THE LOCAL RAG SHOWS IT'S COLORS

The following paragraph is a letter to the editor waiting for submission until I'm allowed to next publish. The occasion is a very nice report the Spokesman made on how many households are starting to live smaller because their incomes, under the Bush administration, just aren't keeping up with the salaries of CEOs and other friends of the Bush mis-administration. Of course the paper didn't get into the meat of the causes of the end of the American dream as I just have. But what really burned my muffins was the paper's mentioning several times how Christian churches are setting up programs to teach the Bushites how to live smaller and conserve money. The paper even mentioned Biblical references which can be construed to teach Christians that they must live smaller and be conservationists. No mention of any other religion in the piece that I can recall at the time of this writing. The letter next below expresses my feelings even more keenly.


"Your report on The Big Squeeze (July 9) was informative, but why the extraneous mentions of Christianity in essentially an economic report? By that pandering approach to outworn reality, your piece fails to emphasize the underlying impulse to frugality which is that good old adaptively-evolved, psychological force—fear—of homelessness, nakedness, hunger and consequent death. Nor does it encourage the many scientifically-minded skeptics who, in the Sixties, began talking about the resource conservation that Christians are just now discovering. Your piece fails to acknowledge atheists like myself and Buddhist wife who, without resort to Bible commandments, drive fuel efficient cars, don’t carry credit card balances and live in a 900 square foot, energy-efficient home within city limits. Most importantly, your report, by acknowledging the irrational religious to the exclusion of rational others, fails to trumpet the skeptical attitude that makes decisions based on scientifically discoverable information rather than Biblical authoritarianism—the kind of factual information that also leads to accepting the fact of evolution and the nonexistence of a supernatural heavenly hypothetical that watches over the human animal. Your report, by failing to ignore theosophy, encourages more superstitious Biblical authoritarianism in future rather than empirical approaches to human problems."