Sam Harris

If I wasn’t spending so much time trying to figure out how to put LED’s into industrial oven hoods, I might be making a little video for youtube that puts me at the podium of C-SPAN’s coverage of the Big Tea Party. I would take sound samples of town hall booing and “Joe” the Congressman’s “You lie!” and make a repeating pattern that sounds like waves crashing on the shore. I would make the following speech while the waves of booing got louder and louder.

“You have all come here to see the face of the enemy. A few of you call it by name and the rest of you use code words. I hear you say that you want to protect “the America you know” from socialism, commie radicals and big government. America “as it used to be” means, “more religious”. The other magic words mean secularism.

Secularism is not a force of nature and it is not your enemy. It is a process in our social evolution that results from all the things we learn about the world as we build more and more complex lives for ourselves. Your enemy is honesty.

Honestly,
Without secularism, you would not be standing here arguing about how we should pay for our medical technology. You would be wearing charms and beads and emoting to statues just like our ancestors did for thousands of generations. You wouldn’t have taxes to worry about, for you would be bartering food and crafts for an at best hit-and-miss healthcare system based on bleeding and demon expulsion.

You say that you have a sacred duty to the truth. I have a secular duty to the truth. The difference is in who owns it. It’s not us, no matter how snazzy a hat we wear. The truth belongs to nature of which we are a part. Learning that, is why we have the science of medicine and why many of you are still here.

Without secularism, you would have had no way to get to this event and probably not even heard about it.

I know that this process hurts. I know that most of you have very moderns ideas about religion. Modern religion is the painfully slow apology for the inevitability of secularism. Having your beliefs challenged is a wounding experience. Many non-religious people experienced the same challenge earlier in their lives. The pain will pass, but a healthcare bill never will until we can all be honest about it.

Honestly, 
What we think or believe is a shadow that the truth cast in our minds no matter who you heard it from. What we see in that shadow can change, especially if we are free to let in more light.

Without secularism, you would not know what tea was.

Great party!”

Tea Party address part two…

“Why do all us commie radicals want government run health care? Because we have to settle for second best. Because we can’t have our first choice.

My idea of the best healthcare system might look a lot like yours, at first.
Imagine handing all this over to an entirely separate social entity that is free of taxes, employer mandates and jack-booted inoculations. A vast organization that everyone can belong to that is based on charity and volunteerism. It would based right in people’s neighborhoods with big meeting rooms and all kinds of educational and medical assets and facilities. Facilities that are populated with compassionate people who have dedicated their lives to serving their communities. Organizations that can connect people to treatments and services without answering to a bottom line.

Gee. Where could we find something like that?

Why can’t we make such an organization? There is only one reason I can think of. Because God doesn’t want us to.

God tells every religion to remain separate from other religions. Our best option for a healthcare system requires making connections that the faithful cannot make and remain faithful.

Religion is the insulation that makes these connections impossible. Dogma is isolating people. Isolation creates a climate of fear. We are afraid to connect. People with time to spare can’t help people in need just a few yards from their door.

Even people with a dogma are afraid of other people with a dogma. They don’t want to connect to others because of the crazy shit they might have in their heads.

A few weeks ago, I heard Phyllis Schlafly speaking to the Clair Booth Luce Foundation. She said, “We don’t need population management. God will take care of however many of us there are.” I have to ask, is this a reasonable premise on which to base a health care policy for hundreds of millions of people? I have to confess, I’m afraid to connect to someone with that kind of crazy shit in her head.

Let’s drop all the pretense and come together. Let’s all take the brown acid.”