Only the Second Amendment is important...

I guess only the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States is important. Because all of the people who railed against gun control are the same people who are now insisting that we execute the Boston terrorism suspect without due process.

The fourth amendment protects the accused against unreasonable search and seizure. Only this appears to not apply under the Patriot Act. We have no actual footage of him committing a crime, but we are fairly sure his brother did. Both he and his brother exchanged gunfire with police. It’s fairly obvious that he is guilty of some crimes, but we have zero idea of what crimes. Oh people are guessing, but they don’t know.

The suspect is an American citizen. Whether that status is in jeopardy in the future is irrelevant. He is a naturalized citizen now and he has rights. If this boy’s rights are not respected, then America is meaningless. Why don’t people understand that?

The fifth amendment guarantees that a defendant not be forced to incriminate himself. The suspect has not been indicted by a grand jury, and since he is an American citizen and will almost definitely be tried in a Federal court the charges probably won’t come for weeks if not months. His sixth amendment rights to a speedy trial are definitely going to be tested.

The American justice system is meant to protect both the guilty and the innocent. We have no idea of his motivations, how he became radicalized, if he was radicalized and his brother wasn’t, if it was the other way around, if or who he was helped by, did he help others? Literally thousands of questions.

Learning what he did is important, but learning why he did what he did is probably much more important.

It reminds me of the Central Park Five. People called for the public lynching of five men who were denied due process, convicted, and served over a decade each in prison. Yet each of them was exonerated. Their lives were destroyed by the court of public opinion. Of idiots like Donald Trump who called for their execution.

If we are truly the greatest country on earth, then shouldn’t we prove it to the world?

"Every now and again, we get a look, usually no more than a glimpse, at how the justice system really works. What we see before the sanitizing curtain is drawn abruptly down is a process full of human fallibility and error, sometimes noble, more often unfair, rarely evil but frequently unequal, and through it all inevitably influenced by issues of race and class and economic status. In short, it's a lot like other big, unwieldy institutions. Such a moment of clear sight emerges from the mess we know as the case of the Central Park jogger." -Sydney H. Schanberg Tuesday, Nov 19 2002

The Orthodoxy of Disbelief

Let me make this perfectly clear, attacking someone’s religion doesn’t make you cool, intellectual, or hip. It makes you the same kind of disrespectful asshole that you despise religious people for being. The orthodoxy of your disbelief is just as oppressive as their orthodoxy. This is not to say that you cannot debate, refute, or dispute someone’s assertions in a public debate. You are more than welcome to do so, and many have.

I spent much of my life with deeply held Christian beliefs, and I was a good man. I now self-identify as a Buddhist, and I am still a good man. I respect learned religious people, most especially those who acknowledge the intellectual inaccuracies of their feelings without apology.

I will never be an Atheist, I am not so illiterate or bigoted that if God actually appeared I would deny him to his face. I refuse to refuse that I may, in fact, be wrong. I admit that we may be living instead in a really deeply flawed world that has or had a God. Maybe he’s alive, maybe he is dead. I refuse to believe that anyone has all of the answers. More so I insist that anyone who thinks they know the answers is always wrong.

The teachings of Buddha as I understand them speak to me. However many of the beliefs of both Judaism and Hinduism resonate as well. Generally I don’t think that religion is a conspiracy so much as a series of mistakes and rationalizations. However those mistakes and rationalizations have produced thousands of years of art, culture, and science that are truly beautiful to behold. Works that are real and good and breathtaking.

Here’s the rub, without this religion that you despise there would be no science. Without intellectual discourse made possible by religion there would be no philosophy. The scientific method would not exist. Both John Locke and Voltaire would have been viewed as pedestrian and impolite without religion to react and answer to. There are positive things that religion has done, and your refusal to respect the beliefs of others does nothing to earn respect for yourself.

I understand all the evil that religion has brought us. I also understand the good, and I refuse to be inflexible.