), said,
To hear that a segment of our society and our politicians want to come in and take everything away and spread it around, umm, that’s when I said enough.”
Later, he said, “This is a freedom-loving, American thing,” when talking about the movement, noting that “they’re (politicians in Washington) all part of the problem and it’s time to stand up for freedom.”
What incoherency is this? What the hell does freedom have to do with anything? Throughout this whole debacle, has our freedom ever, ever, ever been in question? Or is this slick-haired baffoon just throwing out those four or five right wing buzz words that might give him instant cred with ignorants, including words like freedom, America, God, independence and country? I posit the latter.
As an addendum, this particular rally on April 15th is supposed to feature a guy playing Thomas Paine, who was, I must note, a deist, and whose arguments would fly in the face of Glenn Beck’s and (probably) Richard Behney’s belief that the Bible is true, for Paine believed nothing of the sort, and that’s quite evident from reading “The Age of Reason.” (Side note: Deism isn’t valid either, for it says that, while God exists, he is out there somewhere, did not author the Bible and is sort of an impersonal watcher on the world and personal events. He watches “from a distance” as the song goes. Thus, if he isn’t personally engaged in this world, it seems to follow that he is irrelevant and of no consequence for us.) Further, it’s a bit of an insult to the legacy and great work of Paine to have these types of folks parading his name around as if he would agree with them on every point. He would probably agree with them on very few points. But that’s where the idiocy of this generation has gotten us.
Quote of the day: Dec. 28, 2008
I’m currently reading Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason.” Phillip Foner, in his biographical introduction to Paine’s widely read work said this of Paine’s hunger for learning, despite the “meagre education” he received at Thetford Grammar School:
He continued his process of self-education throughout hsi life, convinced that ‘every person of learning is finally his own teacher.’ ‘I seldom passed five minutes of my life however circumstanced,’ he once observed, ‘in which I did not acquire some knowledge.’
Note: I thought it might be interesting to keep a running log of some of the better quotes from my personal reading each day (or as often as I can.) This is the first such post.
Quote of the day: Dec. 26, 2008
Note: This is not to suggest I’m going to begin posting quotes I find every single day. (Though I may) I do have a life, you know, albeit, not much of one.
The hinting and intimidating manner of writing that was formerly used on subjects of this kind [religion], produced skepticism, but not conviction. It is necessary to be bold. Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it. Say a bold thing that will stagger them, and they will begin to think. — Thomas Paine / Letter written to Elihu Palmer