The Papa! Tradition!

Sometimes, aren't you glad that we don't live in the US? I mean, they may be our biggest ally and all that, but at the end of the day, when I'm watching the O'Reilly Factor and getting flabergasted at the sheer idiocy, at least I can console myself with 'sucks to be you'. And laugh. We're far removed enough. For now.

Truly, it is redundant to comment on this programme, but for posterity something may as well be written. Bill was complaining that specific mention of 'Christmas' was being removed from the public sphere and replaced with generic 'holiday' messages. He said this was stupid because it denied that the US was built on a religious tradition. What he said was tantamount to 'there is a liberal-progressive (oh yeah, when did those words come to mean something bad? Oh no! Not progression!)conspiracy to secularise the world in order to achieve radical aims such as (shock!) gay marriage and partial-birth abortions'. He even had Newt Gingrich (yeah, that guy)to back him up.

Regardless of my views on Christmas - which hasn't been explicitly religious for years and is as secular a season as any other: and that's OK - there is something truly awful with this assumption by Christians that atheists are somehow immoral because they happen to have ethics based on evidence and reason rather than tradition, authority or revelation. Yeah, God forbid (no pun intended) we use our own agency to come up with ethical standpoints rather than rely on 'tradition', which is, as Dawkins says, something that is only observed because it has been around for so long and is exactly as true or false as it was when someone made it up all those years ago.

Oh that's right, Bill and Newt were talking about how Western Europe (you know, those useless guys who came up with those annoying little things, the renaissance, the enlightenment, the theory of evolution by natural selection etc. etc.), which used to be a bastion of Christianity is now the most secular place in the world. Oh, you mean they finally grew up? Shit...

It is scary that we still seem to live in a world where the most powerful nation is teetering on the egde of theocracy and doesn't see anything wrong with that.

Also, back in the real world, Victoria is about to be the first place in the world, apparently, to do random drug testing on the roads. Neil Mitchell had an article in the Herald Sun today where he made some good points but undercut himself, not least by using scarequotes all the time (there is no need to say 'smoke a "cone"' as if nobody understands what you're talking about). Mostly, though, he didn't commit to a point fully. While he did mention that if we went one step further and made driving with any alcohol in your blood illegal, there would be 'social upheavel'.

So, where are we? Zero tolerance on drug use and driving - which I agree with - but still allowing .05 BAC, which means that one is still impaired, if only minimally? It seems that Mitchell's point was just that because alcohol has been a significant part of our culture, it should remain at this arbitrary level, which is exactly as safe or dangerous as .06, .07, .08, ad infinitum. So, because our tradition happens to be one of drunk bogans, we're allowed to drive with alcohol in our blood?
I'd like someone to just go balls-out and say 'let's ban drink driving full stop'. Hell, P-platers do it all the time and I can piss it up with the best of them. I'm all for maintaining cultural solidarity, especially in the face of harsh American hegemony (hahaha), but let's not pretend we're being responsible at the same time.

'Who, day and night, must scramble for a living,

Feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers?

And who has the right, as master of the house,

To have the final word at home?'