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Volume 38 Issue 8
January 23, 2001

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Society takes stand sitting down

MESA LEGEND
Submitted January 23, 2001

Challenging the results of an election? Questioning the separation of church and state? Cheering for the arsonist? Who do you think you are?

Rebelling against authority has become "behaving badly."

It has become impolite to be inquisitive, to have the gall to so much as suggest that our rights are being impeded.

With our Me-complex in society regardless of the cost, no one is willing to step on anyone’s feet nor suffer, much less die, for a cause.

When protesters lined up arm-in-arm last month at the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court demanding a hand recount of Florida’s contested ballots, they were called sore losers. When their counterparts outside the Miami-Dade elections commission office just a week earlier demanded the recount be stopped, they were told they were "disrupting the system."

Here at home, radio commentators and state lawmakers are calling the work of a local arsonist torching million-dollar homes being built at the edges of our mountain preserves "dispicable, senseless and cruel."

Personally, I’m finding it hard not to root for the arsonist. Senseless, dispicable and cruel? Are we talking about the arsonist, or the money-hungry real estate brokers and contractors who continue to peel back the skin of the earth in the name of "progress"?

And on this past inauguration day, the American Atheists national organization were among the many protesters questioning Bush’s stance on the separation of church and state.

The local arm of the organization protested Gilbert Mayor Cynthia Dunham’s promotion of Bible Week this past November. They have a website listing atheist principles, motives and tactics to win their battle for the separation of church and state.

But they hide behind your computer screen.

When I called the national headquarters for some input on this column, I was told they would respond, but that I could not quote them by name.

They were afraid of getting in trouble. Afraid of being rude. Afraid to attach a name to the voice.

They, like many of you, may as well walk around with duct tape on their mouths.

Joe Watson is a freelance columnist for the Mesa Legend and a journalism major at MCC.

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