Bad news for those Americans who have had quite enough of Donald Trump’s veritable takeover of the never-very-impressive Republican Party. According to a recent (February, 2023) Guardian article written by Peter Stone, “ReAwaken America, a project of the Oklahoma-based entrepreneur Clay Clark, has hosted numerous revival-style political events across the US after receiving tens of thousands of dollars in initial funds in 2021 from millionaire Patrick Byrne, and become a key vehicle for pushing election denialism and falsehoods about Covid vaccines.”
I can’t republish the story in its entirety or show a very telling photo of disgraced former General Michael Flynn and dangerous-looking Clay Clark, but the link is here.
As well: “Clark’s project also has links to Dr Simone Gold, who served a 60-day jail sentence for illegally entering the Capitol on 6 January and founded America’s Frontline Doctors, an anti-vaccine group that has also touted bogus cures.”
Gulp.
As background, Britain’s heralded newspaper the Guardian also mentions, “Christian nationalism has deep roots in American history and has gained traction at different points,” said Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “The ReAwaken America Tour taps into the unholy well of Christian nationalism to sow doubt about the US election system and the safety of Covid vaccines while equating allegiance to Trumpism with allegiance to God.”
In case this isn’t setting your mental alarm bells off, Amanda Tyler also divulged: “Clay Clark and others who run this tour are using the name of Jesus, holy scripture and worship music to promote a partisan political agenda and personal business interests.”
There is ample evidence that the unholy union of Trumpism, political extremism, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, conspiratorial fearmongering and profiteering, and a noxious blend of populism and fascism has almost brought this country to its knees. Indeed from Paul Pelosi’s savage attack to the FBI being dragged through the mud for spurious reasons to Marjorie Taylor Greene (that obnoxious, self-important, undereducated demagogue) to the farce of a man who formerly represented my Congressional district here in Western North Carolina (Madison Cawthorn)(link), the news from this reactionary strain of resentment toward American institutions and political leaders has been virtually all bad. One cannot perceive the events of January 6th and all the gross machinations before and after by this dark-hearted group of n’er-do-wells and powermongers without fearing for their liberty and the fabric of this nation.
We actually almost lost the Republic on January 6th—as the far-ranging and virtually-above-reproach January 6th Committee’s evidence indicates (link).
The damning and comprehensive evidence of insurrection/conspiracy/sedition is bolstered by the astonishing and disturbing number of rabblerousers since indicted by the Federal government, tried by juries, and sentenced by judges from across the (mainstream) political spectrum shows. Convictions and plea deals number nearly a thousand—with quite a few white supremacist/extreme libertarian leaders being found guilty of seditious conspiracy These are findings almost unparalleled in the long and often illiberal history of the United States.
This country was founded on slavery and commenced with genocide of the original inhabitants, and has been marked by a series of gross usurpations of liberty, ugly church-state separation diminutions, and myriad outrages against good values and lofty ethical ideals.
None of this should be taken to mean I feel that Democratic politicians are great, or that I love the modern political Left. That kind of retort would be indicative of a malignant strain of “whataboutism” that thoroughly marks the political Right nowadays. They move the goalposts, allow/overlook/foster all manner of horrible behavior and then try to point to issues as distractions. Now that Trumpism is a cancer on the Republic, and January 6th and the impeachments occurred, I suggest we bat back nearly every obfuscation and ham-handed bit of verbal prestidigitation perpetrated by the likes of Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Kevin McCarthy, Elise Stefanik, Louie Gomert, and Laurent Boebert — their credibility lies demonstrably one level above a foul villain such as Ted Kaczynski, or a demagogue like Richard Nixon.
So I thought it important to cite some quotations by freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, humanists, and the like as a salve to put on our oozing national wound that has yet to heal. Below are quotes by famous freethinkers, secular humanists, and dissenters who have birthdays in February. I will kick it off with the late venerable Supreme Court appointee — the conservative Sandra Day O’Connor, appointed by Reagan remember! — who has a March birthday (but whom I just learned said something incredibly incisive and relevant to our perilous times):
“Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between the separation of church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why should we trade a system that has served us to well for one that has served others so poorly?”
Additional quotes by freethinkers, reformers, radicals, upstarts, thinkers, and activists follow:
Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
To a cross roads tree.
~ The poet and novelist Langston Hughes (Feb 1, 1902)
“To live remains an art which everyone must learn and which no one can teach.”
~ The sociologist Havelock Ellis (Feb 2, 1859)
“There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself.”
~ The novelist James Joyce (Feb 2, 1892)
“The trouble with the world today is philosophical: only the right philosophy can save us. But this party plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes them with the exact opposite—with religionists, anarchists and every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and call themselves libertarians and run for office.”
~ The novelist Ayn Rand (Feb 2, 1905)
“I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson — the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.”
~ The writer James Michener (Feb 3, 1907)
“I’ve never read Marx’s Capital, but I’ve got the marks of capital all over my body.”
~ The labor activist Bill Haywood (Feb 4, 1869)
“Time passeth swift away/ Our life is frail, and we may die today.”
~ The playwright Christopher Marlowe (Feb 7, 1564)
“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”
~ The novelist Charles Dickens (Feb 7, 1812)
“His entire system of theology was comprised in the Bible, which he never read, and the Methodist Church, which he rarely attended.”
~ The Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis (Feb 7, 1885)
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!”
He said, “Nobody loves me.”
I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?”
He said, “A Christian.”
I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?”
He said, “Protestant.”
I said, “Me, too! What franchise?”
He said, “Baptist.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Baptist.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”
I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.
~ The comedian Emo Philips (Feb 7, 1956)
“They don’t want you to vote. If they did, we wouldn’t vote on a Tuesday. In November. You ever throw a party on a Tuesday? No. Because nobody would come.”
~ The comedian Chris Rock (Feb 7, 1965)
“The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.”
~ The reformer John Ruskin (Feb 8, 1829)
“It’s been a great year for women, as always. Since I’m only a comedian, I’m not going to try and tell you politicians how to “do politics.” or whatever. That’s not my job. That would be like you guys telling me what to do with my body. I mean, can you even imagine?”
~ The comedienne Cecily Strong (Feb 8, 1984)
“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.”
~ The novelist Alice Walker (Feb 9, 1944)
“Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.”
~ The inventor Thomas Edison (Feb 11, 1847)
“The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.”
~ The scientist Charles Darwin (Feb 12, 1809)
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
~ The U.S. President Abraham Lincoln (also Feb 12, 1809!)
NOTE: actually, Lincoln never said exactly this, but it is widely attributed to him. Fellow freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll did say this, though: “Most people can bear adversity; but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never used it except on the side of mercy.”
“You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others.”
~ The musician Henry Rollins (Feb 13, 1961)
“Men have their choice in this world. They can be angels, or they may be demons. In the apocalyptic vision, John describes a war in heaven. You have only to strip that vision of its gorgeous Oriental drapery, divest it of its shining and celestial ornaments, clothe it in the simple and familiar language of common sense, and you will have before you the eternal conflict between right and wrong, good and evil, liberty and slavery, truth and falsehood, the glorious light of love, and the appalling darkness of human selfishness and sin. The human heart is a seat of constant war… Just what takes place in individual human hearts, often takes place between nations, and between individuals of the same nation.”
~ The abolitionist Frederick Douglass (Feb 14, 1818)
“In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.”
~ The astronomer Galileo Galilei (Feb 15, 1564)
“When will the yoke of Custom — the blind tyrant, of which all other tyrants make their slave — ah! when will that misery-perpetuating yoke be shaken off? When will Reason be seated on her throne?
~ The reformer Jeremy Bentham (Feb 15, 1748)
“One-half of the people of this Nation today is utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write a new and just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of government, that enforces taxation without representation — that compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their consent — that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury of their peers — that robs them, in marriage of the custody of their own persons, wages, and children—are this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the other half.”
~ The feminist Susan B. Anthony (Feb 15, 1820)
“If you don’t want your kids to be like Bart Simpson, don’t act like Homer Simpson.”
~ The cultural critic Matt Groening (Feb 15, 1954)
“The policy of the religious world in Europe… by means of persecutions… brought thousands of the foremost thinkers and men of political aptitudes to the scaffold, or imprisoned them during a large part of their manhood, or drove them as emigrants into other lands. …Hence the Church, having first captured all the gentle natures and condemned them to celibacy, made another sweep of her huge nets …to catch those who were the most fearless, truth-seeking, and intelligent …and therefore the most suitable parents of a high civilization, and put a strong check, if not a direct stop, to their progeny.”
~ The scientist Francis Galton (Feb 16, 1822)
“That I shall sink in death, I know must be;
But with that death of mine what life will die?”
~ The martyr Giordano Bruno (Feb 17, 1600)
“I’m ambitious. I do think you have a tendency to be less happy sometimes when you’re a seeker. You can be disenchanted because you’re not getting what you want, and you’re always striving and looking ahead instead of just being in the moment.”
~ The actor Matt Dillon (Feb 18, 1964)
“To know the mighty works of God, to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power; to appreciate, in degree, the wonderful workings of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High, to whom ignorance cannot be more grateful than knowledge.”
~ The astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (Feb 19, 1473)
“The motives which predominate most in human affairs are self-love and self-interest.”
~ The American President George Washington (Feb 22, 1732)
“Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, ‘Thou shalt make no graven image.'”
~ The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (Feb 22, 1788)
“New times demand new measures and new men;
The world advances, and in time outgrows
The laws which in our father’s times were best;
And doubtless, after us, some purer scheme
Will be shaped out by wiser men than we,
Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.”
~ The literature professor James Russell Lowell (Feb 22, 1819)
“The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat — the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.”
~ The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (Feb 22, 1892)
“I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.”
~ The scholar W. E. B. DuBois (Feb 23, 1868)
“Every dogma has its day.”
~ The novelist Anthony Burgess (Feb 25, 1917)
“Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.”
~ The novelist Victor Hugo (Feb 26, 1802)
“There is no Death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.”
~ The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Feb 27, 1807)
“The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.”
~ The novelist John Steinbeck (Feb 27, 1902)
“Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.”
~ The essayist Michel De Montaigne (Feb 28, 1533)
“The time has now come for morality to take its proper place in the conduct of world affairs; the time has now come for the nations of the world to submit to the just regulation of their conduct by international law.”
~ The Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling (Feb 28, 1901)
Michel De Montaigne certainly fits well into the category of quotes by freethinkers, and here you will find more of his quotes.
