Turkey was in the news last month, for putting on trial the two surviving generals who helped lead a successful coup against a popularly-elected government in 1980. Terrible thing, isn’t it, for unelected generals to undermine democracy like that? Or is there more to the story than meets the eye?

The story begins at the dawn of the twentieth century, when Turkish army officers, then the most well-educated, forward-looking people in the Ottoman Empire, overthrew centuries of rule by Muslim sultans. There isn’t space to talk about that in detail here, but you can sneak a peek at a chapter from my forthcoming book to get the full story. Ultimately the military, led by the extraordinary Kemal Mustafa Atatürk, established a secular republic, in a revolution more sweeping (and less bloody) than anything that occurred in America, France, Russia, or China. Not without intense resistance, though, from the Muslim God experts displaced from power, who forced Atatürk to put down a number of armed revolts. When his successor allowed free elections in 1950, a party dominated by imams took power, and promptly began whittling away at the provisions of Atatürk’s secular constitution for their own benefit.

God expert power in Turkey waxed and waned over the next two decades. A tectonic shift occurred in 1973, though, as a result of the stunning success of the Arab oil embargo (which in turn had resulted from Muslim fury over American military support for Israeli God experts). Suddenly, Saudi Arabia had more money than it knew what to do with. While some of it went to race horses and yachts, much of it was plowed into propaganda to increase Muslim political influence around the world. The campaign kicked off with a 1976 conference in Pakistan, under the auspices of the Saudi-funded “Muslim World League,” attended by representatives of Turkey’s religious political party. The goals the conference decided upon were straightforward:

1. The constitutional frameworks of the Islamic countries should be restructured according to Islamic principles and the Arabic language should be spread among the people.

2. Civil laws should be replaced by the Sharia.

3. Women should obey Islamic restrictions.

4. Necessary economic and political steps should be taken to establish modern Islamic states based on the Sharia.

5. At every level of educational training, Islam should be taught as a mandatory subject.

6. The five principles of Islam should be memorized by all primary school students.

7. Secondary school students must learn the entire Koran.

8. In order to promote these goals, Islamic educational institutions must be established in each country.

9. In order to recreate Islamic unity, all Muslim states should first recognize and accept their Islamic attributes and then establish a confederation under the guidance of a commonly elected Caliph.

Saudi oil money began pouring into Turkey. If the shining example of Atatürk’s achievement could be smashed, humanist reformers in other Muslim-majority countries would be marginalized. Some of the money went to capitalize Islamist entrepreneurs; some went directly to Turkey’s religious political party; some went to illegal groups associated with that party, sporting colorful names like the Rapid Freedom Fighters of Islamic Revolution, the Global Brotherhood Front Suicide Squad of Sharia, the Fighters of the Universal Islamic War of Liberation, and the Sharia Liberation Army of the World.

One predictable result of this cash influx was that the religious party grew in electoral strength, becoming a partner in a series of unstable coalition governments. Another predictable result was that political violence soared, especially because the Soviet Union was simultaneously funding its own underground groups. Thousands of political assassinations occurred in Turkey from 1975 to 1980, including parliament members, professors, journalists, and even a former prime minister. By 1980, the assassination pace reached over 20 per day. The combination of the lunacy of Sharia finance and the loss of personal security laid waste to the Turkish economy, which began to experience triple-digit inflation.

Meanwhile, the Muslim World League initiative was having stunning success in other countries. Pakistan turned to radical Islam in early 1979, when General Zia ul-Haq seized power in a coup and imposed Sharia law, which remains in place today. A few months later came the Ayatollah Khomeini’s theocratic revolution in Turkey’s neighbor Iran, which also remains in place today.

Turkey’s military leaders, who saw themselves as the custodians of Atatürk’s revolution, were gravely concerned. In December 1979, they wrote a letter to the president, warning bluntly that:

Our nation no longer has the patience for people who sing the communist international instead of our national anthem; who invite the sharia; who want to bring all sorts of fascism by replacing the democratic regime; and who want anarchy, destruction, and separatism by misusing freedoms that are provided by our Constitution.

The straw that broke the camel’s back came in September, 1980, at a mass rally to protest Israel’s announcement that Jerusalem would become its capital. Backers of the religious party openly called for the destruction of the secular Turkish state, shouting slogans such as “Sharia will come, brutality will end,” “Sovereignty belongs to Allah,” “The Constitution is the Koran,” “Secularism is atheism,” “Government with Allah’s rules,” “We are ready for jihad,” and “Sharia or death.” The Islamists refused to sing the national anthem, instead declaring “We want the call of prayer, we do not sing this anthem.” A few days later, a military junta led by Gen. Kenan Evren took away democracy by seizing control of the state from its duly elected officials.

The Affront to Democracy

Winston Churchill smugly observed in 1947 that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Maybe so. The point to be made, though, is that “democracy” covers a pretty broad spectrum of possibilities, some of which are not really any better than other forms of government.

Suppose the people voted, and those responsible for counting the ballots simply lied about the results. Would that be a good form of government? Of course not; it would be fraud. One step further: suppose there were two otherwise evenly matched candidates, and one candidate prevails by spreading false information that his opponent was a serial child molester. Anything admirable about that? Again, no. Now go one step further: picture the same two evenly matched candidates, and one of them succeeds in using revered God experts to spread the message that God is on his side, and against the other guy. If you want to get in good with God, you’d better vote the right way. Is that a lot different from the first two cases? It’s still fraud, isn’t it? And it happens all the time, not only in the Muslim-majority world but right here in the United States. Which presidential candidate is it who boasts that “We do what we do because God is with us”? (Hint: he kicked off his re-election campaign yesterday.)

Atatürk understood this. He tried, twice, to have free elections in Turkey with a robust but loyal opposition. He abandoned both efforts when he saw that opposition being hijacked by God experts intent on having one election to get back into power, and then staying there permanently to carry out God’s will. Instead, he installed rules in Turkey’s constitution that in their current form state that “No one shall be allowed to exploit or abuse religion or religious feelings, or things held sacred by religion, in any manner whatsoever, for the purpose of personal or political influence, or for even partially basing the fundamental social, economic, political and legal order of the state on religious tenets.” That’s a sound rule that eliminates a huge impediment to real democracy – but only if it’s enforced.

Turkey’s military and judicial authorities in 1980 and at other times have used their muscle to enforce this rule. Unfortunately, though, Evren was no Atatürk. Once in power, he discovered that he rather liked Saudi money, so long as he could channel it into what he thought would be a “moderate” Islam that he could control. He was ruthless in cracking down on the communist element of Turkey’s instability (which helped him attract American money as well), but he oversaw a massive program of mosque construction and reintroduction of Islam into public education that would have enraged Atatürk.

Now Evren is discovering that he didn’t use Islam; Islam used him. Levels of religiosity in Turkey grew rapidly in the 90s, and the successor to the religious party Evren broke up in 1980 won a sweeping “democratic” victory in 2002. Leading secular generals were forced out of office last year. Dozens of other humanist journalists and politicians have been clapped into prison. Evren himself, now 94 years old, is being subjected to a show trial from his hospital bed so the Islamists can prove to Turkey’s humanists that “No matter how long it takes, we’ll get you someday.”

If Evren had shown a little more Atatürk steel in dealing with Turkey’s God experts in the years after 1980, do you think he’d be on trial today?

Luis Granados

The most meaningful stop on the Pope’s recent Latin American swing was not Cuba, as the press would have it, but Guanajuato, Mexico, the symbolic heart of Catholic violence in the Americas. His presence there honored the Cristeros, who slaughtered 50,000 Mexicans early in the 20^th century in order to promote the rule of “Christ the King” – a struggle the pope evidently intends to renew.

For hundreds of years after the Spanish conquest of Hernán Cortés, Mexico was ruled by a coterie of priests and soldiers, who sucked as much wealth as they could out of the land for the benefit of the other priests and soldiers who ruled mother Spain. That ended when independence arrived in 1821. The new republican government systematically began returning the land and wealth the church had expropriated to the Mexican people, and regulating the exorbitant fees the church charged the peasants for services like baptism and burial. Naturally, the church opposed all this, and collaborated joyously in the brief restoration of foreign monarchy under the Emperor Maximilian in 1862. But the Mexican people, most of whom seem to be only nominally Catholic, quickly reinstalled a secular government under Benito Juarez, one of the most outstanding leaders any nation ever had. Read on…

Over the years, I’ve written pieces offending Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, and Scientologists. Leaving no toe unstepped on, today I turn to the Amish. We just observed the 30^th anniversary of a major Supreme Court case involving preferential treatment for the Amish, and we now see them being cited as an example in the ongoing debate over preferential treatment for Catholics in the new healthcare law. So now is as good a time as there will ever be to talk about all the Amish legal privileges unavailable to the rest of us.

One of the few sensible points being made by the Catholic hierarchy in its effort to win special treatment under the new healthcare law is that the law gives other religious groups, like the Amish, special treatment. Therefore, it is discriminatory not to give special treatment to Catholics, who don’t want to provide contraception in their healthcare plans. As Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops put it:

The government allows other religions to live out their beliefs. The Amish and Christian Scientists have a conscientious objection to health insurance, and so the law exempts them from buying it. The government acknowledges the right of these religious groups to live out their religious convictions in US society. Why are beliefs of Catholics and others dismissed?

Read on…

]The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has launched a campaign against what it calls a concerted attack on religious liberty. Not in Pakistan or Iraq, but right here in the United States.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, USCCB’s president, complains about a “drive to neuter religion,” intended to “push religion back into the sacristy.” He’s not claiming any violent assaults on worshipers, seizure of church property, criminalization of preaching, or discrimination against believers in housing or employment. What makes him see red is the government starting to treat Catholic organizations the same way it treats everyone else. The horror!

The bishops have two main complaints: laws allowing marriages of which they disapprove, and laws requiring healthcare plans to offer specified coverage, including contraceptives.

Marriage

Catholic God experts teach that sex for purposes other than procreation is sinful, thus ruling out all forms of homosexual sex. The logical next step is to rule out marriage between members of the same sex. Fine – if the church wants to tell people what it thinks God is against and urge them not to do it, it has every right to make that case. Duly elected and appointed government officials, though, in a growing number of jurisdictions, are changing laws to allow same-sex marriage for people willing to take their chances on the afterlife. With the right to marry comes the right to be treated like you are married, and the right to the same legal status as any docile Catholic in daily life.

“Conscience violation!” shrieks the church. Why? Catholic florists and caterers, they insist, must have the right to refuse to serve weddings they disapprove of. Catholic hoteliers must have the right to refuse accommodation to same-sex couples, who might perform unspeakable acts on their Catholic sheets. Catholic adoption agencies must have the right to refuse service to same-sex couples, and Catholic schools must have the right to expel children who commit the sin of having been adopted by people whose sexual habits are disdained by the church.

Here’s a fact you didn’t know. When you think about the organization calling itself “Catholic Charities,” do you picture an outfit that receives donations from the church and individual Catholics, using them to do good in the community? I always did, until I learned that an astonishing 62% of its funding comes from various levels of government, and only 3% comes from Catholic diocese funds controlled by the bishops doing the complaining. Truth in advertising would call for a change in Catholic Charities’ name, to something like “Taxpayer Funded Program to Make the Catholic Church Look Good.” A mouthful, I’ll admit; I’m open to suggestions for an accurate name that would yield a clever acronym. In any case, when whatever-you-call-it decided to stop helping all orphans altogether in order to make its political point against adoption by gay parents, the bishops pleaded for public sympathy for their injured consciences.

The Catholic argument is identical to that used by white supremacists, religious and otherwise, who demanded the right to refuse to serve black people during the Jim Crow era. There are people who earnestly believe in the inferiority of the black race, and that it is God’s plan for the races to live separately. That’s why, they say, God put blacks on one continent and whites on another. Their belief is every bit as sincere as the Catholic belief that homosexual activity is immoral. Sincerity aside, when duly constituted governments accountable to the people take a contrary view, then the same laws need to apply to everybody the same way. That’s what my conscience says, and my conscience is as good as theirs is.

Contraceptives

The new healthcare law requires insurance plans to offer at least minimum levels of coverage of basic medical needs, thus allowing consumers to compare apples to apples when they shop for insurance. Included on the list of minimum requirements is coverage for contraceptives, used by an enormous proportion of women in their child-bearing years. This, according to the bishops, is an attack on religious liberty, because it forces people who don’t approve of the use of contraceptives to pay premiums for the benefit of those who do.

I help pay for a lot of things I don’t approve of. Ethanol subsidies. The war in Afghanistan. An embassy in the Vatican. Weapons for Israel. John Boehner’s salary. Your list is probably different, but I’m sure there a lot of things you help pay for that you don’t approve of, either. Neither of us like it, but we know we’re part of a bigger group, and it’s not possible to make everybody in the group happy all the time. So we don’t demand special treatment, or an individual reduction in our tax payments for programs we don’t like, because we know government couldn’t function if everyone paid only for the things they like.

No one is requiring any Catholic to use contraceptives. The church has every right to teach that contraceptive use is immoral and to urge people to forego it in their own personal lives. No one is trying to suppress its right to make its case. When the church demands special privileges to allow its members to avoid paying for things that affect only people other than themselves, just because God is on their side, that’s different.

The same contraceptive issue arises in HIV prevention and other international development programs. One of the simplest, cheapest ways to prevent the spread of HIV is to encourage the use of condoms – a far easier task than encouraging people not to have sex at all. So, the U.S. Agency for International Development requires distribution of condoms in HIV prevention programs run by contractors using government money, just like any other organization that promotes techniques that work over techniques that don’t. Those who don’t follow the rules don’t get contracts. The bishops cry foul, whimpering that since the Catholic aid programs are the only ones mulish enough to resist distribution of condoms, this is “anti-Catholic discrimination,” “an unprecedented intrusion by the federal government into the precincts of religion.” This is no more anti-Catholic than it is anti-Semitic for a cop to give a speeding ticket to a driver who turns out to be a Jew. There’s one set of rules, they’re based on empirical data and common sense, and they need to apply the same to everyone regardless of religion. If Catholics’ conscience forbids them from distributing condoms, then they shouldn’t do it. But they shouldn’t get the contract, either. Jesus managed nicely without ever getting any government contracts.

Civil disobedience?

Now it appears that some eminent Catholic God experts are upping the ante, suggesting that Catholic civil disobedience may be necessary. The Vatican’s Zenit news service recently published a piece by theologian E. Christian Brugger claiming that the issue really isn’t about conscience protection at all, but about the fact that the Catholic view on contraception happens to be “truth,” and the rest of the world needs to acquiesce for that reason alone. Brugger concludes that:

We need to stand up and say confidently and resolutely to Kathleen Sebelius, her thugs at HHS and her puppet-master in the White House: Your view is false and untrue; it radically violates human good and is destructive of communal integrity. Forcing persons wrongfully to cooperate in actions they judge to be evil is evil. And no president, king or emperor rightly demands others to do what is evil. We won’t do it.

I’m not quite sure what he means by “We won’t do it,” but it sounds like he’s saying that Catholic employers should refuse to offer the type of health insurance mandated by law, or perhaps that Catholics should refuse to pay the portion of their premiums calculated to fund services the hierarchy doesn’t like.

This is not the first time Catholics have made such a threat. In the mid-20^th century, the issue was schools. Catholic parents were required on pain of eternal damnation to send their children to a Catholic school, if one was available. In some dioceses, the sin of violating this rule was so grave that it could not be forgiven by an ordinary priest in the confessional, but required a special appeal to the bishop for absolution. The problem was that Catholic parents also had to pay taxes to support public schools, which they could not use because doing so would violate their religious obligation – just like they are now being asked to pay for contraceptives they are not supposed to use themselves.

A pamphlet issued by the Jesuit priest Paul L. Blakely, S.J., sounded a lot like Mr. Brugger:

Our first duty to the public school is not to pay taxes for its maintenance. … Justice cannot oblige the support of a system which we are forbidden in conscience to use, or a system which we conscientiously hold to be bad in principle and bad in its ultimate consequences.

Catholic civil disobedience sometimes turned into violence. New Brunswick, Canada, is normally thought of as a pretty sedate place. Prior to the 1870s, its school system was run entirely by Anglican and Catholic denominations, who were generally regarded as doing a terrible job. Canadians envied America’s secular public schools, and elected government officials pledged to copy them. As the conversion moved forward, the Catholic hierarchy responded with cold fury, and a grassroots effort to discourage payment of taxes to support the evil of secular education. As Brugger puts it today, “Forcing persons wrongfully to cooperate in actions they judge to be evil is evil. And no president, king or emperor rightly demands others to do what is evil. We won’t do it.” On January 15, 1875, Catholic rioters in the town of Caraquet began trashing stores belonging to the forces of evil. The government recruited a militia to restore order, and the resulting violence ended with two deaths, one on each side.

Will today’s overheated Catholic rhetoric end in violence? Of course not. It couldn’t happen here. Any more than it could happen in, say, 1875 New Brunswick.

Luis Granados

I once met Christopher Hitchens at the post office on Florida Ave. in Northwest DC. It was a rainy day in April. Turned out it was his 61st birthday, several months before he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. I saw him from behind—he was standing a few people ahead of me in line—but I recognized him instantly. I then spent the next few moments talking myself into approaching him and trying to think of something worthwhile to say. He turned around several times, looking toward the front windows of the post office. He looked terrible. Bloated, disheveled, a worn tote bag with all kinds of loose paper sticking out the top thrown over his shoulder.

As the line crept forward he turned around once more, and I said, “Mr. Hitchens?”

“Well,” he began with some restraint, “would you like me to be?”

People who knew Christopher Hitchens, or knew of him, were likely to have a strong opinion about the writer one way or the other, and I took his question as an attempt to confirm whether I was friend or foe. I introduced myself as the editor of the Humanist magazine and he instantly warmed. “Ah yes, yes. I believe I accepted an award from you,” he remarked matter-of-factly. I really don’t remember what happened to the one or two patrons between us, but suddenly we were together in line, inching closer to the counter.

It had been in the news just a few days before that he and Richard Dawkins were seeking advice from human rights lawyers to have Pope Benedict arrested during a planned visit to Britain, the charge being his cover-up of sex abuse by Catholic priests. I asked him whether he thought they could pull it off, and he wasted no time describing the legal rationale and the idiocy of the Catholic Church with his trademark candor and erudition. He no longer looked terrible. He was Christopher Hitchens on a tear—indignant and aglow. Being on the receiving end of this energy, I was very glad to be seen as a friend and not a foe. And then it was his turn to mail his letters. I managed to slip him my card and ask for an interview (“of course, of course,” he said, “I’m in the phone book.”). And that was it. I later sent him a letter and a copy of the magazine, but when the diagnosis came down I thought it best to hold off. Then his cancer became a big story, along with the requisite bets on whether his mind would convert spiritually before his body gave out physically, and any access I may have had was lost in the shuffle.

I regret that I never got to sit down with Christopher Hitchens and hear him out on all manner of issues of importance to humanists. We’re all familiar with his targets and his shifting foreign policy perspective. But we can’t ignore his contribution to the cause of reason. I personally wanted to ask him about his falling out with Gore Vidal, who I did have the opportunity to interview and who had some pretty scathing things to say about his one-time friend, Hitch. If nothing else, it would have felt fair to let him have his say. Then again, Christopher Hitchens was someone who got to have his say again and again because he did it so damned well. So with that, I think I’ll go and finish his memoir, Hitch- 22 and then start in on Arguably, his recently published collections of essays. Mr. Hitchens, you’ll be sorely missed!

Everything is breaking right for Mitt Romney this year, as his opponents do their best to imitate Joe Louis’ old “Bum of the Month Club.” Unless the same strategy that’s failed to revive our economy over the past three years suddenly starts working, it looks like America is about to have its first Mormon president.

Which is perfectly ok. Mormonism is no more bizarre than Christianity, Islam, or Judaism – it’s just newer. I wouldn’t disqualify Romney based on his supernatural beliefs – even though his bigotry would disqualify me. “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom,” he proclaimed in 2007. “Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.” He went on to condemn humanists in bitter terms:

It’s as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism. They are wrong. … We are a nation ‘under God’ and in God, we do indeed trust. We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history.

That’s still not a disqualifier; humanists get the same middle finger from Obama, who insists that religious faith is “fundamental to human progress.”

There is one big Romney religious scandal that really ought to be a disqualifier, though – unless he’s big enough to issue an apology.

Mitt Romney volunteered to serve as a Mormon missionary in France from 1969 to 1971. He excelled at the work, becoming a zone leader in Bordeaux, then assistant to the mission president in Paris, the highest position for any missionary. Hundreds of French were baptized into the Mormon faith during his tenure. He has never claimed to have preached and disseminated anything other than standard Mormon doctrine during this period.

During Romney’s missionary period, standard Mormon doctrine concerning race was exemplified by the Juvenile Instructor, a publication for Mormon children: “We will first inquire into the results of the approbation or displeasure of God upon a people, starting with the belief that a black skin is a mark of the curse of heaven placed upon some portions of mankind. . . We understand that when God made man in his own image and pronounced him very good, that he made him white.”

Mormonism teaches that souls exist long before the humans with which they are associated are born into the world. The official Mormon doctrine was that souls who had sinned against God before physical birth were punished by being born with dark skin. Mormon President Joseph Fielding Smith described this in 1935:

Millions of souls have come into this world cursed with a black skin and have been denied the privilege of priesthood and the fullness of the blessings of the Gospel. These are the descendants of Cain. Moreover, they have been made to feel their inferiority and have been separated from the rest of mankind from the beginning.

Bruce McConkie, the leading modern-day Mormon theologian, wrote in 1958 that “The present status of the negro rests purely and simply on the foundation of pre-existence. Along with all races and peoples he is receiving here what he merits as a result of the long pre-mortal probation in the presence of the Lord.”

When the Supreme Court began ending school segregation in 1954, the Mormon church was appalled. Apostle Mark Petersen stated that:

I think the Lord segregated the Negro, and who is man to change that segregation? It reminds me of the scripture on marriage, ‘what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ Only here we have the reverse of the thing – what God hath separated, let not man bring together again.

Mormon-sponsored Boy Scout troops even discriminated against black Boy Scouts, because they had to hold church positions in order to become patrol leaders, and they could not do so.

Mormon doctrine was especially vehement on the evils of miscegenation. Brigham Young, the Mormon leader after Joseph Smith:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.

Won’t it be juicy to watch Romney run against the world’s most famous miscegenation product?

The relative darkness of the skin of American Indians, at least in comparison with that of the Mormons, was also related to their sins, according to the Book of Mormon that Romney tried to plaster all over France. “And it came to pass that I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations.” [I Nephi 12:23].

There was hope for the coloring of Indians who converted to the true faith, though. Spencer W. Kimball noted in 1960 that:

I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today . . . they are fast becoming a white and delightsome people. . . . For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. . . . The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation. At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl – sixteen – sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather. . . These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness.

Kimball was rewarded for his powers of observation by becoming the 12^th LDS president in 1973, five years after Romney returned from France. Not until five years later did another LDS president have a “revelation” to allow black males into its priesthood, without officially changing Mormon teaching on the “pre-birth” evil of black souls.

Mitt Romney was 19 years old when he left for France, six years after Kimball spoke, and nearly 22 when he returned. He was old enough to think, to vote, to fight, and to supervise 175 missionary subordinates. Instead of saying “I am not going to try to promote any organization with teachings that obscene or that preposterous,” he did everything in his considerable power to try to extend the reach of that organization as much as he possibly could. Not only has he never apologized for any of this, he is still bursting with pride over the entire missionary episode.

People make mistakes, especially young people who have been brainwashed by elders claiming to speak for God. Mistakes can be forgiven, but only for people who acknowledge that what they did was wrong and resolve not to do it again. So is Mitt Romney ever going to apologize, not for being Mormon, but for spreading vicious and disgusting teachings on race? Unlike Joseph Smith, I don’t claim to be able to predict the future. I do know, though, that the title of the campaign book Romney published earlier this year is No Apology.

Luis Granados

(Guest post by Rick Heller)

I have been participating in the Occupy movement, and although I have held a sign outside Bank of America protesting policies that allow banks to be “too big to fail,” my main activity has been to lead meditations at Occupy Boston’s encampment across the street from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

These meditations are based on those conducted at the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. The Humanist Mindfulness Group at Harvard has an orientation that can be described as “Secular Buddhist,” bearing a relationship to the Buddhist religion analogous to the relationship that Humanistic Judaism has with Orthodox Judaism.

When leading a meditation at Occupy Boston, I make clear that I don’t think meditators send out “vibes” that magically effect our financial institutions. Rather, these meditations have two purposes. The first is reducing stress, because living and sleeping in close quarters with others can be trying (I’m not a camper, only a day visitor). But more interesting is the possibility that meditative practices can directly contribute to the primary goal of the Occupy movement, which is to oppose the greed that led to speculative bubble and subsequent economic crash in 2008.

Newsweek has a cover story out on the science of why people overspend (I wrote on the same subject in the Humanist’s July/August issue). We have two motivational networks in the brain, one that focuses on immediate gratification and one on long-term payoffs. Neuroeconomist Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University has found that when people receive injections of oxytocin, a hormone associated with loving feelings, they are better able to make financial decisions that require the deferral of immediate gratification. To put it simply, when you feel good now, you don’t need “retail therapy.”

With this in mind, I led a loving-kindness meditation in which you successively summon loving feelings toward yourself, a friend, a neutral person and finally, a person you find irritating. In a separate meditation, we were mindful of sounds. As Occupy Boston is next to a busy road and diagonal from a fire station, it provides a rich environment to practice receptive, loving attention to sounds usually thought of as “noise.”

Meditation and allied practices like psychotherapy can help us overcome our own greed, but they won’t magically overcome the greed of the “1%.” My hope is that young people in the Occupy movement can serve as role models to others in their generation who pursue materialistic aims. The current crisis has knocked a lot of young people off the career path they expected to be pursuing. They are examining alternative ways to live “the good life.” If the Humanist community were to engage with Occupy right now, I think we’d find a lot of young people open to our message.

Rick Heller is the author of the new eBook, Occupy the Moment.

(Guest post by George Erickson)

Morning. The sun, shuttered by clouds that brush my Ely Lake treetops, is just a feeble glow. Were it not for the intervening Norway pines, I could see the Eveleth/Virginia airport, and a mile beyond that, my gaze would stop at a roadside memorial to a caring, progressive, Minnesota activist who ranked among the best.

On a day like this, when Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and his wife Sheila were en route to the funeral of a friend in a chartered Beechcraft King Air, their lives took a tragic turn. Descending too low, and more than a mile off course, the Beech struck the trees, and we suddenly had a vastly different funeral to consider—a service to honor Senator Wellstone, his wife, and child plus several coworkers and two instrument-rated pilots who died in that inexplicable crash.

I retrieve a book from the table beside my deck chair, and as the wind sighs I turn the first page of a book that every American should read: Wellstone’s The Consience of the Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda.

The title says it all, for Wellstone was a truly compassionate man: “How can we live in the richest, most privileged country in the world… and still hear from Republicans and too many Democrats that we cannot afford to provide a good education for every child, that we cannot afford to provide health security for all our citizens?”

He was always that way. As a fledgling Carleton college professor who was determined to organize the poor, Wellstone was warned by the college trustees that he’d be fired if he continued his activist ways. He persisted—and was fired.

Fortunately, 1600 of the college’s 1700 students rose to Wellstone’s defense. Reinstated, he became the Carlton’s youngest tenured professor, and soon turned to politics as a way to improve the lives of John and Jane Doe. “Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives,” he said, “lessening human suffering, advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and in the world.” Thomas Paine, the first great American humanist comes to mind.

With his green bus, he traveled aroung Minnesota, won the Democratic nomination, and campaigned against wealthy Rudy Boschwitz, the incumbent senator who eventually sunk his faltering campaign with a desperate, bigoted charge that Wellstone was insufficiently Jewish because he’d married a Christian.

During his years in the U.S. Senate, Wellstone, who came to be known as “the conscience of the Senate,” championed women’s rights, promoted single-payer healthcare, and campaign finance reform. He was re-elected despite a vicious campaign that relied on a Newt Gingrich strategy to always use derogatory adjectives when speaking of your opponent. Thus, Paul faced ads that said “Wellstone is a lying, hypocritical whiner” but rarely addressed the issues. He was labeled “Senator Welfare,” and was charged with wanting to take everyone’s guns away, and with supporting abortion at nine months for the purpose of sex selection. In an attempt to make liberalism sound like a crime, he was called “embarrassingly liberal.” (Nevermind that liberalism is defined as “favorable to progress or reform, favorable to freedom of action and thought, free from prejudice, open to tolerance and generosity.”)

Despite frequent death threats, Wellstone persevered, serving the ordinary man and woman—not the corporations and not the rich and famous. He had been targeted by Republicans as the # 1 person to be removed from the Senate. Undeterred he soldiered on, and on October 25, 2002, just two weeks after he voted against George W. Bush’s fraudulent war in Iraq, his Beechcraft fell from the skies.

Though just five foot five inches tall, Paul Wellstone took on bigger, more powerful, and often unprincipled foes, winning some battles and losing others, but in eschewing power, fame, and profit, and in representing John and Jane Doe so faithfully, Paul Wellstone repeatedly proved that he was the a superb human being.

Palestine is in the news, asking the United Nations to be admitted as a full member despite the fact that it is occupied by a foreign army and that its government exists only at the sufferance of neighboring Israel. This move causes great consternation, because it threatens to disrupt a 40-year old status quo with which most people (other than Palestinians) have grown comfortable. I happen to think it’s a terrible idea, for reasons other than the ones usually given by pundits. I suggest a Plan B, though, that might actually improve the situation for everyone other than God experts.

In 1948, the institution to which Palestine seeks to be admitted adopted a profound statement called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN’s founders had just concluded a bloody war, which the combatants had been promised was going to mean something – that victory would result not just in one gang of politicians replacing another, but a truly fairer, freer world. Two years of effort went into crafting the Declaration’s 1,800 words, and the final document was approved without a single dissenting vote.

Here are some relevant excerpts from the Universal Declaration:

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people …

Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status …

Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination …

Article 13: Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

Either these words mean something, or they don’t. If they mean something, then isn’t there a problem with admitting to the club a new member state that has already announced that its first act, once it has the power to achieve it, will be the expulsion of all of the people within its borders who’ve committed the crime of being Jews?

That is precisely what the would-be Palestinian government promises to do. “After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated,” said Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador to the United States, at a press conference on September 13. “We are trying to preserve the concept of a two-state solution,” he added, “and to make the Israelis understand there will be consequences for their actions.”

Consequences indeed. When a firestorm erupted over the ambassador’s words, he issued a “clarification,” which only digs the hole deeper. Jews would still be allowed to visit independent Palestine, he insisted; all he meant was that Jews wouldn’t be allowed to live there. And, as is typical of both sides of this conflict, he defended himself by arguing that the other side was even worse:

Jerusalem right now is restricted – Palestinian Muslims and Christians cannot visit it. Christians, Muslims and Jews must be able to visit their respective sites in both countries. This wasn’t even on my mind when we [sic] asked the question – I thought he was talking about settlers staying in Palestine.

So the bad news is, half a million Jews would have to pick up and move once the Areikat team is in charge, including thousands who were born there. The good news is, they can come back and visit the folks who stole their homes.

This is hardly a novel idea. The first expulsion of Jews was effected by the Roman Empire, back in the 2^nd century. After the second major rebellion in Palestine, which cost thousands of Roman lives and massive sums of Roman money to subdue, the frustrated Emperor Hadrian ordered the permanent removal of all Jews from Jerusalem, and even renamed the city.

A few centuries later, the early Muslim Caliph Umar expelled the Jews from western Arabia, quoting Muhammad as saying “Two religions shall not remain together in the peninsula of the Arabs.” Looking at a map, I don’t think one would say that Palestine is on the “peninsula,” but maybe Areikat flunked geography.

In the 13^th century, it was England’s turn. King Edward I, perpetually short of funds, extracted cash from his Jewish subjects by every means he could imagine, until they had very little left. They still owned property, though; Edward solved that problem by his 1290 “Edict of Expulsion,” removing every Jew from the country. This Edict was not repealed until 1656.

King Philip the Fair of France was only mildly impressed, because Edward’s inefficiency let a lot of money slip from his grasp. Philip thought that secrecy of preparation and suddenness of action were the keys. On July 22, 1306, every Jew in France was arrested. Within weeks, they were escorted to the borders and expelled – without any of their property, which Philip retained for himself. Just as importantly, all debts owing from the king to the removed Jews were cancelled.

There weren’t that many Jews in England and France to expel, but there were lots of them in Spain. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered them all either to convert to Christianity or leave. Many of them wound up in Ottoman Turkey, whose Sultan could not believe his good fortune: “Allah has struck the king of Spain with blindness, that he should impoverish his realm to enrich mine.”

In Germany, Jews were removed from Vienna and Linz in 1421, from Cologne in 1424, Augsburg in 1439, Bavaria in 1442 and again in 1450, and from cities in Moravia in 1454. Hitler spent his first eight years in power trying to expel Jews from Germany (after relieving them of their money), before getting frustrated and deciding to murder them instead.

It doesn’t take brilliant legal analysis to figure out that the Areikat plan is as contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as you can get. So the UN either ought to tear up the Declaration and say “Just kidding,” or it ought to refuse admission to Palestine.

The drawback to leaving things at that is that the Israeli government has routinely violated the same Declaration since the day it was founded, so acting against only one of the wrongdoers would be unfair. To pick only the most recent example from hundreds over the past 60 years, just last week, the Israeli government approved a plan to kick out 30,000 non-Jewish Bedouins living in “unrecognized villages” in the Negev, to make room for 10 new Jews-only towns. “Unrecognized villages?” Orwell must be smiling somewhere. How does this square with “entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law”? Not very well. Nor does the unrelenting Israeli campaign to evict non-Jews and not allow them back in that’s been going on since 1948, in both wartime and peacetime (if you can call it peace). Nor does the vast array of Israeli government benefits provided to Jews alone.

So here’s my Plan B. If you’re going to keep Palestine out of the UN, then kick Israel out at the same time. Tell both of them to call back when they’ve squeezed all the religion out of their governments, and started treating all humans the same regardless of what they do or don’t believe about the spirit world. Absolute freedom of worship for everyone; absolute exclusion of religious advantage or disadvantage for anyone, backed by meaningful international guarantees. When that happens, what will they have to argue about?

“Well,” you might be thinking, “if the UN kicked out every member nation that violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it could meet in a much smaller building – maybe a phone booth.” And you’d be right. What makes this case special is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most dangerous flashpoint in the world, that it has cost the rest of humanity trillions of dollars, and that it is by far the likeliest location for the next nuclear weapon detonation. If ever there were an occasion for an audacious experiment of actually sticking to principles by refusal to countenance “disregard and contempt for human rights,” as it says in the Declaration’s preamble, this is it.

Luis Granados

New York’s Mayor Bloomberg resisted intense pressure last week, refusing demands to include professional God experts on the official city program commemorating the attacks of September 11. The mayor’s explanation for this conscious omission was straightforward:

It’s a civil ceremony. There are plenty of opportunities for people to have their religious ceremonies. Some people don’t want to go to a religious ceremony with another religion. And the number of different religions in this city are really quite amazing. … It isn’t that you can’t pick and choose, you shouldn’t pick and choose. If you want to have a service for your religion, you can have it in your church or in a field, or whatever.

Simple enough. The point of the ceremony was to remind the families of the victims that America still cares about them and mourns their loss, not to provide a government-sponsored platform for experts to inform us about God’s will. Nothing on the agenda was anti-religion; the program was designed in coordination with victims’ families and included readings that were “spiritual and personal in nature,” along with six different moments of silence to allow personal reflection and prayer. The only thing that was missing was the showcasing of a publicity-hungry preacher. From the reaction Bloomberg generated, though, you’d think he was Caligula, feeding Christians to the lions.

“Offensive to the families of victims.” That’s how a petition circulated by the Family Research Council described the family-designed ceremony. FRC’s president Tony Perkins also called it “A deliberate defiance and insult to people of faith across America.”

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said the omission was “a shameful example of anti-religious bigotry,” reflecting the “mindless secularist prejudice of the political establishment on our nation’s Eastern Seaboard.” (Should California’s secularists be offended at the slight?)

Pastor Joel C. Hunter, an Obama favorite who spoke at the 2008 Democratic convention and serves on the official White House religion advisory board, whined that “The bottom line is, this is not how we were founded. This is not who we are.” The American Family Association called it an insult to “God himself.” If God himself complained, that wasn’t reported in the press.

So what did we miss? As the mayor noted, it was perfectly ok for churches to put on their own programs, and plenty of them did. Pastor Bill Hybels of Chicago’s Willow Creek megachurch laid the blame for September 11 squarely on Satan:

Some of us … are naïve to the reality of evil. We have never come to terms with what the Bible teaches about Satan and his power and how he organizes his accomplices to wreak havoc in this world and to wreak havoc in your life.

So the reality wasn’t humans deciding to use despicable means of making a political point; it was Satan, organizing his accomplices. Since the problem is in the supernatural sphere, the solution lies there as well. “I would think of our God who the Scripture says loves people even if they’re missing from His family and I would think of God kind of wandering around again figuratively with pictures of people who are still missing and just going ‘I wish this person would come home,’ ‘I wish this person would repent,’ ‘I wish this person were in the fellowship.’” So if more people would just “come home,” join the megachurch, and put money in the basket, Satan and his accomplices would be thwarted.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan was in full agreement on the Satan angle. “It’s a war where evil is against good, where death is versus life, lies versus truth, pride against humility, selfishness against selflessness, revenge versus mercy, hate versus love, Satan versus Almighty God.” Dolan claimed, though, that “The side of the angels, not of the demons, conquered. Good Friday became Easter Sunday. And once again God has the last word.” As evidence, he noted that a child of one of September 11 victims had gone on to become a priest. I admit to being a selfish Godless pig, but if I had lost a family member on September 11, I would not appreciate an archbishop telling me that it was ok, because my tragedy had inspired someone else to join his ranks.

Anne Graham Lotz, the unordained evangelist daughter of Rev. Billy Graham, decided to cash in by writing and promoting a whole book about God and September 11. “I’ve been convinced that 9/11 was our wakeup call. If that wouldn’t wake up the church, what would it take?” Lotz isn’t buying the Satan theory. She lays the blame squarely on humanists. “Foundations of godliness have crumbled; things sacred have come unraveled. We have also embraced pagan teachings while rejecting the Bible in our schools, courthouses, and government institutions.”

An interesting theory, but hardly new. Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, famously characterized September 11 as “chickens coming home to roost” because of America’s lack of his brand of godliness. More to the point, just two days after the attack, Rev. Pat Robertson invited Rev. Jerry Falwell onto his television show, to announce that:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say “You helped this happen.”

“Well,” Robertson replied, “I totally concur.”

I have a two-word response to that, but I’ll let it slide. I think Robertson may have been miffed because the attacks detracted attention from the 10^th anniversary of the publication of his best-seller, The New World Order, which hit the stores in September, 1991. There he made the same point as Lotz and Falwell: “There will never be world peace until God’s house and God’s people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world. How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy moneychangers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top?” The main thrust of The New World Order was that a centuries-old secret cabal called the “Illuminati,” backed by Jewish Rothschild money, was behind a Satan/secular humanist plot to dominate the world.

The New World Order was written in opposition to the international coalition against the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait in 1990 – Robertson saw the coalition as a scheme hatched by the Illuminati. He emphasized the story of the Tower of Babel, conveniently located in Iraq, which God viewed with animosity: “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” Indeed, humans working together, using acquired scientific knowledge, can accomplish tremendous things. According to Robertson, “The danger of such a plan to future generations and the threat of this man-made order to the people of faith was so great that God determined to stop it at its inception.” So down the Tower came.

Robertson, of course, was in the front ranks of last week’s offended. “I am frankly shocked that Mayor Bloomberg thinks that he is doing the city of New York a favor by eliminating the spiritual element at an event commemorating tragedy, grief, and heroic sacrifice.”

The truth of the matter is that it was religion that brought down the Twin Towers, as surely as the Bible tells us it brought down the Tower of Babel. It was the God expert Osama bin Laden who brainwashed 19 young men into sacrificing themselves and thousands of others for the sake of his own supernatural musings, guaranteeing them a place in heaven for their efforts. Who was it who called on Americans in 2002 to “reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and usury” – Robertson, or bin Laden? It was bin Laden; but it wouldn’t be hard to find a Christian preacher making the same point at the same time, in nearly the same words.

It would have been grotesquely inappropriate for any speaker to use the 9/11 memorial as a platform for denouncing religion in general. Or for promoting it. Mayor Bloomberg got this one right.

Luis Granados