Publicly, it’s pretty respectable to be tolerant of other people’s religious views and just to be passive when it comes to any of the countless outrageous rituals we accept as rational in the 21st century. But is it harmless to be just passively irreligious?
Religions do not inherently and inevitably lead to conflict, and religious division is not necessarily violent or negative as a force in the world.
Due to the economic recession, some state and city governments are cutting spending on essential public services such as education and mass transit. Yet in major sports venues across the United States, tax dollars are being used to subsidize the costs of building stadiums for professional teams.
Two weeks ago, Joe Stack, a 53-year-old software engineer, posted his suicide note in the early morning, lit his home on fire and left to fly his airplane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. Why did he do it? Beyond the faith that we put in government control of our money, the answer to this question reflects the poor choice of putting money before all other things in life.
Some people wish we could go back to the days of parties working together flawlessly as U.S. representatives first and partisan hacks second. But there is one big problem. Historical trends have culminated in this current Congress to create these unbridgeable disagreements that cannot be undone, at least not without some highly improbable intervention.
Maybe what the Senate needs, to get over its love of obstruction, is a return to core debate principles. Legislative minorities play a valuable role in moderating political agendas, but they should not be permitted to obstruct them wholesale through notes to the majority leader’s desk.
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