Well it's TAX TIME here in the United States, and the clock is ticking away for taxpayers to get their paperwork in order and send it all over to the IRS.
We all HATE paying taxes, and we certainly wish we could do something to fix this system, but no matter how many ideas we come up with, they really don't get too much support. Why is that?
Well this weekend you'll know why. I'll show you that there is a certain mentality in place that makes sure that we can't change the system.
Plus, of course, all the news that's "Off the Wire", including a major political announcement that you DID NOT hear about in the media, and something of a big announcement about the future of my own show. This is the announcement you've been wondering about, folks, and I think you'll like what I'll have in mind when you hear it.
Also just a word of warning, this week's show is going to be slightly LONGER than the usual 30 minutes. I'm hoping the folks at Freethought Radio will keep that in mind when they do the simulcast, and I hope that Lauren Floyd over there will be listening because the announcement WILL affect the simulcast as well.
All of that is THIS SATURDAY at 7pm Eastern on ShockNet Radio and simulcast on Freethought Radio. And be sure to drop by here afterwards to posit your thoughts about it.
RJ Evans has issued some important news about his program on ShockNet Radio. I just wanted to let you know that his announcement really has no impact on my own show, "Brutally Honest on ShockNet", which will STILL be on the air in its usual time of Saturdays at 7pm Eastern.
In fact, by the time American Heathen® goes on hiatus, I should have everything ready to make the leap to the full-hour time-frame and that should happen at the start of May.
And now, here's RJ...
American Heathen® to be re-tooled
The American Heathen® show will take a production hiatus until August after the "Whippin’ It Out Below The Bible Belt" special on April 25th.
According to RJ Evans, the host of the show, "I’ve done a lot of talking wth my producer, Carl Wood, and we have decided to give the show a complete makeover. The show is going to be slicker, more regimented, topical, and an hour shorter."
Asked if the show would still embody the message of freedom, RJ said, "Yes, but it won’t be as crazy and as difficult to follow as it has been in the past. We’re going to tame it down a little and give it a little more substance. We’re also going to make an effort to attract the progressive believer. It’s still about the Constitution and the First Amendment, but we want to get more people interested in listening in. There’s too much division out there and this has limited our audience considerably. Many atheists have issues with the First Amendment. They want to see religion crushed. This kind of mentality is an attempt to usurp the First Amendment. I want to dispel the notion that all atheists share this narrow minded and bigoted view. The new show is going to address this on many different levels, as well as the warped fundamentalist religious views.
"But, we aren't going to abandon fun!"
American Heathen® listenership has dwindled over the past 8 months, and as a result, the production team is determined to make changes, returning in August with a better show. RJ will be joined by his co-host Carl Wood, aka Dr. Teddy in the current show format. Carl is a progressive believer and will be bringing his perspective to the new show. Predictably though, both RJ and Carl are staunch defenders of the Constitution and are not afraid to take on any fundamentalist ideology that threatens freedom.
A friend of mine recently told me about a sign in front a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan…
HERE - GOOD FRIDAY - 7PM - LIVE CRUCIFIXION
And I thought about this for a moment and I realized that only organized religion can come up with something like that and not cause the townspeople to rise up with pitchforks and torches. You know that if someone posted that sign in their driveway that you’d have the police over there in a heartbeat eager to arrest somebody. Sure it’s a screw-up, and we all can presume that the church officials really don’t PLAN on having someone actually NAILED to a couple of pieces of wood and then left hanging for a few hours until their limbs break, their blood pools to their feet, and they die either from infection from the nails, shock from the injuries, or from the loss of blood.
We can laugh at the gaffe… but organized religion is really the only party that can make it and get away with it.
People of faith LOVE to talk about the supposed benefits of religion. Of course when they give their glowing affirmations of religion, it’s usually THEIR OWN religion that they have in mind, NOT just any odd group. You will not, for instance, hear a Baptist sing the praises of Islam or Judaism or Mormonism. They will, instead, stick to their own church.
There’s really no big mystery behind it, of course. They don’t want people to know that they’re biased towards THEIR own faith. And that pretty much applies to ALL faiths, not just Christians, or not just Muslims, or not just Mormons, etcetera and so forth.
And that brings us to one of the problems of organized religion… its insistence of religion as a SUBSTITUTE for everything in life.
Let’s get brutally honest here… ALL organized institutions, be they social, religious, or political, have within them the potential to become destructive collectivist enclaves; to become – for lack of a better word – cults. ALL of them do, without exceptions. If you think otherwise then you’re a damned liar both to yourself and to everyone else; because it is the nature of organized groups to become collectivist if it is left unrestrained.
And in order for organized religion to become collectivist, they have to sell their product… religion… to be the end-all-be-all universal solution to everything. Again, listen to the person who espouses their assertion (I won’t call it their argument because they really don’t want to argue about it) that religion is essential to everything in life. If “religion” (read: THEIR religion) isn’t hyped and glorified in society, then they assert that civilization itself collapses. Laws become meaningless. The bonds that keep society together supposedly implode. Anarchy supposedly rules the day.
Now they don’t just make that assertion in the most extreme of situations. They make that assertion ALL THE TIME, for ANY issue that THEIR religion has a stake in. It’s an all-or-nothing situation for them. Find an issue… Sunday liquor sales, abortion, stem cell research, the Theory of Evolution, prayer in schools… and you will hear this very assertion at some point. RELGION (specifically, their own) has to be the end-all-be-all to the matter, up-front, in the center of the whole mix, without question, THE FINAL ANSWER to everything… or civilization itself is DOOMED. Period.
To that end, we have religion being used as a SUBSTITUTE for things that it really has no business being a substitute for.
We have religion being used as a SUBSTITUTE for individuality. You are not a person. You are a follower of whatever faith you’re with, and you are EXPECTED to adhere to the dogma of your faith, without question and without hesitation.
We have religion being used as a SUBSTITUTE for reason and logic and science. Facts be damned, faith is all that matters. If any kind of information contradicts the “established” dogma, then that information is either condemned or suppressed.
We have religion being used as a SUBSTITUTE for education. Johnny may not be able to read, write, or do math, but he better be saying his prayers before the big football game if he expects his team to win! Oh, and by the way, the excuse why Johnny can’t read, write, or do math is supposedly BECAUSE he can’t pray in class.
We have religion being used as a SUBSTITUTE for ethics. Violence is wrong… unless it’s in defense of the faith. Murder is wrong… unless the person you killed did something to offend your faith. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, unless that opinion OFFENDS your faith… in which case that person must die, or at least be hounded out of town at all costs.
We have religion being used as a SUBSTITUTE for sound legislation. Laws are pushed for and enacted not based on any concept of freedom or reasonable balance between the needs of society and the dignity of the individual, but simply because a certain religious DOCUMENT declares it so. Why should liquor sales be banned on Sunday? It’s the same reason why all stores had to originally be banned from doing business on Sundays. Because that’s the day that everyone is supposed to go to CHURCH! Sure they can pull out a trillion studies about drunk driving and accident statistics, but they will NEVER come up with a simple, reasonable, LOGICAL and SECULAR explanation why ONE SPECIFIC day of the week should be singled out from all others. It is ALL based on RELIGION.
We have religion being used as a SUBSTITUTE for justice. If a preacher gets caught doing something unmentionable, it has to be covered up “for the sake of” religion. Ministers who preach that their followers “give ‘till it hurts” have luxury cars and diamond mines. They will launch an endless crusade to persecute those that “offend” them, but they will only give a half-hearted apology if their words or their deeds offend others and then expect that we simply accept it. And all of it is permitted because RELGION is more important than JUSTICE.
We have religion being used as a SUBSTITUTE for therapy. Look at some of the largest addiction groups in the country and see what they advocate as their “multi-step” treatment. The essential element in their “multi-step” treatment involves a certain church. Specifically THEIR church; the church that sponsors the treatment program. It basically advocates turning a person from one addition – drugs and/or alcohol – to another addition – religion. And judges have no qualms ordering anyone and everyone before them with drug or alcohol-related offenses to go to these “treatment” centers… even if they are of a different religion.
Finally, and most despicably, we have religion being used as a SUBSTITUTE for national identity. The constant mantra being uttered is that America is a “CHRISTIAN” nation, even though we have plenty of documents and statements from our founding fathers to the contrary. RELIGION is used as an essential qualification for holding public office, even though it is expressly FORBIDDEN in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. Churches are given tax-exempt status and then use their pulpits to tell the followers how to vote. And even when the practice itself is outlawed, they find ways around that law.
ALL of it… every single instance where religion is being used as a SUBSTITUTE for essential qualities in life… is done so at the behest of and for the sole advancement of organized religion. It is done so that those in positions of power in that institution have what they have always yearned for… absolute and unquestionable power over others. The kind of unquestionable power that you currently see in third-world theocracies. The kind of power that was the source of much of the evil committed in human history.
It is for this reason, above all others, that the authors of the First Amendment made sure that the VERY FIRST prohibition of government was to prevent it from being used by organized religion for that very purpose.
“Congress shall make no law RESPECTING THE ESTABLISHMENT of religion…” (Note: emphasis added by the writer.)
That’s more than just prohibiting the government from officially ESTABLISHING a religion. That’s more than just prohibiting the government from FAVORING a religion. That prevents the government from acting as if such an establishment was ALREADY MADE!
Of course, as with all other rights, we as Americans have a hard time accepting some of these things, especially when they are in contradiction to everything that we have been brought up to believe in. But you take a look at how these substitutions are being made in this country, and then you take a look the end result in third world nations and ask yourself if their societies are any better because of it. If we are supposed to be “better” than them, then why are we trying to emulate their methods?
Perhaps someday we can look at that “LIVE CRUCIFIXION” gaffe again and know that ANYONE can make it and we would still get a good laugh at it. By then, of course, we would have put organized religion in its proper place in society… perhaps still respected, but certainly restrained.
What does that mean, you ask? Well it's a little cautionary tale that I've had in my head for a while to warn you about a certain "get rich" program... and it's one that even members of Congress are a bit skeptical of! What is it? We'll you'll just have to tune in and find out!
Also this week I'm debuting a new regular segment on my show called "Off the Wire". This will be all about news stories from the wire services that didn't make the cut from my regular "News Pundit Report" over on the "American Heathen®" program. Quite often these will be news stories that you probably never heard about because your nightly news show was spending time talking about Britney Spears or the latest American Idol contestant to get voted off. And of course because this IS a commentary program, I can't help but to interject my own two cents on each news report that I discuss. So what will be "Off the Wire" this week? Well, tune in and find out!
Fun stuff this week! "American Heathen®" may not be doing a show this week, but I'm certainly keeping things going, and it all happens this Saturday at 7pm Eastern on ShockNet Radio and simulcast on Freethough Radio!
I'll let him say it... WELCOME back to the game, Governor! Where have you been all this time?
By the way, I've got to get my own shot in on this...
Donnie, why do you say that fighting terrorism is a "new kind of war" when this has been going on for quite some time? Do you REALLY think that the Boston Tea Party was some kind of Harvard social event? We were having to deal with terrorism as a form of warfare back in the Vietnam War, a fact that Governor Ventura himself can attest to since he was THERE! The only thing that is different about this war than the others is that there is no set nation to target. We can't turn to one single country and say "BLAME THEM" for it.
And if you really think about it, the battles we fought in the past of late were pretty much PROXY battles. Korea and Vietnam were both proxy battles for China and the old Soviet Union. Our standoffs in Berlin? Soviet Union. Cuban Missile Crisis? Soviet Union. Grenada? Cuba, which was also the proxy for the Soviet Union. Even the Gulf War was a proxy war to the extent that we limited our goals to liberating Kuwait when the real problem of the time was Iraq.
That probably explains why we found it easier to pick a fight with Iraq than to find Osama. Once we got the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan, it stopped being a geographical enemy.
Oh, wait a minute... there I go again, getting people to THINK! You'd think that I would have made that into a commercial for some Internet radio station. Oh... yeah... I DID!
In the beginning of Shakespeare's play "Hamlet", even the guards noted that something was "rotten" in the state of Denmark. They knew that something was bad, but they didn't know what. They weren't in a position to find out. They just knew that something was wrong.
That idea comes back when a very simple question is asked... when something is "rotten" in the state (in this case our own), who's more willing to say what it is? This week you'll find out why someone like yours truly is better at finding what that "rotten" thing is and letting you know what it is.
Plus... I talk about a certain "skin deep" scandal... only it's NOT the kind of scandal that you would expect me to discuss. I'll go over why I don't discuss THAT scandal, and why the other scandal that I DO discuss has far greater implications for people.
Plus don't forget to talk part in the American Heathen® "Drop Dead Contest", which is still going on from now until mid-April. Listen in every Friday Night from 7-11pm Eastern for the right time to call, and your guess could win you a new 4GB MP3 player! Visit the American Heathen® page for more information.
Well, hopefully the show will go on THIS SATURDAY... last week we sorta-kinda had a little FUBAR situation that ended up with the previous week's show being aired on Saturday, and the REAL show being aired the following Sunday. We're really sorry about that, guys, and RJ has taken steps to make sure that history doesn't repeat itself.
Meantime, here's what I have for this week's program...
First, I have a bone to pick with a fellow American Heathen® contributor. Long-time Brutally Honest supporters will know what I'm talking about once you hear what the subject is, but this is a certain train of thought that I've been trying to eliminate for quite some time. On the plus side, it gives me a chance to give everyone a little lesson in history.
And that education course continues after the break, where I give some high school students a free lesson in reality when it comes to their education. And then after that I give you the REAL source of a couple of dirty political attacks, and it's from someplace that you really wouldn't expect! That and a quick word about dirty politics and what really needs to be done to stop it.
All of that in one 30-minute program! Can you imagine what sort of trouble I'll get into with a full hour on my hands?
The insanity begins at 7pm THIS SATURDAY on ShockNet Radio and simulcast on Freethought Radio! And please leave your comments on the show here.
Looks like the folks at ShockNet Radio screwed up and repeated last week's program.
I know I sent them the right show, so I don't know why the wrong program got put into the rotation.
Stay tuned. UPDATE: The correct show will air on ShockNet Radio on SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY at 6pm Eastern. It'll also re-air this Friday night at 6pm Eastern, just before the "American Heathen®" program.
Sorry Freethought Listeners, I don't know if Lauren Floyd will be doing the simulcast, but you may have to make the jump to ShockNet if you want to hear the right show this week.
We will resume the NORMAL schedule next Saturday.
RJ has expressed his sincere apologies for the mix-up, and unlike a certain TV station in Alabama (which I WILL be talking about in this show), there really is no appearance of political conspiracy... just an honest mistake.
I am a freelance writer, online commentator (both written and audio), techno-geek, Libertarian, Trekker (have the uniform, just don't wear it), amateur disc jockey, and (unfortunately) an all-around nice guy. I'm also the author of various fan-based comics at Battlerock Comics.
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