Peace Warriors

Photo credit: pschubert from morguefile.com
A friend on Facebook posted something about global warming the other day and since it piqued my interest, I did a little internet research and happened to stumble across something called The Earth Charter (http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/pages/The-Earth-Charter.html). It’s basically a little touchy-feely document that says we as a world should strive to promote respect for all life, social and economic justice, democracy and peace. I was ready to start swaying and singing Kumbaya by the time I finished reading the charter. It was endorsed by the 2001 U.S. Conference of Mayors, various youth organizations, the Unitarians, and even some Catholic groups for God‘s sake! Who could object to that?

A lot of people as it turns out. Evidently there’s some kind of crazy-ass theory that it’s all a conspiracy by groups like the United Nations and the Bilderburg Group to form an evil one-world government. There are conservative Christians who consider it some kind of pagan mumbo-jumbo religion that will persecute them once they gain control. Relax, anyone who’s out for peace and respect is probably not going to nail you to the cross. I’d be more worried about the people right here in America who approved torture, extraordinary rendition and the Patriot Act. The thing that really makes my head explode though, is the fact that some of the same Christians who buy into these theories also rave about the teachings of Ayn Rand, an atheist in an open marriage who had a long-term affair with a much younger man.

I read Atlas Shrugged years ago and I’m sorry but damn, she was one selfish old bitch. In the book all the elite thinkers stage a strike and the world basically collapses. She neglects to mention that if all the peons staged a strike it would have the same outcome. Everybody’s needed to make a society work. I’ve read the Bible and her theory of Objectivism seems about as far away from the teachings of Jesus as you can get. It’s not survival of the fittest, it’s do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And saying fuck you, I don’t care if you’ve run into a bad stretch in your life, it’s every man for himself, is not the way I see a true Christian thinking.