There has been a lot hysterical wind blowing recently about what a raging liberal (cum socialist) Barack Obama is.

If there was ever a negation of that rhetoric it is here: Obama to sign executive order on abortion limits Wednesday. Clearly there are agenda items that are shared by both parties. One of them is the willingness to negotiate women's sovereignty over their bodies. Clearly Obama shares the religious and conservative view that a woman's body is merely a vessel in which the state has a compelling interest.

I suppose, or at the very least hope, that there will come a time when women's bodies and rights are no longer pawns on the political chess board for men to play with as they will; a time when men - who would bristle at any thought that their bodies and their personal integrity are not inviolable - will recognize in woman an identical perspective; a time when Christian religious doctrine will not trump the rights of women, regardless of their own personal religious or moral beliefs

My sister - who is a devout Christian - claims that I do not believe in God. This is not true, I simply see no compelling reason to posit one. What I do not believe in, what enrages me beyond reason at times, is religion. Or rather, the man (and the gender reference is used advisedly in this case) made construct of rules intending to regulate what people believe.

There has been much written of late of the evolutionary psychological roots of religion and the role that it played in the formation of civilization. And I take no issue with the past, what was useful to my ancestors, what may or may not have helped the human race move forward - if forward is in fact how we have moved (we are more "civilized" only in our level of sophistication, from a behavioral perspective we are the same old animals we ever were) - what I take issue with is the idea that it is all still relevant.

Understand, I am not talking about this from a personal perspective - worship Santa Claus if you want (something we do starting right after Halloween and ending around January 15th) - what I objective is the regulation of belief, the politics of spirituality if you will.

I object to the idea that someone - anyone - needs someone else to tell them what to believe, or not to believe. I particularly object to the idea that I must regulate my behavior - or in this case my wife or daughter must - because of what some other people believe that their deity has said must be done - or not done; because most of religious doctrine concerns itself with what not to do.

Despite Christ's exhortations that the restrictions of the Pharisees were preventing people from having a personal relationship with God, the man made infrastructure that was used to recapture the people from Christ's populism has concerned itself primarily with authority - with telling people what they were "allowed" by God to do.

And so we end up here - with the politics of sprituality making deals with the politics of secularity to repress women (the favorite whipping-girl of religion since the suppression of the goddess cults.) To own their reproductive capacity and treat them as vessels for the designs of (religious) men.

The only upside of all of that we can now rest assured that Obama really is no different than most other men.

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I am in the process of reading conservative entertainer Michael Medved's book 5 Big Lies about American Business. I am not far into it admittedly, but it got me thnking.

In the intro section of the book Medved says this: "Ever since FDR's New Deal in the 1930's, and perhaps since the Progressive Era of thirty years before, the public has expressed queasiness and uncertainty regarding the profit motive."

Now, maybe it's me, but I think that human's uncomfortableness with wealth and "the profit motive" has been around a hell of a lot longer than 110 years. For instance, here is chapter 53 from the Tao te Ching, written 500 years before Christ:

The great Way is easy,
yet people prefer the side paths.
Be aware when things are out of balance.
Stay centered within the Tao.

When rich speculators prosper
While farmers lose their land;
when government officials spend money
on weapons instead of cures;
when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible
while the poor have nowhere to turn-
all this is robbery and chaos.
It is not in keeping with the Tao.

And here is Christ himself speaking, Matthew 19:24: And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

The Catholic Church had rules against usary (i.e. interest) and forbade those who engaged in it from taking the sacraments (thereby consigning the business of moneylending to the Jews and establishing the pattern of pogroms when ever times got bad.)

Essentially everyone from Plato and Aristotle to Cato and Seneca, condemed the practice of charging people money for the use of money.

Even John Calvin, the spiritual father of Capitalism considered profit making to be only for the glory of God, as a show of mercy to those who lack.

So I am hereby proposing a 6th Big Lie for Mr. Medved: Progressives and liberals are the only people who are uncomfortable with the excesses of our gratuitously consumptive society. It seems pretty clear from a historical perspective that, if there is any being who is uncomfortable with the profit motive, it it is God (Jesus, the Tao, the Universe, etc. etc. etc.)

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