It ain't sympathy for the Taliban

Yesterday, footage of U.S. Marines pissing on the bloodied dead bodies of people we're told were Taliban forces leaked onto the internet. Naturally, the blogsophere took this as an opportunity to display their divisiveness with the gun-humping, strict-father-model red staters sweeping their Bibles under the carpet and cheering on what the rest of the country can see is at least super disturbing.

The right can use this as an opportunity to let their jingoism fly and verbally attack anyone saying this is wrong as blaming America first or being Taliban sympathizers, but there's a serious fallacy being made there, perhaps even by some who agree that pissing on dead bodies is appalling.

It's not about respecting a dead body. A dead human body is about as valuable as a destroyed furniture. I don't entertain any illusions of the body needing respect just because it was a person. Nor am I too concerned with members of the Taliban. This isn't an issue of 'every person deserves respect,' if they were indeed Taliban, which hasn't been shown, than I think they do deserve disrespect. What I have a real problem with is: What are we doing to our men and women who join the military?

What kind of sick training do you have to endure to want to urinate on a blood stained corpse? It's gruesome. It's horrifying. Look, here's a metaphor, if my dog needs to be put down, I'm going to take him to the vet and have him humanely euthanized. I'm not going to take him to a vet who likes to stomp dogs to death. Even if I don't particularly love my dog, even if it did something horrible, like attack and kill someone, I don't want to bring it to the dog stomper. That's not who I am, I'm above that. Is there some difference in the Taliban? They're rapid dogs and they ought to be put down, for sure, but I don't really want to pay a bunch of guys who're going to piss on their dead bodies after they do it. That tells me that they delight in what they've done. I don't want my vet to enjoy killing animals, I want a vet who loves animals. In the same way, I don't want a military who loves killing people, I want a military who love people enough to want to protect them, even by killing others and putting their own lives at risk.

Peeing on dead bodies is like comic-book-villain, horror-movie-psycho-killer mentality. Is it any wonder more military veterans who served in Iraq are killing themselves than are dying in the war? We're turning these people into monsters. How does a man go home and hug his child with the image of a dead, bloodied face being pissed on and laughed at in his head?

What's been gained?

Casey Anthony and the legend of the Ten Commandments

I want to make a brief point here using this well-known and over-exposed case of Casey Anthony. Lets say, for arguments sake, Casey Anthony did, as well all suspect she did, kill her child or, at the very least, participate in the murder of her child. The country's outrage is immense. We can make lots of complaint about how you rarely see a minority child's murder being treated like this (this one outraged me far more than the Anthony case)or about how the interest in this case was fueled by heartless, self-interested opportunists like Nancy Grace, but we really are outraged. There's nothing that screams injustice to us more than the slaughter of an innocent, defenseless child at the hands of the one person who was supposed to protect her. We as a society value the family quite highly.

Now, Ms. Anthony is being brought back to Orlando in relation to a check fraud case. To you and I, this is a minor legal slight, especially in contrast to the murder of a small child. However, there are many religious ideas out there stating that, to God, all sins are equal. Indeed, the people defending this idea, that all sins are equal, and it's not a majority of Christians or Muslims saying this, but those who do advocate that position have an easier time proving their case through scripture than those who say some sins are more heinous than others.

Just look at the Ten Commandments for an example. Anthony, assuming she is guilty of both crimes, is guilty of breaking two commandments: One being the sixth commandment (No Killing) and one being the eighth commandment (false witness). And I guess a case could be made for the idea that in bearing false witness, writing a bad check, she, in effect, stole, so that would be the seventh commandment broken as well.

In the second violation she broke two commandments. Why is society more upset with her for breaking one commandment in the first violation? Why are we not really concerned about a false check, at least not on a national level, the way we're concerned with a murder?

Could it be that there's an aspect of humanity that has a greater system of morality in place than the one handed up to us from unrefined ancient cultures?

Get in line

Keeping church and state separate should be easy. It's simply a matter of each institution knowing their place. For instance, public schools are a state matter. It's not in a state's interest to promote a religion, but in public schools across America, particularly in one part of America, we are seeing religious forces slip their way in. Here's an example:

GALLATIN, Tenn. (AP) — Three Sumner County families claim the local public schools illegally promote Christianity.

A complaint to the school board made by American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee on the families' behalf claims the schools have shown a pattern of endorsing Christianity since at least 2006. Examples include the distribution of Bibles, a teacher who displayed a cross on a classroom wall and Christian prayers over school loudspeakers.

School board attorney Wesley Southerland told The Tennessean the board has been advised to "take all precautions necessary to make sure they are operating in a constitutional way."

The complaint to the board asks for the religious activities to cease, but it is not a lawsuit.

The ACLU of Tennessee successfully sued the Wilson County school system over similar issues in 2008.

Clearly, there's been a breach. But that ain't all, there's not one, not two but three high profile lawsuits this graduation season over the refusal of certain parties to remove prayers from their public school graduation ceremonies. Two of the students involved spoke on the non-prophets podcast.

The most frustrating aspect of this, of course, is that while praising the Constitution and pretending to be originalists, people like Governor fuckstick...I mean, Rick Perry, of Texas (the same great thinker who asked governors from around the country to come to his house and do a rain dance or something) spit on the Constitution and appoint judges more interested in promoting their theocratic views than justice to rule over cases like this. Then, he praises their decision.

I can't wait, and I seriously want to encourage any Muslim, Atheist, or Orthodox Jew to take advantage of the platform that the government is passively allowing to become a state sponsored church. I want someone to lead their class in a prayer to a non-Christian god. Some valedictorian should perform a Flying Spaghetti Monster prayer, a Muslim should make the whole room bow to Allah, an Orthodox Jew should make everyone listen to him sing in Hebrew for a while. Let's see how easily that sits with Rick Perry.

By the way, how do you feel about Fox declaring the forced prayer as a "victory?"