Shirk the Truth

Yesterday's posting garnered me a fairly rapid response from someone out... well, a quick WhoIs identified their city (out thataway), and a search online narrowed it further. I dug into this person not as a snoop or as a stalker, but because in the year-plus I've been whispering into the blogosphere's collective hubbub, I've picked up well over five thousand spams, masked (rather poorly) as comments/responses.

No, this person seemed legit; here's what they had to say (details obscured):

Author: croixian1 (IP: ...comcast.net)
E-mail: yeehaa@yahoo.com
URL: http://
Whois: http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=br.549
Comment:
Apparently you are a Christian who strongly believes in religious oppression by wishing the elimination of the First Amendment.

I gave a startled yee-hah of my own, shuddered, and scratched my head: I'm about as far from the stereotypical Bible-thumping, conservative, one-restricted-nation-under-Gawd type as you can get... and still be found in the pew Sunday morning. Heck; my Bible(s) have more dust on them than fist-dents.

Well, YH had been kind enough to give me her/his opinion, so I responded:

Good evening, Yee/Haa!

I'm sure my blog leaves it quite apparent that I'm Christian – more precisely, Catholic. I appreciate your at least skimming my blog, and this evening's entry, and taking the time to weigh in.

However, you seem to have badly misread the man behind the rant: I'm in fact politically quite to the left, voting the Democratic ticket (have also voted Green when possible), and I strongly support the US constitution as it was written, long before the heavy watering down we've seen over the last two to three decades. More in a moment.

First: Merriam-Webster defines oppression as "unjust or cruel exercise of power or authority", so let me state quite clearly that I most strongly, in fact, oppose all forms of oppression, whatever the source: "wholesale", as in governmental, cultural, religious… any form of established authority (even prima-facie legitimate); or "retail" – i.e., one individual controlling the minds and activities and expressions of another individual (e.g., seen in abusive domestic relationships, wage slavery, and so on).

Now; the First Amendment – "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" – is an extremely crucial linchpin, in fact, in our structure of government and its protection (which George Duh is steadily whittling away) of civil liberties and personal rights and freedoms... and especially in ensuring peace from sea to shining sea. I unequivocally share Thomas Jefferson's rock-steady declaration that "I have sworn… Hostility against every form of Tyranny over the mind of man" (and woman, of course).

I take it that my blog-posting this evening rubbed a raw nerve; that wasn't quite my aim, though I don't apologize. My objective was to point out how inaccurate, false, and agenda-driven Dan Brown's ludicrous assertion on Jesus and the Church is. It doesn't stand up to the historical record, it doesn't stand up to anyone who can research in a library, or on the net, for as little as five minutes. Shoot; his book (let alone his movie) doesn't even stand up as good reading.

For some bizarre reason that at times troubles and amuses me, people are becoming increasingly more dependent on other people to tell them what to think. The louder the voice, the more scandalous the assertion, the more likely it is to be true. Right? Oh, please. A very-left friend of mine is somehow married to a conservative Republican woman (and how a woman can kowtow to conservatism baffles me); one election-year he put a bumper-sticker on her car: "Vote Republican – it's easier than thinking!"

(Look, I'll say it again: I'm liberal, left, feminist – and a devoted Catholic. These are not mutually contradictory, and I find much peace (and no oppression) in my faith, and I am deeply thankful that my country allows me to express my faith – both in worship/meditation, and through the written word. I support each person's freedom to do this, be it in mosque, synagogue, meeting-house, ashram, wherever – so long as hatred, intolerance, and other social ills are not crammed in with the prayers.)

Read Sandra Miesel's article that I hyperlinked to, and at least skim the reviews of the books I mention at the very end. It is crucial in this country, and in this slacker-age, to keep an open mind, to question, to seek answers. If you find someone shaking the foundations, don't join in right away because it seems (on the face of it) to benefit the little guy. What is this person really saying? How true can it be? Is it true? Does s/he have an agenda? And so on.

If you don't do this – take the time and look into it and understand it – every time some big whopper comes down the pike, you may as well just hang it up the rest of the way and vote Republican, and let the oppressors do the thinking for you. It really is easy, it's more secure, and you have (initially) far fewer problems if you do as Pink Floyd said years ago, and "follow the worms".

No thanks. I'd rather be the gadfly.

Take care!
Aging Child

No answer yet from out thataway, folks; I'll let you know if anything further comes of this. In the meantime, I need to get back with our friend John Wojnowski and address something far more important than which lever this aging child pulls ever November: defense of the Church a) against someone much more poisonous than your average gadfly; and b) against some of its own clergy.