My friend and fellow “reasonist’ Mr. Neu sent me a depressing link today. I’ve known for a while that Pat Roberson is a nut but yesterday Pat had David Horowitz, a right-wing writer, on his Christian Broadcast Network new show. Keep in mind that Pat’s TV network is one that most of America doesn’t watch but that a lot of God fearing voters do watch. Keep in mind that half of Americans do not vote – obviously the “Rock the Vote” and “Vote or Die” campaigns just aren’t working – so you really need to pay attention to the ones that do in order to properly gauge the nation’s pulse.
Part of what depressed me was how the show featured paranoid ravings about MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, America Votes and the “shadowy group” Media Matters and how they are forming their own party as part of a George Soros plan “to take over the political structure of the United States.” While doing so, it repeated a baseless slur that Soros, a Hungarian-born Jew, collaborated with the Nazis as a 14-year-old boy. It was a sickening and sad display, and anchored by a smiling preacher who is worth between $200 million and $1 billion dollars. Say Hallaluyah!
Maybe Horowitz was attacking Media Matters because this moderate group showed how his recent book on these groups titled Shadow Party had “doctored quotes, shoddy scholarship, factual errors, and baseless insinuations on matters both small and large.” I know he is scared by MoveOn.org and CAP most likely because these moderate, centrist, “third way” organizations all advocate reason and restraint, not hysteria and fear. If you go point by point through the groups he trashed, you see how they are on the side of reason and moderacy – virtues and not sins in my book.
What really made me feel down in the dumps is that this sort of thing airs every day in the good old U S of A. This poison is being fed and happily swallowed by millions of voting Americans. I cannot stress enough how voting maters because as the Middle East has shown, democracies can be perverted by religious fundamentalism if those leaders win elections. Hamas was elected by the Palestinians because their secular leaders, the PA, were letting them down. One cannot deny the strong link because the fundamentalist movement and conservative Republicans. Rick Santorium, one of the most radically fundamentalist Republicans around, is one of only a hundred Senators in the entire country. He is one of only two Sentors from the great state of Pennsylvania. He is also believes that homosexuality is the same as if not worse than bestiality and he probably watches his good buddy Pat all day long whenever he can.
I bring all of these points up because I think the time is right to start a new poitical movement called the Reasonist movement to counteract the nutso religious fundamentalism that is running rampant in America. Our slogan is “We make good sense.” We will advocate for laws that make good fiscal and moral sense, for policies, both foreign and domestic, that make good fiscal and moral sense. We won’t shout down the shouting opposition’s lies. We will simply wait out their yelling and bluster the way a parent endures a child’s temper tamtrum and then will logically respond with facts that simply make sense. I am a rational philosopher – instead of hysteria I prefer reason. The more extreme our nation becomes, the more I will take the middle road of reason. At the lead up to the 2004 election, I was solidly blue and very anti red but I don’t want to make a Blue State thing. Barak Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention said it best – to paraphrase, we are all basically purple – both red and blue. To that end, I want to reframe the entire discussion and create a third way: a way of reason. Who’s with me?