I got it!

Last night I was lusting over my potential bike purchase and I had an epiphany. The enemy within post of last week...spending too much money so you can't afford to do the things you want to later, is the answer.

Duh!

I haven't spent too much money yet, but I was on the verge. Plans are being scaled back. It's quite the temptation to buy stuff and not have money later. We all fall for it from time to time. Hopefully I dodged a bullet. I'm sure that's not my only enemy within, but it's the one showing itself for now.

But today I want to complain yet again about organized religion.

I was reading this morning on Proceed at Your Own Risk about organized religions use of scripture to promote hatred and bigotry. Since the dawn of time religion has preyed on the fears and ignorance of man to further their agenda of hate. This is not news. It's simply a byproduct of a lack of education.

Education is thought to be the single most important factor to provide their children with a better life by parents in the United States. It is the single thing most neglected. No music, no history, no arts, no understanding of what has gone on before we were here and a complete repeat is in the offing. It's like the writer's strike hit education hardest.

I was recently listening to a cd of Manhattan Transfer, in which they are performing live. They encourage the audience to clap and dance during Tuxedo Junction. The audience has absolutely no idea what a downbeat is. They're clapping twice as fast as the song is going! We don't even teach our children what a downbeat is, how can we expect them not to repeat history? Yes history is boring, yes, history seems to have little to do with ones actual current existence.

Yes! It informs our decisions and our understanding of who we are as a nation, and how we got here, and how to go forward instead of spiraling ever downward in disastrous circles. How to progress, how to improve as human beings, how to learn to live with each other and celebrate our differences, because with them we all thrive and grow, and without them we all wither from sameness.

Most parents in the United States would pay higher taxes without complaint if their child’s education improved exponentially. But they do pay higher taxes and not only does the education not improve, it degrades!

Every President since Eisenhower has been billed, either through their own political machine, or through the media as the education President. None of them have done this! Not one of them has significantly improved education to a degree that would improve our standing as a literate nation. I say literate, as though that were an acceptable standard. It's pathetic.

No one knows how to construct a sentence, they don't know which words to use to convey their meaning. Then for than, now for know, the list goes on and on.

So if you're trying to promote an agenda of hate and intolerance, (God I hate that word.) ignorance is your friend. You would want people to be ignorant and fearful because that's the way to control them and get them to do your bidding. Make them hate because you're teachings of hatred are the only benevolence they've ever known. Lemmings will do what they're genetically programmed to do, all you have to do is nudge them in the right direction. Hatred derived of religion is making out like a bandit in this country nowadays.

Private education is a dangerous pitfall because the regulation does not restrict teaching hate! A school run by a religious organization can teach that African-Americans are evil because their skin is a different color than ours. That men who love men are evil because they love. That a religion that disagrees with them is evil simply because they disagree. Public education is a good idea in theory, but it's been highjacked by people who can't find the door, let alone a good sentence. Public education panders to the lowest common denominator so there's "no child left behind" (please) and the one's who suffer are those who are intelligent. Those who could and would excel given the opportunity are dragged down to the level of the lowest achiever because that's what the system is geared to do.

It needs to be rethought. It needs to be redesigned. It needs to teach every single child to excel at their own pace and to help them do so. That's the only way to keep the fanatics who teach and practice hate from taking over completely.

I'm going to borrow a quote from Richard Rothstein to finish up because I don't have better words than his today.

"The Evangelicals have forgotten that the great prophets were constantly arguing with God. Moses himself was a cranky old bastard. And sometimes, the prophets even won the argument. So maybe God let them win, but He was reinforcing their obligation to think for themselves. And that is the Judeo-Christian [idea] upon which this nation is based, not blind obedience to tele-evangelists."