Guy Fawkes Day

V for Vendetta

I do hope the film adaptation does this graphic novel justice. But what interests me more at this moment is not the book "V for Vendetta" or even Rich Johnston's commentary. What interests me are the comments posted by the readers of Newsarama. Perhaps its the academic in me but the commentors who at least did not actively disagree with Rich did have some good arguments with evidence to base their claims on. I like evidence and live by the rules of evidence. In fact, all of the sciences, both hard and soft, live by the rules of evidence. They have done so for a few thousand years or so. What deeply disturbs me are the comments posted by those who disagreed with Mr. Johnston. Those comments consistantly lacked the evidence to support their arguments. I don't care who you are or what your politics are; if you don't ground your arguments then I am not going to waste my time. Those who argue without providing sufficient evidence or reason are simply propagandists.

Young Crooks of Texas

Pro Libertas - Pro Texana

What scares me about the Young Conservatives is not that there exists a group of people committed to promoting their views and shaping politics to fit their perceived needs. What scares me is there exists a group of people committed to destroying the values of the United States in the name of American values. A country built on immigration and they hate immigrants. A country based on freedom of religion and they want the federal government to stay out of their efforts to impose religion on the state level. What I love the most though is the apparent belief that the Declaration of Independence is an enforcable document versus the Constitution which, by the way, makes no reference to God.

Mythmaking in the Modern Age

The Basement Tapes

When I read the first collection of Neil Gaiman's Sandman I suffered a sort of pyschosis where I couldn't stop buying more issues. I think in this day and age of required sources and citations it's a little difficult to separate the story from the creator. Still, a great story will always live on and the names of those who had a hand in crafting the story will only be an afterthought. The great stories are those that will contribute to the mythology of a society and the superheros of modern comics are those mythic images.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Constitution, Takes Aim at Magna Carta

Secular Humanism

One would think the fact that the Ten Commandments were not included in the Constitution would be a sign that the Framers didn't intend to make them the foundation of U.S. law. Still, at this point I don't think context has much to do with the matter right now. Original intent can be discussed till you're blue in the face or throwing chairs across the room. What matters right now is how allowing such displays to remain might further erode the division between the Church and the State. If a court of law can claim that the Ten Commandments are representative of the foundations for the United States then how soon will it be before other religious laws are included? More to the point, how soon will the laws of the Ten Commandments be actively enforced by the courts such as not working on the Sabbath (which is actually Saturday), honoring your parents (no matter how abusive and sick they may be), or believing in one God and only one God (of course, by God the courts would mean a Judeo-Christian one and not one of those horrible eastern gods)? If you include the Ten Commandments with a set of other documents considered foundational to the United States and are enforcable as such then you implicitly claim that the Ten Commandments are enforcable as well. Finally, if such an inclusion is made then what of the current attempts by the U.S. government to bring American democracy to other foreign countries? What of the effort to bring democracy to Muslim nations already tense over the idea of seeing their governments toppled and foreign troops rolling in? Wouldn't including the Ten Commandments as an implicitly enforcable document also mean that 'American democracy' represents a distinctly Christian, or rather anti-Muslim, democracy?