The True Fanatics

So now we have a Wisconsin-based athiest group demanding the removal of a decades-old war memorial in a distant city they never visit because they suspect the city can't afford to defend itself. 

Religious people are passionate, and passionate people hope to influence. But this group of athiests, like so many organized in this way, are zealots who not happy until they have converted others. Something of irony there, to say the least.

Through the millennia, non-believers were sometimes exiled, tortured, and killed. Not good.

Now, however, the religious also have to "pay." Towns are forced, with public tax money, to defend themselves against groups which simply have their own agenda to "convert" and deny. I found it laugable that the self-important student in Cranston's legal brief claimed she felt "ostracized" by passing the "heavenly Father" statement on the school wall. Thousands of others over decades, believers and non-believers, were able to get through each day without that burden, but not her. So everyone else has to pay.

Still another mornonic letter in the ProJo the other day demanded not only freedom of religion, but "freedom from religion." That writer is in for a long day, since people can express religious beliefs in the public square, in their clothing and accessories, in their free speech, and on the very currency the writer uses to pay for his coffee. There is no "freedom from religion" clause in the Constitution, so you'd better run when they sing "God Bless America" at the ballgame.

Pawtucket ought to find some private backing to defend itself against the inevitable lawsuit, and then should counter-sue. If a cross honoring people of all kinds who died defending our country so ignites resentment half a country away, then perhaps we ought to look at which behavior is really deviant: acknowledging the dead with an historic symbol or respect, or demanding removal of something you never have to look at.