Whenever I see something in the news I'm knowledgeable about, I laugh at how uninformed or flat-out wrong it is. Until I remember I know a lot about about precious little and worry about the other 95%.
David Thoreau is the best known of early conscientious objectors who refused to pay taxes to fund a war. In fact, his well known book Civil Disobedience was a response to the Mexican-American war of 1848, "The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war". This is the seminal book that inspired Gandhi and King in their understanding that the dictates of our own conscience are more important than the laws of the state. This is the man for whom a, "Concord lady who used to decorate the graves of Thoreau's peers in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and who, having done so, would leave his with a curse: 'No flowers for you, you dirty little atheist!'" [Keith, excerpting Wagenknecht 155. ]
In the communities I'm a part of, the most decent of people, those that refuse to harm animals and humans, (those involved with homeless, poverty, anti-war, and animal and human rights concerns), are atheist/agnostic. To expand the circle of decency, I do not consider the many good Buddhists and Unitarians I know to be "religious" given the term's doctrinal, institutional, and theistic definition. In the world that I know, our new President is a religious man whose favorite political philosopher is Jesus Christ; he also oversaw the execution of 113 people, and is the son (both in genes and policy) of a former Director of the CIA and Gulf War Commander-in-Chief. However, just as I would consider it laughable to consider him the exemplar of the religious and dismiss their contributions to the pacifist movement, I would hope my religious peers would be as accepting.
This is why I'm concerned that a bill permitting people to defer their taxes from military purposes is presented as an exclusively religious concern by the recent addition of "Religious Freedom" to its title. I've carefully read the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act and noted conscientious objector is defined via reference to the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 450 et seq.), which includes those with "religious training and belief", but which, "does not include essentially political, sociological, or philosophical views, or a merely personal moral code."
However, I also understand that in Welsh v. United States the Supreme Court held that those "whose consciences, spurred by deeply held moral, ethical or religious beliefs, would give them no rest or peace if they allowed themselves to become a part of an instrument of war." Justice Harlan concluded that there was no First Amendment (freedom of religion) right to conscientious objector status. Instead, if Congress provided for such a privilege, it must not be restricted to members of specific religious sects; instead, "the Court, rather than nullifying the exemption entirely, should extend its coverage to those like petitioner who have been unconstitutionally excluded from its coverage." (Pp. 361-367.)
The Court's ruling of expanding the definition to the non-religious does not mitigate my concern with the title of this bill as some of the advocates suggest, it augments it. The very fact that we live in a country where the majority of people consider themselves religious and commit so much wealth to war demonstrates that religion is not the primary ingredient of dissent. Just as Thoreau noted, the key is a reluctance to become an instrument of war in person or coin. If the Court has made a correction that advocates agree with, I would expect them to be informed by and reflect it instead of continuing on in error and offense to the well meaning "dirty little atheists."
Now that the Vietnam war has long be considered a failure and King a person worthy of respect, many people do not appreciate that a vulnerable King faced harsh criticism from many, including his colleagues in the civil right movement, for speaking out against the war.
"The rift was immediate. The NAACP saw King's shift of emphasis as 'a serious tactical mistake'; the Urban League warned that the 'limited resources' of the civil rights movement would be spread too thin; Bayard Rustin claimed black support of the peace movement would be negligible; Ralph Bunche felt King was undertaking an impossible mission in trying to bring the campaign for peace in step with the goals of the civil rights movement." The African American Almanac, 7th ed., Gale, 1997.
His position is one of the causes of my belief that, "text-book history is sometimes presented as complex and varied: right and wrong is only discerned in hindsight. However, this historical presentation is often little more than an excuse... Slavery was not a difficult moral situation for anyone other than those that benefited from the exploitation of others... Only the morally complacent and lazy need hindsight to recognize the evils of slavery, war, and tyranny."
"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours." Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.
Making this distinction really isn't the best way to spend my time, but it only took me a few minutes to write as I've done it so many times in the past:
Mr. Lynch,
In your letter to Bitch Magazine you blamed "a reckless hacker" for the fraudulent ad that is associated with one your brands (Southern Comfort). However, you also state you were unable to find the source of this hoax; you only know that it was posted to the Internet. In this day, nearly *anyone* with access to a computer can post something to the Internet, and it need not have even been the person that created the ad! I won't labor the distinctions between hacker and cracker, instead I'll refer you to a definition [1] and ask that you be more careful with your words.
__
[1] http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/h.html#hacker
hacker n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary... 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker.
His response was rather defensive — they must have gotten a ton of mail, and they aren't strangers to ad controversy:
Mr. Reagle,
I won't argue the distinction between "hacker" and "cracker" with you. Call it what you want.
The important point — since you seemed to have missed it — is that someone illegally violated our Southern Comfort trademark by creating a fake ad and posting it on the Internet. Perhaps different people did create it and post it on the Internet — but what difference does it make? Brown-Forman would love to take legal action against this person or persons — regardless of what they are called — for creating such a reprehensible hoax that violates our trademark and insults women.
As for being more careful with my words — I'll try harder in the future. In the meantime, I hope you find something better to do with your life.
Which I found sort of amusing actually:
Mr. Lynch,
I'm surprised you don't see the irony of our shared situation: someone co-opting and misusing something that we identify with and take pride in (bitch{the female body}, me{hacking}, you{booze}). I appreciate and respect your interest in defending your identity; I am only doing the same.
In public we'd raise our vanes of dissent to gather the energies of a people betrayed: sails driven by the wind of angry stares, dorsal fins cutting through the storm of America.
In private we'd decorate our fallen mohawks with ribbons and budgie feathers and pretend the whole of the world was at peace.
Twelve years later the killers rise again, and so do my hackles — only this time there will be no ribbons. As a teen I had hundreds of little orthodontic rubber bands gaily packaged in white plastic ziplock bags; the packets were adorned with pictures of athletic youth and their sport indicated how much pain they'd cause. Later, I used them to fasten braids and ribbons. It was a peace dividend of sorts, and the only one I'd see in that decade. But, like my hope, they have all since been lost: the fools are still obsessed with placing the whole world under the Sword of Damoclese, suspended by slender threads of laser light.