Re: PEX (was Re: Not always joking...)

Kip Williams <kiptw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Apropos of nothing much, I just read a bit about St. Vincent de
> Paul, the patron of prisoners, and noted that he was falsely accused
> by his roommate of theft.  'Twas ever thus, eh?

Interesting.  And his case was only about one order of magnitude
longer ago than mine.  And I see that, like me, he also didn't defend
himself against the charges.  This made him especially saintly; it
made me a felon.

That's not really that much difference.  The fast track to sainthood
has always involved persecution and martyrdom.

I can certainly see the attraction of the religion.  It would be nice
to believe that good people like me are going to be rewarded for our
virtue and that our persecutors are going to suffer.  Justice *feels*
like it ought to exist.  When someone does something very wrong, it's
tempting to say, "You can't *do* that!"  Or at least, "You can't get
away with that!"

Our society has largely adopted a secular religion, worship of the
state.  The belief is that if someone in the United States is virtuous
and hard working, they will be rewarded by a good job with good pay,
and that if someone does something really bad, they will be caught
and punished appropriately.  Extremists in this religion include
the notorious Wendy Murphy, who believes that false convictions are
absolutely impossible in the US -- even the DNA exonerees are all
really guilty.

I can see the attraction of that belief, too.

I didn't *choose* to be an atheist or an anarchist, any more than I
chose to not believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.  It's just
how reality appears to me, and how I think it would appear to anyone
who's paying attention.
-- 
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html
before emailing me.