Must atheism turn nasty ?

          Letter writer Don Gormley( March 12, " Bullying and Bigotry ) )  perceived a certain mocking tone in Steve Ahlquist's  March 6 Commentary piece( " Bigotry is bigotry, religious or not " ).  I do think that the recently vetoed anti-gay rights bill in Arizona was politically unwise.. Yet   I also feel that this village atheist inspired war on ALL traditional religion borders on the demonic- in the ironic sense. The late ogre-former Trotskyist- Christopher Hitchens set the hateful tone of the New Atheism in his popular book "  God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything ". The book is quite obnoxious with chapters titled "  Is Religion Child Abuse "  and " Religion's Corrupt Beginnings ".

        I note that so many new atheists have abandoned the secular religion of millions of common people-socialism - in order to worship at the feet of Wall Street and the war machine Moloch of global capitalism.  Amusing how Ayn Rand can replace the Holy Mother in the hearts of born again atheists.

Pleased by anti-nationalist letter( John St.Lawrence )

I was pleased to read John St. Lawrence's letter ( " Four Families fight over territory " , March 9 , on line ).   It speaks for many patriotic Americans who reject neo-nationalist poison in all its forms. Any belligerent obsession with national identity and ethnic roots is crypto-fascism -in the Ukraine or anywhere else on this small ( doomed ? ) planet.  Every mad mob does not epitomize some innocent form of political idealism. I am reading with revived interest old Bertrand Russell's experiences opposing the madness of the First World War. That war made so many nice sounding words ugly.

Overnight transformation: U.S.- a pillar of international law ?

         After more than a decade of stupid wars against terrorism, reckless occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq ; permanent hostility toward any country in Latin America that dares to honor Catholic social philosophy or socialist humanism; after more than five years of the Great Recession that has ruined the hopes of a generation of working class youth, the American ruling class wants to revive Cold War fever and make Vladimir Putin's Russia again the " axis of evil " in the world ?  Americans can overnight forget their dysfunctional democracy, their mass misery, and cheer brainlessly for the redeployment of our mighty missiles-and pretend that America still stands tall as a pillar of " freedom " and international law ? How can any red blooded American sleep well at night knowing that one jackass oligarch has replaced another jackass oligarch in far away Ukraine ? Thank God for our A-bombs !

       What we need is another  Woodrow Wilson to make the world safe for our own plutocracy ? Our so very patriotic ONE PERCENT ?      

   Calling all international lawyers and other charlatans to the New Crusade !

         But old Sixties radicals won't be fooled again !

U.S. jingoists :export our dysfunctional democracy ?

     I sense a growing hysteria over the crisis in the Ukraine. Just as President Obama was making plans to cut back our bloated military, powerful sections of the American ruling class are longing for Cold War absolutism. The Russian ruling class is now just drunk with money and the arrogance of power. No SOCIALIST-COMMUNIST threat here !

       Our own democracy has never been more dysfunctional. Who are we to recommend it to the rest of the world ? Here Tea Party Republicans show complete contempt for the poorer half of the country. But they want working class American kids to sacrifice their lives to protect class privilege in capitalist America ?

         We are approaching the 100th anniversary of the Great War - the dumbest big war in modern history. Historians will recall the madness of Verdun and all that Wilsonian blather about freedom and democracy- on a mountain of corpses !

          We won't be fooled again ?

Reed tries to help desperate jobless in Rhode Island

       I just caught this breaking news on providencejournal.com : "  Reed tries again to extend emergency unemployment benefits " ( March 5 ). The story points out 2 million people in the United States and 8000 here in Rhode Island are affected by this Congressional cold hearted stinginess.  Congressman Jack Reed has been a foreign policy expert for some time now-and is quite well respected. But he must see the irony of our readiness to give -just for starts- a billion dollars to a dubious new regime in the Ukraine. No waste of tax payer money here ?

       Not every cheap weekly revolution in the world is  1776 America  or 1917 Russia .Everywhere the real war is still mostly class war. A sad and bitter truth.

Chafee for progressive minimum-ism- how bold !

  " Governors unite on minimum wage " ( page A2, March 3, Providence Journal  ). And our own Governor Lincoln Chafee is a formidable voice in this  display of lion- hearted New Democrat progressivism- which slobbers over a still comfortable middle class and would like to forget the old New Deal base of FDR: the poor and the working class, organized and unorganized.   Chafee recalled protests by Occupy activists. They were "  persistent and tenacious ".  Was their vociferous complaint directed at the ONE PERCENT all about a pittance raise for wage slaves ?   In fact, they were asking : By what divine right does our plutocracy own the country ? A much more substantial issue here .

           I hope more ordinary Democrats will rebel against this jackass progressive minimum-ism. You would think that the minimum wage at least for now could be tied to the cost of living index. I am on social security. I just got my generous raise. Thank God for  " that man ",  Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was, of course, " a traitor to his class ".