Godless Commie Bastards

“Secular nations have one thing in common-mass graves, and the reason is that they believe the government is the final arbiter of right and wrong and good and evil.” - Rob Schenk

I walked by this quote (unattributed) several times on my way to and from simulator briefings. The simulator briefings are all run by retired pilots, now civilian contractors. This quote bothered me, but the owner had never been around when I passed by. I secretly plotted what I might post under it in response.

On my trip to Australia before pilot training began I was fortunate to be seated with a large Orthodox Jewish wedding party, on their way to a ceremony in Sydney. They wore beards, yamakas, broad rimmed hats, black suits, undershirts with tassles, the works. All except for Joe, who explained that he had grown apart from his childhood faith and community. He was wearing a yamaca, but was no longer religious (though his childhood friends didn’t hold it against him) and he was still racially Jewish. He described them as “ultra-conservative”. After a long flight with all of them, I was invited to the ceremony which was an overwhelming and awesome experience.

I digress, Joe was reading a book titled Society Without God by Phil Zuckerman, which I later read myself. It is a slower reading than I prefer, but thorough in refuting that secular nations are doomed to sin and anarchy. Countries like Sweden and denmark are two of the least religious, yet rank among the happiest and safest in the world. Armed with this reading, I was soon assigned to a simulator with none other than the advertised “non-secular” instructor. I took a usual interest in the squadron patches and items hanging around his cubicle (some of the instructors have great stories to tell) and flew my sortie. It wasn’t until after the debrief that I finally spoke up “Could I ask you something personal?” He said sure. “I was wondering if I could ask you to take this down.” I made sure to be non-confrontational and cordial. He settled back into his chair, folded his hands together, and asked “Why? Are you offended?”

I can’t stand people who wine and complain instead of dealing with things head on. All the politically correct non-offensive language crap is way too pervasive in our Air Force. Careful not to come across in this way, or as argumentative either, I pressed forward. I wasn’t offended, but I didn’t think it was a valid statement, and asked him what he thought it meant by ’secular nation’. The quote to me represented ignorance, both false and a blatant stab at the non-religious.

If ’secular’ here intended a nation of secular people, like Sweden and Denmark, genocide was conspicuously missing from their list of accomplishments (they actually have some of the lowest rates of violent crime despite a proportionately small police force). If it was a secular government that was to blame, I would hope that America and France have more to show than mass graves, considering our governments are secular by design. We discussed the issue for about an hour, discussing everything from communism, Nazis, the Democrats (which tried to kill him in Vietnam), the offenses of equally religious nations, and ‘Christian America’. We kept coming back to my reiterations that secular simply meant “independent of religion” and that it had little to do with whether a givernment was oppresive or not as there are plenty of examples in every direction to refute correlation.

Eventually we came to it, and he conceded “Well, if that’s what you say secular means, then I’ll make sure to look up a definition. How would you define countries like [Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, China, North Korea] then?”

“Totalitarian? Oppressive? One that isn’t free.”

“Well, I’ll make sure to look it up. I saw the quote and liked it. You can take it down. But I’m going to look it up.”

He may have deeply disagreed with all my beliefs, but because I approached him coolly and conversationally, we were able to have a reasonable discussion that resulted in him taking down the statement. Had I blind sided him with the issue, or came out guns blazing, I know he wouldn’t have budged.

I just looked up the specific quote in question, which was given by organiser Rob Schenk during “Save the Commandments” Sunday that toured Alabama in response to the firing of Ray Moore after his refusal to remove the Ten Commandments from his courthouse. The purpose of the tour was to encourage Americans ”to acknowledge the sovereignty of God over our land.” This is a sentiment I’ve overheard a lot around here, and I have a feeling he knew what it meant.