What is at stake.

Melissa McEwan has now resigned from the Edwards campaign. The Announcement is at Shakespeare's Sister, http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/

Jim,
Right on. Read Chris Hedges' stuff. It's the real deal. These people are fascists xenophobes. We have to convince those who are still open to reason (the core mullahs, like Donahue, are not)that these people want to undo everything good that's happened since the Magna Carta. They take no prisoners. Some of my neighbors are very "nice" hard working people who think we should nuke Iran. Because they worship the wrong sky god, and are therefore evil. Really.
We are fighting for our country, and the Dems "mainstream" BS won't cut it.
Griff

Both Kos and DU have had some very vocal members of the Catholic Church going after Edwards hard for not firing Amanda and Melissa the moment Donohue went after them. I used to think I was paranoid and alone in thinking that there were elements on the left that would feel right at home in a theocracy as those on the right. Fellow atheists used to think I was crazy and blowing things out of proportion. Now, sadly, people are starting to agreeing with me. Skim through the backwaters of Kos and DU and you'll find some pretty scary "progressive" posters who would be more than willing to help Donohue go through employment rolls of candidates looking to find atheists, agnostics, and other heathens to purge.

Susan Jacoby is brilliant, as is Shadia Drury, who has also written some phenomenal books of late.

I long for a world where a man like Robert Green Ingersoll could give the kind of speeches he did, and people would come from miles and miles around to listen with rapt attention.

Quite ordinary people actually came, and took an active interest in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in the 19th century. They listened, paid attention, argued amongst themselves.

Now we watch a bunch of right-wing bullies scream at tepid centrists about leftists who aren't even in the room to defend their views on a little glowing box and think it progress.

re: the Dems; I guess I'll vote for Kucinich if he's still in the primaries by the time it rolls around to Texas. If he's not then maybe Barak O. General election? Too early to say.

*sigh*

See ya'll at Walden Pond...

Jim, I think you've hit on the real seriousness of this story.

This is not just the usual nastiness. It’s something elementally more virulent – a clear transformation in the type of danger we face.

Probably most of us have depended unconsciously on “passing below the radar” to escape such personal attacks.

That is no longer possible. You yourself, and me, anyone who blogs or comments on blogs, can now be targeted for hate mail, for threats, for online and possibly even personal attacks by the people who power this machine. Your job, your private life, your freedom of speech are now officially at risk.

Assuming hopefully that Edwards has not joined in with the rampant gutlessness of political candidates on the left, I don’t want to blame him too much for this. This was the result of a deliberate attack from rightwing religious elements, and I believe Edwards was blindsided by it. However, either he or his campaign managers have failed to understand what’s taking place, and I’m afraid there will be little help from them on this.

The media, as expected, continues to demonstrate cozy obsequiousness to the right.

Ladies and gentlemen, the core freedoms of America have once again been exposed to assault, but this time I believe we will not feel it merely in some vague and distant general terms. This time, I think it will hit us at home, and as individuals.

This is a pivotal moment when we either go down ... or we find some way to fight.

Holy fucking shit, Batman! Alligators are coming over the wall and we are stomping on piss ants. I was sorely disappointed with how the Edwards campaign handled this issue. No, they did not fire these two bloggers but they also failed to seize this opportunity to tell these bigoted asswipes to crawl back into the cave they came out of. And they also lost my vote.

They do not yet have the full force of government at their command, but is there any doubt that they would use that force if it was available in order to silence their critics?

The threat from these asshats is real and becoming more immediate every day.

The only way to resist these evil actions to intimidate and silence us if for us to be more vocal, more active, more visible.

We cannot all be a Harris or a Dawkins, but we can make sure that our family and friends know where we stand on religion and other issues. "The Bible has some good stories but they are just stories." How hard is that?
Oh, that alligator, piss ant thing - I have no idea what that means but I like it.

Our freedom to think really isn't at stake because we here have already broken free of the mental yoke and defied the forces of the imaginary hell. What really is at stake is opportunity for the children and other thinkers who come after us to have the opportunity to choose, to know that there are some who do not believe in Imperceptible Magic People and why they don't. But even in that there is little hope that I can see. We all know that even though some people are given all of the information that we possess they still choose to believe. I know of nothing we can do about that aside from deep conditioning which I think you and others would likely object to. Anyway, this is the reality we live in. In the eyes of the American public if you don't believe then you are a monster. No atheist will be elected to high office here for the forseeable future. You should accept the fact that most of our species is insane and not get angry when they act in an insane manner.

As the saying goes -

"do not waste time arguing with a pig. You won't learn
anything useful, the pig won't learn anything useful, and all you'll succeed in doing is annoying your bacon."

I just finished reading Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers and she documented this Catholic playbook has been in use for a while. They are apparently dusting it off again.

...on the first pass, but I managed to delete the damn thing before getting it posted, and this version doesn't have the same amount of fire... Ah well.

Jim Downey

"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller

I agree that this is a serious problem that is going to impact more and more of us. At the same time, I'm not sure how to translate our concerns into action. Any suggestions?

I have been spending some time talking to my gay friends about this. I feel like we could learn a lot about how to change/modify/do something proactive for the next generation from the gay rights movement. We need awareness campaigns. We have to be willing to put our faces out there and humanize our athiest selves. We need to figure out how to get more active athiest characters on TV. I think most importantly we need to reinvent the salon. Instead of seeing pictures of Paris Hilton in magazines, I would rather read about groups of people who get together and discuss and debate real issues in comfy armchairs with martinis.

Mandy U

Let's turn it around (like Trent Lott after the joke at Thurmond's birthday party if you want an example).

If David Duke created a PR firm, and a candidate hired him, they would be criticized and told to disavow him. And the other candidates would be asked to disavow Duke as well.

So when it is an anti-catholic, anti-jewish, anti-african-american bigot, everyone would demand a disassociation.

But when the subject is only a rabidly anti-catholic bigot, everyone says demanding the exact same thing is excessive.

Is this really what you believe? You aren't for any actual freedom, but are merely selective in which bigots should get a pass?

And atheists have not merely gotten on the radar of "religious nuts". Most have made it clear that even the slightest belief in God would be grounds for incarceration in a psychiatric hospital until they recanted - of course just being helpful. And they do impose it in the form of taxation for public schools which they use to indoctrinate various things including some many here might object to.

But realize the people you are defending as far as I can determine want to expand federal power into more areas of society and thus limit freedom, choice (when not approved by the state - e.g. motorcycle helmets, seatbelts, toilets and showers for example).

You don't disapprove of all the propaganda and coercion only because you happen to agree now with what is being coerced. And you want much more because you think it will be you doing the coercion. Fight force with force? If they want to impose, we impose first? We need a preemptive war against the theists?

If that is your true belief, they have as much reason to fear as the Branch Davidians at Waco - for eventually you will trump up a charge, then send in military tanks, guns, or whatever, and kill them all. Did you throw a party or consider it excessive force?

Political activists tend to have no sense of humor outside inside jokes that are only funny to members of the movement. Political radicals, including Dominionists like Donohue, are even worse. Sure, they might attack the other side for lacking a sense of humor, but, let's face it, "hot, white sticky Holy Spirit" is funny. So is The Commissar's The Passion of Amanda.