September-December 2019 Krassner issue

Since Thomas Paine’s death and burial in 1809, there has been a mystery surrounding the revolutionary author’s remains and his role in the Declaration of Independence.

In this issue, Moncure Conway, who penned the first biography of Paine, digs deep into the disappearance of the Founding Father’s bones. And Gary Berton –– an officer in the Thomas Paine National Historical Association –– makes a compelling case that Paine was a leading participant in the creation of the Declaration.

In keeping with the Truth Seeker’s 146-year custom of championing Charles Darwin, we present an article on evolution by Quentin Wheeler, Antonio Valdecasas, and Cristina Cánovas

Author and journalist Betty Clermont reports on the Vatican’s political agenda in American politics carried out by Opus Dei, the official arm of the Catholic Church, whose roots were in fascist Spain.

Filmmaker John Follis focuses on the demonization of atheism and the origin of “In God We Trust.”

Two books by our contributors have recently been published. In our interview with Nathan Alexander, we learn about his first book, Race In a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850-1914. Author Christopher Cameron introduces his Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism. Both are a must read for anyone interested in the history of Freethought.

Abortion policy driven by religious ideology is the subject of a piece by Professor Gretchen Ely. Joel Larus, a 95-year-old retired academic, opines on the option of suicide for the super-old. Mortality is confronted by James Haught, an 86-year-old journalist with “no supernatural beliefs.”

The Truth Seeker has always publicized and praised Freethinkers of the past and present. This issue is devoted to Paul Krassner –– our Contributing Editor –– who passed away on July 21, 2019.

Paul Krassner got turned on to atheism in New York at an “Ingersoll Forum” in 1953. Had he not attended that event which was sponsored by the Truth Seeker, Paul believed the rest of his life “could have taken a totally different path.” Five years later, he founded his own Freethought magazine –– The Realist.

Bruce Fessier, David Macary, and Michael Simmons write about their friendship with Paul who was known as “the father of the underground press.”

It was an honor and a privilege to publish Paul’s investigative satire and excerpts from his autobiography. If our “most irreverent subscriber” was Mark Twain, then Paul Krassner was arguably the Truth Seeker’s most irreverent Contributing Editor.

Peace out, Paul.

By DaviD Macaray

PAUL KRASSNER AND ME

Ican’t remember exactly where or when I first met Paul Krassner, but it had to have been in the mid1980s, and was almost certain to have been at a local club where Paul was doing stand-up comedy, performing before tiny but greatly appreciative audiences.

I must have talked to him after the show, and we sort of hit it off. Anyway, over the years the two personal things that I most remember about him were his wonderful generosity and his keen and totally understandable interest in earning money. Not that every writer isn’t looking to be compensated, but in Paul Krassner’s case — having never had a “real” payroll-type job or a decent medical or dental plan—getting paid meant everything.

We all have known wealthy people. But considering that Paul had more talent—more creativity, more wit, more wisdom, and more common decency—in his left nut than these rich folks had in their entire bodies, him being “poor” was an outrage. One is reminded of the Dorothy Parker quote: “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gave it to.”

Not that I was a prolific writer, but every time I got something published Paul wanted to know if I had gotten paid for it, and if I had, how much it was, because he wanted to add that particular publication to his list of places that paid. Writers don’t like telling citizens what they got paid for a piece, but they’ll always tell another writer.

I once wrote a labor piece for the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times. Paul saw it and asked me how much I’d gotten paid. This was easily 20 years ago, probably longer. I still recall exactly how much because it was a big deal to get an op-ed piece printed in a major newspaper. It was $300 for a roughly 700-word piece. Paul was pleased to hear it.

Paul went out of his way to get me published in the old New York Press. I had done an interview with Mort Sahl

that the LA Times Calendar Section was interested in, but at the last minute they decided to pass on it, which irked me because I was counting on it.

I whined to Paul about it. He knew the NY Press editor, told me to query him about the article, and to be sure to use his name as a reference. Which I did. Thanks to Paul’s generosity, the interview was published and I was paid.

In 1978 he was brutally beaten by a San Francisco cop during the “White Riot” following the Dan White sentencing for the murder of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. In truth, it was more a “protest” than a riot. It was the maniacal and ferocious response of the local police that turned it into a riot.

Paul suffered a serious injury. And not having any health insurance, and believing that he was still young and spry enough for the brutal attack to heal itself, he didn’t seek medical assistance. It turned out to be an unwise move. The shattered bone never healed properly, and he was left with a severe and painful limp.

During one of his last public appearances, doing stand-up at a tiny club in LA, he stumbled and fell hard as he entered the stage. The audience gasped. But Paul was not only able to leap to his feet, when he reached the mic, he relaxed the audience by making a joke of it. “I want you all to know…I do that on purpose,” he said. “It’s a great way to get sympathy.”

Rest in peace, my friend. There will never be another one like you.

DAVID MACARAY is a playwright and author. His newest book How To Win Friends and Avoid Sacred Cows: Weird Adventures in India: Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims When the Peace Corps was New is available on Amazon. Paperback. 304 pages. Ardent Writer Press. ISBN-10: 1938667638

ISBN13: 978-1938667633. He can be reached at dmacaray@gmail.com

PAUL KRASSNER PHOTO PROVIDED BY NANCY C AIN.

“If life isn’t a mystery, then what the fuck is it??”

–Paul Krassner

PAUL KRASSNER: NUN SMOOCHING IN AMERICA

By Michael SiMMonS

When I was 12 years old in 1967, my father Matty Simmons published Cheetah — a slick magazine designed for what the press called “hippies.” It was a fine publication — top-shelf scribes like Tom Nolan, Robert Christgau, and Ellen Willis contributed, editor Jules Siegel ran his legendary “Goodbye Surfing, Hello God” profile that announced to the world that Brian Wilson was a mentally ill genius and Mama Cass Elliot doffed her oversized duds and posed nude for a centerfold. But “slick” and “hippies” were oxymoronic and Cheetah tanked at the newsstand, folding in a year.

Though I was but a lad, I was paying attention and there was one contributor whose writings and exploits inspired in me a special delight that appealed to remnants of my mischievous childhood and a more sophisticated analysis of the ever so fucked-up world. That satirical terrorist was Paul Krassner.

I knew of Krassner because he was a regular guest on Radio Unnameable, Bob Fass’ all-night free-form radio show on noncommercial WBAI along with underground film director Robert Downey Sr. (father of Junior), comedic actor Marshall Efron, folksinger Phil Ochs and a then-unknown political activist named Abbie Hoffman. They’d all madly riff till dawn and to this day I rarely laugh as hard as I did back then. Krassner chronicled his satirical pranks in his self-published magazine The Realist. My favorite was an anecdote in which he went to an airport with a lady friend who was dolled up in a nun’s habit and passionately smooched with her to the shock of fellow flyers.

One day my parents were tut-tutting about Krassner’s latest literary attack on bourgeois sensibility. Author William Manchester had written an account of the JFK assassination called The Death of a President, but widow Jackie Kennedy insisted that certain sections be deleted prior to publication. This piqued everyone’s curiosity because Mrs. Kennedy was successful in blocking public access to these portions. Krassner published what he claimed were “The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book” in The Realist, with Jackie’s allegations of having walked in on newly sworn-in President Lyndon Johnson on Air Force One on November 22, 1963 as he inserted his penis into the dead JFK’s neck wound. “He was literally fucking my husband in the throat,” she was quoted as saying in the bowdlerized outtake. Krassner had a few people second-guessing: “Could it possibly — maybe — be true? LBJ is kinda crude, after all…” Most recognized the claim as untrue, though most (like Ma and Pa Simmons) also thought it tasteless, offensive and disgusting and its real author (Krassner) despicable.

And then there were young people like me who thought it the greatest work of 20th Century satire.

With one rank frank prank, Krassner addressed the nature of power using the most crude metaphor imaginable, with allusions to what politicians not only do to each other, but to the public, i.e. fuck ‘em, as well as what LBJ and the military-industrial complex were then-doing to the Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam. The Kennedy piece also made people gauge their own credibility meter — what they were willing to believe. By publishing it (and initially refusing to take credit as the author), Krassner fucked the bleeding corpse of hypocrisy in its neckwound by implicitly forcing readers to ask themselves the question: what outrages you more, O holier-than-thou

ones: an over-the-top salacious satire or very real war crimes in Vietnam? For many establishment figures, the answer was the former.

Paul later wrote for National Lampoon, another magazine my father published. The Realist continued onand-off until 2001, while Krassner also co-founded and named the Yippies — politically radical hippies — on New Year’s Eve 1967 and was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Chicago 8 trial. He managed to confound simplistic generalizations by running an underground railroad for abortion providers before Roe vs. Wade, as well as later briefly publishing pink spreadsheet Hustler. He won an award from Playboy for satire and the Feminist Party Media Workshop for journalism. He performed stand-up comedy and recorded comedy albums, wrote a small library of books and continued political activism, usually in the guise of being funny. He had more close friends who genuinely loved him than anyone I’ve ever known. A very short list of famous ones includes Lenny Bruce, Ken Kesey, Abbie Hoffman, Kurt Vonnegut, Terry Southern and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He danced at the Egyptian Pyramids while the Grateful Dead played and he supplied 78-year old Groucho Marx with LSD — and tripped with him!

I finally met Paul in 1980 at the memorial for our mutual pal, National Lampoon co-founder Doug Kenney. Among other adventures, I accompanied him and wife Nancy Cain to Amsterdam in 2001 as their guest when he was inducted into the Counterculture Hall Of Fame at the Cannabis Cup. (“My ambition since I was three,” he quipped.) We remained close friends until the day he died, this past July 21st at his home in Desert Hot Springs, California at the age of 87. He leaves behind his beloved Nancy, daughter Holly Krassner Dawson, granddaughter Talia, brother George and eleventeen-trillion mutual Martians.

Continued on next page

He had more close friends who genuinely loved him than anyone

I’ve ever known.

People ask me what he died of and the truth is we don’t really know. In 1979 he was covering the Dan White trial in San Francisco for the Bay Guardian. After ex-cop White was acquitted of murdering Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, a few thousand rightly aggrieved San Franciscans expressed their displeasure in the streets. A few set fire to police cars and the coppers responded by beating up random demonstrators, including reporters. Paul received a fractured rib, punctured lung and other injuries and ancillary conditions worsened with age. Increasingly crippled, he developed a mysterious throat ailment that made eating painful and he grew weaker. Suffice to say that the non-violent Krassner died of anti-war wounds.

What always struck me about Paul was that his fundamental decency was his only ideology. He was a genuinely nice guy and as an atheist, his personal moral code guided his politics and social interactions. He was also against shutting down speech, so-called cancel culture, because someone disagreed with what was said or with a person’s personal life or errors of judgment. He and I discussed our shared distaste for political correctness and he was nonjudgmental while simultaneously holding strong opinions on issues, for instance adamant that misogyny had to be eradicated.

He never cared for his birthday, but I always sent him a note. This year’s read thusly: “You taught me how to be young, now you’re teaching me how to be…uh…the other thing!” He wrote back: “It’s a two-way street.” And he signed it “Cerebral Paulsie” — my little sick-joke nickname for him.

One last story. Longtime activist Mayer Vishner was one of Krassner’s lifelong Martian friends. He suffered

from depression and in 2013 confided in Paul that he’d decided to kill himself. “I told him that I’d miss him, but that was my problem, not his,” Krassner said later. He went on Bob Fass’ radio show to discuss what happened after Vishner fatally overdosed on downers. There were phone callers who were furious with him for not trying to stop Mayer or for not calling the cops. But Paul had too much respect for the individual’s right to choose — plus Mayer had trusted him and he wasn’t going to violate that trust. After hours of enduring rebukes with equanimity, it was time to wrap the show and host Fass bade Paul a simple adieu. “Well Paul, thanks for coming tonight. And let’s do this again real soon.”

You could practically hear Krassner shrug as he responded in the moment: “Well OK…but I’ll have to find someone who wants to kill himself.”

I was listening to the show on my laptop here in Los Angeles and, much like I did in the 1960s listening to Krassner on the radio, I began to laugh uncontrollably. If Mayer hadn’t already died, he would’ve died laughing when he heard that. As for Paul Krassner, he lived laughing.

In October, Fantagraphics will publish Zapped By The God Of Absurdity: The Best Of Paul Krassner. [https:// www.amazon.com/ Zapped-God-Absurdity-Best-Krassner/ dp/1683961846]

As leader of Michael Simmons & Slewfoot, the front man was dubbed “The Father Of Country Punk” by Creem magazine in the 1970s. MICHAEL SIMMONS was an editor of the National Lampoon in the ‘80s where he wrote the popular column “Drinking Tips And Other War Stories.” He won an LA Press Club Award in the ‘90s for investigative journalism; has written for MOJO, LA Weekly, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, The New York Times, LA Times, High Times, CounterPunch, The Progressive and Dangerous Minds; and scribed liner notes for Bob Dylan, Mike Bloomfield, Phil Ochs, Kris Kristofferson, Arthur Lee & Love and Kinky Friedman. Copyright © Michael Simmons.

PAUL KRASSNER PHOTO PROVIDED BY NANCY CAIN.

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pus Dei

OPUS DEI’S INFLUENCE IS FELT IN ALL OF WASHINGTON’S CORRIDORS OF POWER

In the past two deCades, the center’s “K Street NW location, just two blocks from the White House, became a bustling gathering place for conservative academics, politicians, journalists, young professionals.” “The noon Mass became known as a ‘Who’s Who’ scene in conservative circles” including “Judge Robert H. Bork, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), economist Larry Kudlow and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).”

Opus Dei’s influence is enormous in the U.S. judiciary .

“The center’s board includes Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society, which helped shepherd the Supreme Court nominations of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch. White House counsel Pat Cipollone is a former board member, as is William P. Barr, who served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush and is now President Trump’s nominee for the same position.” Barr, a “committed Catholic,” was highly recommended by Leonard Leo

The U.S. judiciary has been shaped not only through Leo’s control over Trump’s judicial appointments but also

by the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) directed by Leo and run by Carrie Severino, a former law clerk for supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.

The JCN is a 501(c)(4) organization, meaning its donors are secret. “It has spent millions across the country to influence the elections of judges and attorneys general as well as judicial appointment and confirmation processes.”

“Leo’s efforts to ensure that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito were confirmed engaged the dark money spending power of JCN. In 2005 and 2006, Leo and the Federalist Society worked with JCN to coordinate radio and online ads as well as on grassroots efforts to support the confirmation of the right-wing justices.

To block the appointment of Barack Obama’s choice, Merrick Garland, and support the confirmation of Justice Gorsuch, Leo helped coordinate the JCN’s expenditure of $17 million. The campaign was highly effective in allowing Gorsuch, the Federalist Society’s pick, to take the place many thought rightly belonged to Merrick Garland.”

The Opus Dei Catholic Information Center’s “members and leaders continue to have an outsize impact on policy and politics. It is the conservative spiritual and intellectual center… and its influence is felt in all of Washington’s corridors of power,” stated the Washington Post.

B y B etty C lermont

WHAT IS OPUS DEI

opus deI Is a seCret soCIety and an official arm of the Catholic Church as I’ve noted before but bears repeating. Its roots are in fascist Spain.

In 1982, Pope John Paul II designated the group as a “personal prelature,” that is, they are under the sole jurisdiction of the pope and no other prelate. Its website states, “Opus Dei’s mission is to spread the Christian message that every person is called to holiness and that every honest work can be sanctified.” As of 2017 there were 92,892 lay members and 2,212 priests worldwide.

Non-Catholics are welcomed as “cooperators” who “assist the educational and social undertakings promoted by the Prelature.” Priests not ordained into Opus Dei can be a member of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, “intrinsically united to the Prelature.”

Only the identities of Opus Dei priests are public. Members of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross and all lay members’ and cooperators’ names are secret unless self-disclosed, for example by being openly affiliated with the Catholic Information Center.

At the top:

“Opus Dei is an efficient machine run to achieve worldly power,” wrote investigative reporter Penny Lernoux in her book, People of God.

“Opus Dei pursues the Vatican’s agenda through the presence of its members in secular governments and institutions and through a vast array of academic, medical, and grassroots pursuits. Its constant effort [is] to increase its presence in civil institutions of power. [T]heir work in the public sphere breaches the church-state division that is fundamental to modern democracy,” noted Gordon Urquhart, author of The Pope’s Armada: Unlocking the Secrets of Mysterious and Powerful New Sects in the Church (1995).

“Opus Dei uses the Catholic Church for its own ends which are money and power …. Its members form a transnational elite. They seek to colonize the summits of pow-

er. They work with stealth – ‘holy discretion’ – and practice ‘divine deception,’ ” Robert Hutchison wrote in the introduction to his book, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei

“Opus Dei is mostly middle- and upper-class businessmen, professionals, military personnel and government officials. Its members control a large number of banks and financial institutions,” according to Martin A. Lee, author and activist who has written books and articles on far-right movements.

OTHER

GOVERNMENT

AGENCIES INFLUENCED BY OPUS DEI

BeCause It Is a seCret soCIety, usually we can only know government officials’ affiliations with Opus Dei.

Roger Severino, Carrie Severino’s husband, is Trump’s Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Severino was a trial attorney for seven years in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.Larry Kudlow is Trump’s director of the National Economic Council. Plutocracy is “just what America needs,” Kudlow wrote in December 2016. “Putting the incredibly wealthy in charge of the U.S. government” is described as Kudlow’s great idea.

Former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is now Trump’s Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.

Mick Mulvaney is serving as Trump’s acting White House Chief of Staff. He remains director of the White House Office of Management and Budget and interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mulvaney “has reportedly met with a long list of lobbyists, corporate executives and wealthy people with business interests before the government.” His meeting with Opus Dei’s Jeff Bell, architect of Reaganomics, covered “religious and political matters.”

As an example of Opus Dei-affiliated military personnel, veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh “claimed that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Vice Admiral William McRaven and others in the JSOC were members of the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei.” JSOC is “the elite Special Ops force” who killed Osama bin Laden. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals… This is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally,” Hersh reported. “He added that members of these societies have developed a secret set of insignias that represent ‘the whole notion that this is a culture war’ between religions.”

VATICAN CONNECTION

that newt GInGrICh Is Close to Opus Dei helps explain Trump’s appointment of Callista Gingrich as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. (Newt’s three marriages would have raised eyebrows in the Vatican diplomatic corps even though the first two were annulled when he became Catholic and married Callista.)

Newt was an early and constant supporter of Trump. He provides Pope Francis with direct access to Trump. For Trump, he has trusted emissary in a diplomatic corps described as a “prime listening post” in global affairs.

Trump attended Callista’s swearing in ceremony in October 2017.

The U.S. Embassy to the Vatican also has a “ Political and Economic Chief ” and two “Political and Economic Officers.”

“Political” officers are understandable given that Trump and Pope Francis share so many positions such as restricting women’s access to abortion and contraception, restricting LGBTQI and transgender human rights and, most importantly, continued tax-payer funding of Catholic charities, schools and hospitals.

Pope Francis might have a more benign view on immigration, but he does agree that “a country has the right to protect its borders .” For all his rhetoric

— and in spite of billions of dollars of personal income — Pope Francis has sponsored only six refugee families even though the Vatican owns “ thousands” of apartments in Rome.

The necessity for “economic” officers is less obvious. The pope is also head of a global network that can act as a conduit for “dark money” thanks to “religious” exemptions granting the Church monetary secrecy in the world’s financial centers. That is a magnate for Opus Dei to maintain power inside the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis has made sure that the Vatican retains its expertise and capacity in this regard. He has has hired and appointed vulture capitalists and Opus Dei members and associates to manage his assets. And now he has an American ambassador and embassy staff as allies.

BETTY CLERMONT has previously reported for Atlanta

Progressive News, contributed editorials to Atlanta Latino and written for Voice of the Faithful on the sex-abuse scandal. As a holder of a certificate in theological studies and a former employee of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, she has had an opportunity to view the Catholic Church from the inside out. Betty Clermont is the author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America published in 2009 by Clarity Press, Inc. ISBN: 0-932863-98-1, 978-0932863-98-0. http://www.claritypress.com

SEAL OF THE HOLY CROSS AND OPUS DEI:“A CROSS EMBRACING THE WORLD”

Opus Dei’s influence is enormous in the U.S. judiciary.

WHEN RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY DRIVES ABORTION POLICY, POOR WOMEN SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCE

By Gretchen E. Ely

In northern Ireland, CatholICs and Protestants are frequently segregated, with some neighborhoods divided by barbed wire fences, reflecting deep historical conflicts between the faiths.

Ninety percent of Northern Ireland’s 1.87 million people are Christian, with Protestants, once the solid majority there, now slightly outnumbering Catholics. But members of these faiths remain divided decades after a 1997 peace agreement meant to end sectarian violence in the region.

Northern Irish politicians do agree on one thing lately, The New York Times reports: banning abortion.

It is illegal in Northern Ireland to end a pregnancy unless it endangers the mother’s life, though 65% of Northern Ireland’s population supports abortion. As a result, women who seek abortions typically go to England, where abortion is legal.

But, as my research on cases of low-income abortion patients shows, not everyone can afford abortion expenses. That includes women in the United States, where restrictive abortion laws mean the nearest clinic may be many miles away.

Unaffordable abortion

In one 2017 study, I examined data of over 2,300 patients in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Isle of Man who had received financial assistance from abortion funds, charitable organizations that help people access abortions they can’t afford.

Though the Republic of Ireland legalized abortion in May 2018, leaving Northern Ireland as the only nation on the British Isles with an abortion ban, our research took

place when abortion was illegal in both nations.

The average abortion expense for our sample was US$585, while patients had on average just $307 at their disposal to pay for the procedure. Eighty-four percent of these abortion-seekers were single, 34% were age 21 or under, and 8% were minors. They had, on average, two children each.

This profile is comparable to that of the almost 4,000 abortion fund service recipients in the United States whose data we also studied. In the U.S., abortion is legal nationally but highly restricted in some states.

We found many similarities between the patients. The American patients had, on average, $422 to contribute to abortions that cost around $1775. They were also young, single parents of two. These American low-income abortion-seekers traveled, on average, 140 miles for their procedure.

Penalizing the poor

Recent changes to U.S. family planning policy highlight another parallel between Northern Ireland and the United States: the influence of religion in reproductive health policy.

In mid-August, Planned Parenthood announced its withdrawal from Title X — a Nixon-era family planning program for low-income patients — due to a new requirement that Title X medical providers cannot also offer abortions.

Title X funds have never been used to pay for abortion services. But by eliminating funding for facilities that offer abortions in addition to other reproductive services, the Trump administration rule may leave millions of low-income Planned Parenthood patients without family planning care.

The new rule is part of an old American effort, promoted by Christian activists and lawmakers, to make legal abortions as difficult as possible to obtain.

The new rule is part of an old American effort, promoted by Christian activists and lawmakers, to make legal abortions as difficult as possible to obtain.

The new Title X rule builds on the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal dollars from paying for abortion expenses. Low-income women relying on programs like Medicaid for health insurance must pay outof-pocket for abortion, reallocating money that would otherwise go to food and rent.

While most manage to access a wanted abortion, research shows, some poor American women end up carrying unwanted pregnancies to term against their will.

Many states in the southern U.S. — a conservative region where 76% of residents identify as Christian — require a waiting period of up to three days for patients to “reflect” on abortion decisions. In practice, that means two mandatory in-person trips to the clinic and higher medical costs.

In Tennessee, where there is a 48-hour abortion waiting period, my recent research found that abortion-seekers from the mountainous Appalachian region reported financial and personal strain, as well as problems arranging child care and transportation. Appalachia is a rural, remote region where health care access is already compromised. The 48-hour waiting period likely puts legal abortion out of reach for some.

Religion in health policy

Many nations in Europe can be classified as predominantly Christian, much like the American South and Northern Ireland. But few allow religious ideology to influence their reproductive health laws.

In France, 60% of people identify as Christian, abortion is legal, and 80% of the French support the procedure in all or most circumstances, according to the Pew Research Center.

Legal abortion is similarly acceptable throughout Western Europe, Pew polling finds, with public support

at 60% in Portugal, 65% in Italy and 72% in Spain — all majority Catholic nations.

Catholic Ireland, where even condoms used to be banned, recently voted to legalize abortion in the first trimester. The momentous decision was spurred by the death of a 31-year-old woman who was denied an abortion after miscarriage.

Evidence-based policies

Irish voters’ willingness to modernize abortion laws against Catholic teaching reflects a reality that my research lays bare: Reproductive health policies based on ideology rather than scientific evidence fail to serve the public.

Studies show that abortion rates across countries are similar regardless of legality. So making abortions illegal or inaccessible generally does not stop women from getting them.

Wealthier abortion patients with adequate resources will overcome costs and other barriers that restrictive abortions law throw in front of them. Poor abortion-seekers are more likely to seek unsafe, even deadly, procedures.

Research from Latin America confirms this. This socially conservative, heavily Catholic region has the world’s most restrictive abortion laws. It also has the highest rates of clandestine abortions.

Religious freedom is critical in any free society, and faith provides a vital source of comfort for many people. But evidence shows that religion can be a burden, not a blessing, when it comes to reproductive health.

This article is was originally published on The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/when-religiousideology-drives-abortion-policy-poor-women-suffer-theconsequences-121906

GRETCHEN E. ELY is Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Thomas Paine and an Early Draft of the Declaration of Independence

B y G ary B erton Secretary of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association

There has always been speculation on Paine’s involvement in writing the Declaration of Independence. Now, a manuscript copy of an early version of the Declaration of Independence has emerged. This document places Paine in the room in a position of authority in the creation of the Declaration.

Since its inception, The Truth Seeker has always served as the primary vehicle for disseminating information about Thomas Paine, therefore a magazine article about this major discovery about him deserves its first placement here. The content of this article is a distillation of years of research, and it incorporates the findings from author attribution text analysis using computer methodologies.

The document, which I refer to as the Sherman copy, since it became Roger Sherman’s copy of the status of work on the Declaration in the third week of June, 1776, was brought to the Thomas Paine National Historical Association to help verify its meaning in 2012. After seven years of analysis, we can affirm its authenticity. The text, including the note on the back of the document, with the exception of initials and the date, are all in John Adams’ handwriting.

It is generally accepted by objective historians (and I exclude the conservative trend in the historiography of the Revolution), that Common Sense led to the creation and content of the Declaration. So the speculation always ex-

isted, and several books and articles written, about Paine as its author. While the philosophy and politics of the Declaration find their immediate roots in Common Sense, Paine did not write the Declaration — it was done by Committee. But as the main proponent and activist for independence and its declaration, it makes perfect sense that he would have played a major direct role it its creation.

The note on the back of this document [below] states, in Adams’ hand:

“A beginning perhaps — Original with Jefferson — Copied with T. P.’s permission.”

It is initialed in a different hand by “B.F.” The “B. F.” initials are identical to Benjamin Franklin’s initialed let-

Since its inception, The Truth Seeker has always served as the primary vehicle for disseminating information about Thomas Paine.

ters in the 1770s; prior to that period and after that period, his initials more closely resembled a usual F. In June of 1776, Franklin’s F’s resembled G’s. As well, Sherman’s “R.S.” initials at the top of the back of the page are identical to his known initials. [Note: the document is the first page of the draft; the second page has been lost to history.]

The Declaration Resources Project at Harvard has confirmed our findings that the only T. P. of note in Philadelphia during June of 1776 was Thomas Paine. As well, the handwriting being Adams’ was confirmed by overlaying this document with the known Adams’ copy at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, which verified the near perfect identity in script: spacing, slant, capital letters, and muscle memory attributes, making this the second copy made by Adams. Most likely, Adams drew this copy first from the “original” (as noted in the inscription, which is also lost to history other than these copies), sent it to Franklin for review, who then initialed it and forwarded it to Sherman for his review and approval. The procedural nature of both Franklin and Sherman signing this manuscript would demonstrate its early use in the drafting of the Declaration, while “copied with T.P.’s permission” places Paine in a position of early involvement in the drafting process. The provenance was established, since the box containing the document was from the heir to Col. Lowrey who was friend and colleague of Adams, Sherman and Franklin, and who was present in Independence Hall in June, 1776 as a delegate from Lancaster County. The manuscript’s paper and ink were all available and used during 1776 in Philadelphia; the paper shows appropriate, natural ageing, and the handwriting of Adams was in Snell Roundhand, common to the time.

The text of this document is identical to the Adams’ copy in Boston, before the Rough Draft of Jefferson was created with cross-outs and substitutions made by Jef-

ferson. The Slavery grievance was removed by Congress, and it was edited by Jefferson to change a few phrases; for example, changing “that all Men are created equal and independent; that from that equal Creation they derive Rights inherent and unalienable”, became “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” — a “creator” replaced “equal creation”. Adams and Franklin changed a couple of words on Jefferson’s Rough Draft as well, before it was sent to the Congress. There were five members of the Declaration Committee: Franklin, Jefferson, Sherman, Livingston, and Adams. Copies had to be made and circulated since most sat on other committees as well, and Franklin was home, sick in bed.

Paine’s position of authority is demonstrated by Adams needing Paine’s permission to make a copy. The reasons that no one disclosed Paine’s position in the Committee are two-fold: Paine was not a member of Congress, so he should not have been doing its business, a point that further strengthens the notion of how crucial he was; and secondly, Paine already had many enemies in Congress because of his revolutionary politics, and it would have made passage of the Declaration that much more difficult. And what it does demonstrate is that the revolutionary politics of Paine were in charge of crafting the Declaration.

Paine’s role in the creation of the Declaration reflects the victory of the democratic wing of the American sup-

Previous page NOTE BY JOHN ADAMS ON THE BACK OF THE DOCUMENT, WITH BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S INITIALS OF RECEIPT.

Above BOTTOM PORTION OF THE DOCUMENT SHOWING A PORTION OF THE TEXT WITH DATE AND PURPOSE OF THE COPY.

Opposite THE TRUTH SEEKER, JULY 1, 1916, WITH RECENTLY COLORIZED IMAGE OF THOMAS PAINE CREATED BY WILLIAM SHARP (1749-1824) AFTER A 1792 PAINTING BY GEORGE ROMNEY (1734-1802).

porters of independence. In the spring of 1776, in the seismic wake of Common Sense, a “pamphlet war” took place, centered in Philadelphia. The debate was between the democratic Whigs who embraced Common Sense and its political philosophy on one side, and the conciliating Whigs and the Tories on the other, who wanted ties between the colonies and Britain to remain. [I use the term “democratic” because its first modern use appeared in the pamphlet war debate.] The class nature of this internal struggle created three political wings: Tories, who were strong supporters of British authority over the Americans; conciliatory Whigs who wanted to replace the British and become the ruling elite, while keeping their lucrative connections; and the democratic Whigs supporting Paine’s political philosophy. The latter two wings allied to fight the war of independence, but they also were drawing lines over the issue of the type of government — whether to mimic England, or create the first democratic republic. Generally, the democratic wing evolved into the Democratic Republicans of Jefferson; the conciliatory Whigs mostly became Federalists (known as the British Party for trying to reverse American sovereignty), such as John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, and John Jay. Many of the Tories joined the Federalists, as their class interests were closely aligned. As Jay said, “Those who own the country ought to govern it.”

The political organization by the democrats to win that fight was the determining factor in the revolution that took place. The principles of the Declaration were produced by this democratic wing who not only outlined the democratic nature of the struggle, but popularized it among the people, turned the tide in their favor, and forced the hand of the hesitant Whigs to follow, in order to overthrow the British comprador state government and allow space for the Declaration to become law. As Adams would later write: “I can say for myself, and I believe for most others who have been called ‘Leading Men’ in the late revolution, that we were compelled against our inclinations to cut off the hands which united us to England and that we should have been very happy to have had our grievances resolved, and our dependence continued…”

[February 27, 1790, to Francis Vanderkamp]. The hesitant Whigs were forced by the democrats who had the

support of the people. “A beginning perhaps” in the note was a statement by Adams that he regarded the composition of this draft as being in need of revision, since the radical democratic sentiments of the Declaration would have irked Adams.

This democratic group, fathered by Franklin, led by Paine, was to become the first modern revolutionary party in the world on the eve of the Age of Democratic Revolutions. (Marx named the Social Circle in Paris in 1792 as the first, a group that Paine was also part of.) A year later they formalized themselves as the Whig Society in January, 1777, and went on to defend the Pennsylvania Constitution, which they largely authored, against the other two wings. These are the ones who provided the democratic pamphlets in the pamphlet wars: Paine writing under four pseudonyms; James Cannon writing as Cassandra; Franklin as Candidus, Censor, and An Enemy to Monopolizers; Thomas Young as Demophilus and Candidus with Franklin; and with their compatriots Charles Wilson Peale, David Rittenhouse, and Timothy Matlack, they agitated, held public meetings, addressed the Congress, and organized the militia and other political committees to overthrow the Pennsylvania British apparatus.

Franklin, being the senior statesman in American circles, and being endorsed to create the Declaration after an upsurge of support for it among the people, chose Paine to oversee the drafting. This allowed the democratic wing to define the politics of the Revolution.

The fight between Adams and Paine started right after Common Sense was printed, and represented the opposing wings of the united front. Adams answered with his Thoughts on Government in April in the middle of the pamphlet wars, as Adams declared that Common Sense was “so democratical”. Adams supported separation (we were to learn in the 1790s that the separation he had in mind was temporary as the Federalist Jay Treaty tried to turn back over to Britain most of America’s sovereignty), but his end goal was an elitist at least, monarchical at worst, form of government. (In the Adams’ letter above was also the following: “I will candidly confess that an hereditary Senate without an hereditary Executive would diminish the Prerogatives of the president and the liber-

Paine’s position of authority is demonstrated by Adams needing Paine’s permission to make a copy.

ties of the people. But I contend that hereditary descent in both when controlled by an independent representation of the people is better than corrupted, turbulent and bloody elections.”) It was the revolutionary democratic trend, through the organizing of this group of revolutionaries, that made the democratic Declaration possible, and that gave the content to the Revolution, and turned a squabble over taxes into a social and political revolution.

Paine had gone directly to the people and declared in Common Sense that only a Declaration of Independence would move America forward. (see my article on www. thomaspaine.org on the Declaration). In fact, the end of Common Sense outlines, in the same order as the Declaration, what would be needed in a Declaration. Now that we have this document, it explains how the Declaration followed Common Sense so closely, and how much of the language from Common Sense is used in the Declaration, which had been mimicked by some ninety city, county, and state declarations of independence in the spring of 1776, and that language was transferred to the national Declaration. Without Common Sense, there would not have been this Declaration of Independence. The pamphlet wars were temporarily won.

The nascent Whig Society participants’ goal in the spring of 1776 was the Declaration, and there is a plethora of information never printed or analyzed dealing with the pamphlet wars around the publication and politics of Common Sense. The pamphlet wars began with Common Sense, and then the first public letter to the newspapers in early February was from Candidus, which was Franklin and Young, showing an obvious collaboration was going on. Then Cannon as Cassandra started his series in support of Common Sense, then Cato (who was a Tory, Rev. William Smith, who fled to New York City to live under the British occupation during the war) wrote his first of eight articles defending Britain, at which time Paine was called upon by the group to write as Forester to counter Cato. This lasted until May of 1776, at which time the revolutionary group and their thousands of supporters overthrew the British puppet government in Pennsylvania. June, 1776 saw Paine and Franklin active in the creation of the Declaration, followed by support for a democratic constitution in July. Before he left for the

battlefield, Paine left Four Letters on Interesting Subjects to be printed, as Thomas Young left Genuine Principles of the Anglo-Saxon Constitution under the pen name of Demophilus, to support the democratic principles of the constitution which Franklin and Cannon then applied. It was probably Franklin who created a plural executive for Pennsylvania with no senate, the first time in history at such a scale.

The Whig Society was formed in early 1777 to counter a move by conservatives (this is a modern term, but the similarity in ideology and purpose translates well to that time) to overturn the new Constitution of Pennsylvania. The Constitution was being used as a model for other states, and it was far too democratic for the likes of the landed gentry and wealthy merchants. These maneuvers by the conservatives was led publicly by two “founders” who also had opposed the Declaration: Benjamin Rush (I know he signed it after the fact, but opposed it strenuously leading up to it), and John Dickinson. They allied with various closet Tories in the middle of the war to disrupt the new government. The Whig Society led a public campaign to defeat them in ‘77 and ’78, which they did. They addressed Congress to demand suppression of these disruptors and other Tories, and they had enough impact to save the Constitution as written, and for extending it in 1783. Paine used the Pennsylvania Constitution as the model for the 1793 French Constitution which was delayed by the Terror, then abandoned by the coup that put the French elites back in power in 1795. The Pennsylvania Constitution was mainly written by James Cannon, with Franklin’s guidance. The loyalty oaths initiated in Pennsylvania were championed by the Society, and they went on to lead citizen’s committees, including Paine, voted in by mass democracies on the streets by thousands of people, independent of the government, to prevent and punish merchant hoarders who made food and supplies scarce and drove up prices, and to lead militia rights’ groups in the military. Chapters of the Society spread to other states, and eventually faded away after the National Constitution was ratified.

So this one line — “Copied with T. P.’s permission” — written by John Adams, is a weighty, meaningful four words, reflecting the hidden politics and ideological war

This democratic group, fathered by Franklin, led by Paine, was to become the first modern revolutionary party in the world on the eve of the Age of Democratic Revolutions.

taking place. Adams was forced to bow to the leadership of the revolutionary wing, until he had time to subvert their momentum. But the impact of the leading ideology of the American Revolution was completed before the counter-revolution ensued, and the Declaration of Independence still stands as a clarion call for democracy.

The discovery of this document helps to answer a few varied questions in Paine studies. First, there has never been an explanation of where Paine and Jefferson became friends: there was never correspondence between the two from June, 1776 through to their reunion in France in 1788. At that time in the late 1780’s, letters were frequently written between the two, and they exhibit a warm friendship, beyond the weighty issues of revolution and rights that they discussed. Creating a bond in Philadelphia when they were both there — June, 1776 — would explain their connection. Now with the knowledge of Paine and Jefferson working together, we have a basis to explain this bond. A similar bond existed between Paine and Robert Livingston throughout the rest of their lives.

Secondly, why did John Adams recommend Paine for the position of secretary to the Committee on Foreign

Affairs the following year? They were bitter ideological enemies that spring of 1776. An exposure to Paine as a worthy organizer and having knowledge of world affairs would allow Adams to show his support for him in a governmental position.

Thirdly, it explains the reference in a book by Henry Redhead Yorke on his visits with Paine in 1802, where he said about Paine’s reaction to the death of Sherman some nine years previous, “As soon as I had finished the perusal of the letter [from Jefferson to Paine], he [Paine] observed that there now remained only four persons who had acted in concert during the American Revolution, John Adams, Jefferson, Livingstone, and himself.” There was never a time that these five could have worked together except for the Declaration Committee in June of 1776. And it could not be in concert in an abstract ideological way, since many leaders for independence were still alive in 1802, it must be in a particular way.

Lastly, how did Paine know the name of the new country? The first public pronouncement of the name “United States of America” was made in a short article in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on June 29th, 1776, by someone who knew of the newly determined name of the country that appears on the Declaration of Independence, which was yet to be released to the public. The article was signed Republicus, and Republicus was Thomas Paine.

William Cobbett, the opportunist Englishman who wrote for the Federalists against Paine, then read Paine, and became a staunch supporter, who then stole his remains and proceeded to lose them, wrote in 1829, “Jefferson and some others, have had the credit of being the authors of the Declaration of Independence: either of them might, for aught I know, have written it, but Paine was its author.” Cobbett finally got something right.

GARY BERTON is an independent scholar for and officer in the Thomas Paine National Historical Association for the past 22 years, a member of the International Society for Historians of Atheism, Secularism and Humanism, and is currently the Coordinator of the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College. He is part of the international Editorial Board for the Official Collected Works of Thomas Paine that will begin late next year. https://www. thomaspaine.org

“WRITING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 1776” BY JEAN GEROME FERRIS (1863-1930) BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (LEFT), AND JOHN ADAMS (CENTER), THOMAS JEFFERSON (RIGHT) AND THOMAS PAINE (FAR RIGHT) MEET AT JEFFERSON’S LODGINGS, ON THE CORNER OF SEVENTH AND HIGH (MARKET) STREETS IN PHILADELPHIA, TO REVIEW A DRAFT OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. [SINCE THE ARTIST DID NOT DEPICT THOMAS PAINE IN THE ORIGINAL PAINTING, WE AT THE TRUTH SEEKER TOOK THE LIBERTY OF PLACING THE FORGOTTEN FOUNDING FATHER AT HIS RIGHTFUL PLACE AT THE TABLE.]

Congratulations on your new book! I like the bold simplicity of the cover. I guess it could have also been an entire white cover with black letters? Perhaps that will be the cover for Volume Two? Thanks! I like the cover as well, although I had no hand in designing it! I will keep that idea in mind in case there is a volume two someday.

Why did you focus on the period between 1850 and 1914?

I chose this period because there were two trends happening in this era. One is the rise of scientific racism (pseudoscientific attempts to classify and rank human races through anatomical and psychological measures) and the height of western imperialism, where much of the globe was carved up among European powers (and to a lesser extent the United States).

The second is the rise of organized freethought movements in the United States and Britain. At this time, new scientific findings challenged the biblical story, particularly in geology, which showed the Earth was much, much older than previously thought, and in biology, which showed that humans had evolved from ape an-

cestors. Also, detailed studies of the Bible began to cast doubt on its historical accuracy and its authorship. As a result, more and more people began to give up the faith and to organize themselves into groups that contested religious authority.

In short, then, I wanted to look at how these two trends were interlinked, and how increasingly vocal atheists and freethinkers responded to the rise of scientific racism and imperialism.

Please tell our readers a little about your background, education, and what you’re currently working on these days besides promoting the book.

I’m originally from Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada — just across the river from Buffalo, New York. I did my BA and MA in Canada before moving on to do my PhD in Modern History at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. My PhD research formed the basis for this book. Most recently I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt, in Germany, where I began work on another book project about the history of the word “racism.”

Do you come from from a freethinking family?

INTERVIEW with Nathan G. Alexander, author of the new book Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850-1914. Last year we published Nathan’s article “Freethinkers and the Fight Against Racism” in our Bertrand Russell issue of the Truth Seeker.

I don’t! Actually I was raised an Anglican and was a believer until my early 20s, although I was not super religious. At this time though, I began to watch some debates between Christians and outspoken atheists like Richard Dawkins. Watching these debates made me think more about my faith, and I gradually gave up it, eventually moving all the way to atheism.

Can you tell us about some Canadian freethinkers?

Was there anyone in Canada who had an impact on freethought who you feel should be better known?

I’m not an expert on Canadian freethought, but Marshall Gauvin is one name that comes immediately to mind. He was from the province of New Brunswick, but spent much of his career in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he became a major figure in the freethought scene in the early 20th century. Gauvin was also a contributor to the Truth Seeker. For those interested in the history of freethought in Canada, check out my friend Elliot Hanowski’s article, “Activist Unbelief in Canadian History” at https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.95/.

Do you think the U.S. is more religious than Canada?

Yes, definitely, and I think poll numbers show this. Of course, I’m sure it depends where exactly you are in the US and Canada, but generally I think it’s true. This is somewhat ironic given that in the 19th century, the opposite seemed to be true: Canada was a more religious place then and the Truth Seeker was even banned in the country for its irreligious content!

How did you get interested in the subject of race?

I got interested in this topic when I was studying for my master’s. Initially I was going to focus on African history, but shifted from this slightly and ended up writing about British views of the Asante Empire (in present-day Ghana in West Africa) in the 19th century. While finishing up my master’s, I realized that religion intersected in many ways with the history of race and racism, for example, in debates about evolution, or in Christian justifications for slavery or imperial conquest. There had been some research about the links between Christianity and race, but there had not been anything about what nonreligious people thought about race, so this is what I decided to do my PhD and the eventual book about. (Obviously this process seems more straightforward in hindsight!)

Where did you find most of the material for your book? I assume you had to do some traveling? I know you did some research at the Center for Inquiry Libraries in Amherst, New York. Where else did you go?

Yes, I needed to visit various libraries for the research. In the US, I visited the Center for Inquiry Libraries in Amherst, where I looked at copies of the Truth Seeker, as well as the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. In the UK, I went to the British Library, as well as the specialist freethought libraries at Conway Hall and the Bishopsgate Institute, all of which are in London. [Video http://thetruthseeker.us/video/284368469 and website for the CFI libraries https://www.cfilibraries.org]

Continued on next page

Who is the audience for your book?

I’m really hoping to reach anyone interested in issues of freethought, atheism, and racism.

How have you been publicizing Race in a Godless World?

I’ve reached out to various freethought groups in the US and Britain to promote the book. Most recently, I gave a talk at historic Conway Hall in London, England. This building is the home of the Conway Hall Ethical Society, which has existed under various names since the late eighteenth century. It’s named after Moncure Conway, a freethinker originally from Virginia but who later settled in London and became head of its freethinking congregation, which was then called South Place Chapel. I was really happy with how this talk went and I hope to do more events like this in the future.

What were the main findings in your research?

On the one hand, I argue that white atheists and other nonreligious people seemed to accept the idea that whites were on top of the racial and civilizational hierarchy. In this, they were in line with other white people in Britain and the United States. On the other hand, though, these same atheists were often marginalized within their own societies, due to their lack of religion, but also their class (since many came from the working classes). They were, therefore, outsiders who were discontented with their Christian-dominated societies. This outsider perspective, combined with the same skepticism that led them to give up religion, caused them to question racial and civilization superiority in ways that were extremely radical for their times.

Can you provide a particular example of how freethinkers were more likely to question things and if or how their belief in Darwinism played a role?

One example is the way in which white atheists portrayed so-called “savage” societies as, in many ways, superior to western ones. These societies seemed to be more egalitarian and more moral than their western counterparts, without the need for religion. For example, one author, Emily G. Taylor, quoted in the Truth Seeker in 1895, discussed the so-called Hottentots of South Africa. She wrote that “in the excellence of their morals,” they “surpassed all nations of the earth,” despite (or because of) their lack of religion. Likewise, their society was much more egalitarian than that of the West: “Peace and prosperity reigned; no wealthy class was supported in idleness by the toiling poor; no dens of infamy, no saloons, and — no churches.”

The issue of Darwinism is complicated. On the one hand, there is no doubt that people could and did draw upon ideas of evolution and “survival of the fittest” to suggest that certain races were less evolved or less fit than

others. On the other hand, though, we also see examples of atheists suggesting that Darwinian evolution refuted racist conceptions of humanity. One atheist author, James F. Morton Jr., in his 1906 book, The Curse of Race Prejudice, said that the true lesson of Darwinian evolution was “that the human race is one in all essential characteristics” and that talk of superior and inferior races therefore made no sense. Morton even thought that in the future, people would have difficulty believing that people in the past accepted racism, particularly in light of Darwinian science: “‘What!’ we may suppose them to say, ‘Did these crude notions prevail in an age when Darwin’s epoch-making scientific achievements had made the common origin of the human race a matter of schoolboy knowledge?’”

You’ve extensively researched both the American and British freethought movements. As you know the two leading freethought periodicals were the Truth Seeker in the United States and The Freethinker in England. In your opinion, in what respect were those two publications different? And was there a difference between the freethought movements in Great Britain and the United States?

It’s a difficult question since there was a great deal of similarity between both papers, not least the fact that both of their editors (D.M. Bennett and G.W. Foote) spent time behind bars for their views. Both papers campaigned for freethought, science, and secularism. The differences between the two mostly concerned the broader national contexts. In Britain, church and state were legally tied together, while the US had (in principle) a secular government, even if this was constantly under threat. Likewise, in Britain, class divisions were much starker than in the US where there was not the same kind of entrenched power among the hereditary elite.

In terms of the racial context, the two countries also differed. For the US, the presence of millions of black people in the country was a context not shared by Britain. This made race much more of a concrete issue to white freethinkers in the US and they grappled with the legacy of slavery and the place of newly emancipated blacks within their society. Those in Britain watched the developments of the Civil War and its aftermath with interest, but this was always more of an abstract issue to them, though of course Britain also dealt with the legacy of slavery in its Caribbean colonies. Empire was another difference between the two countries. Britain possessed a wide-reaching empire in the 19th century. Questions of imperial conduct in India, Africa, and Australasia were hugely important and more pressing to British freethinkers than American ones. By the end of the century, Americans began to build up an overseas empire, particularly in the Pacific and the Caribbean, but this never came close to rivaling the extent of the British empire.

Continued on page 44

NO QUALMS

M y first wife died ten years ago Dozens, hundreds, of my longtime friends and colleagues likewise came to the end of their journeys. They number so many that I keep a “Gone” list in my computer to help me remember them all. Before long, it will be my turn to join the list.

I’m 86 and still work. I feel keen and eager for life. My hair’s still dark (mostly). I have a passel of children, grandchildren, and rambunctious great-grandchildren. I love sailing my beloved dinghy on our small private lake, and hiking in shady forests with my three-legged dog, and taking a gifted grandson to symphony, and seeking wisdom in our long-running Unitarian philosophy-and-science circle. I remarried an adorable woman in her 70s, and we relish our togetherness. But her health is fragile. Her turn is on the horizon too.

I have no dread. Why worry about the inescapable, the utterly unavoidable, the sure destiny of today’s seven billion? However, sometimes I feel annoyed because I will have no choice. I’m accustomed to choosing whatever course I want — but I won’t get to decide whether to take my final step. Damn!

I have no supernatural beliefs. I don’t expect to wake up in Paradise or Hades, surrounded by angels or de-

mons. That’s fairy-tale stuff. I think my personality, my identity — me — is created by my brain, and when the brain dies, so does the psyche. Gone forever into oblivion.

I’ll admit that some reports of “near-death experiences” raise tantalizing speculation about a hereafter. But, in the end, I assume those blinding lights and out-of-body flotations are just final glimmers from oxygen deprivation. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

It takes courage to look death in the eye and feel ready. So be it. Bring it on. I won’t flinch. Do your damnedest. I’ll never whimper. However, maybe this is bluster and bravado, an attempt to feel strong in the face of what will happen regardless of how I react.

Unlike Dylan Thomas, I won’t rage, rage against the dying of the light. Instead, I plan to live as intensely as I can, while I can, and then accept the inevitable. I find solace in wisdom I’ve heard from other departees. Just before she died of ovarian cancer, one of my longtime friends, Marty Wilson, wrote:

By david Macaray

“I often think of humankind as a long procession whose beginning and end are out of sight. We the living… have no control over when or where we enter the procession, or even how long we are part of it, but we do

get to choose our marching companions. And we can all exercise some control over what direction the procession takes, what part we play, and how we play it.”

In The Fire Next Time, brilliant writer James Baldwin said: “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.”

Legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow wrote: “When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the fact that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom; the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier… for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.”

My journey on the road has been proceeding for eight decades. Actuarial tables make my future so obvious that I can’t shut my eyes to it. Life proceeds through stages, and I’m in the last scene of the last act.

I have a Pantheon of my favorite heroes: Einstein, Jefferson, Voltaire, Lincoln, Carl Sagan, Shakespeare, Martin Luther King Jr., Tolstoy, FDR, Beethoven, Epicurus, Gandhi, etc. They fill a different “Gone” list. They uplifted humanity, even transformed humanity, in their day — but their day ended, and life moved on.

My day was the 1960s, and ’70s, and ’80s, even the ’90s. I was a Whirling Dervish in the thick of everything. Life was a fascinating carnival. But it slides into the past so deftly you hardly notice.

While my clock ticks away, I’ll pursue every minute. Carpe diem. Make hay while the sun shines. And then I’m ready for nature’s blackout, with no regrets.

JAMES A. HAUGHT is editor of West Virginia’s largest newspaper, The Charleston Gazette, and a senior editor of Free Inquiry. This article first appeared in the Sunday Gazette-Mail in September 2013; dates have been updated.

I’m quite aware that my turn is approaching. The realization hovers in my mind like a frequent companion.

By James A. Haught

TS

Thanks,

Paul...

Peace ut, Paul

Paul Krassner sent me a Precious note last summer after reading my Desert Sun story celebrating the 50th anniversary of his role in the historic protests of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention.

“I kept laughing all day yesterday,” he e-mailed from his Desert Hot Springs home, “if only because a local paper’s front page was placing John McCain’s death second to my life on the cover.”

For this pioneer of the underground press and

co-founder of the Yippies group that planned the Chicago protests, Krassner’s elevation to hometown hero was like the attainment of a 32nd Mason degree. The iconoclast had become an icon. The Earth had orbited counter-clockwise and Krassner’s counter-culture realm had become the culture.

To understand this disruption, you must consider this violin prodigy-turned-“investigative satirist’s” history. Krassner titled his autobiography Confessions of

By Bruce Fessier

A Raving, Unconfined Nut because an FBI agent once labeled him as such. In 1981, the late broadcast journalist, Harry Reasoner described him in his memoir, Before the Colors Fade, with language generally reserved for Hitler or Jack the Ripper.

“I’ve only been aware of two figures in the news during my career with whom I would not have shaken hands if called to deal with them professionally,” Reasoner wrote. “They were Senator Joseph McCarthy and

a man named Paul Krassner, or something like that, who published a magazine called The Realist in the 1960s… Krassner and his Realist were part of a ‘60s fad — publications attacking the values of the establishment — which produced some very good papers and some very bad ones. Krassner not only attacked establishment values, he attacked decency in general, notably with an alleged ‘lost chapter’ from William Manchester’s book, ‘The Death of a President.’”

Manchester’s book on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, authorized by the Kennedy family, became a cause celebre when Jackie Kennedy’s lawyers persuaded Manchester to omit certain passages she found “unbearably offensive.” The public’s imagination ran wild about what could have been so offensive, so Krassner perpetrated a hoax in The Realist, which he called “an adult Mad Magazine.” In prose sounding remarkably like Manchester’s, Krassner offered the literary manifestation of what might be “unbearably offensive.” He attributed a truly indecent act to President Lyndon B. Johnson and gave only a clue to its fiction by labeling the issue’s theme, “Irreverence Is Our Only Sacred Cow.” The hoax was so brilliant, it’s now better remembered than Manchester’s book. Krassner admitted his fabrication in the next issue, but by then the nation had debated the boundaries of decency and the First Amendment had come out strengthened.

But, just think about Reasoner’s reaction. During his career as a CBS and ABC newsman, Reasoner and his news teams covered corrupt politicians from Joseph Stalin to Ferdinand Marcos, destructive racists from F.W. de Clerk of South Africa to David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan. They covered mass murderers like Idi Amin in Uganda and Pol Pot in Cambodia. Reasoner even fought Hitler in the Army. And Krassner was one of only two human beings he wouldn’t shake hands with?

The irony is that Krassner has proven to be on the

The irony is that Krassner has proven to be on the right side of history on many controversial issues since launching with aid from Steve Allen and Lenny Bruce in 1958.

The Realist

right side of history on many controversial issues since launching The Realist with aid from Steve Allen and Lenny Bruce in 1958. Those include the legalization of abortion, cannabis and pornography for personal viewing, and the opposition to military incursions from Vietnam to Iraq, and spying on American civilians.

Krassner was the Forrest Gump of the counter-culture. He knew everyone from Bob Dylan to Charles Manson and Baba Ram Dass to Margot St. James, founder of the pro-prostitution group, Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE). He moderated a panel called “Political Fallout of the Beat Generation” on the 25th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road with Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs, Abbie Hoffman and Timothy Leary. Yippie co-founder Hoffman told Beat poet Ginsburg, “You were the prophets and we were the warriors.”

Krassner was the perfect moderator because his influence bridged generations. As an “investigative satirist,” he used provocative humor like Bruce and Groucho Marx, but took it a step further by using journalism and political activism to stimulate social change. He erased obsolete social patterns by making people laugh at the absurdity of old ways, but he also championed the use of psychedelics to raise consciousness one expanded mind at a time.

He’s famous for making an implied threat to put LSD in Chicago’s water during the ’68 Democratic National Convention and for turning Marx onto LSD. He said Groucho told him during that psychedelic trip that irreverence and reverence are the same thing. “If they’re not,” he said, “then it’s a misuse of your power to make people laugh.”

Krassner and I and his wife, Nancy, and my wife, Jane, frequently got together for lunches and dinner parties, where Paul would revel us with his historical experiences, like counter-culture versions of Walter Cronkite’s “You Are There.”

At one dinner party at our house, I asked everyone to describe their favorite hallucinogenic experiences, and Krassner trumped us with a tale of taking LSD with the Grateful Dead among the pyramids of Egypt. At another, he and the late Kaye Ballard told tales of how Lenny Bruce only used profanity when necessary to punctuate a story.

I always found Paul to be impish but humane, balancing temptation like the

devil on one shoulder and Gandhi on the other. We spent July 4th, 2018 together because I could think of no great champion of American ideals. The late comic George Carlin said in an introduction to another of Krassner’s books that he kept his collection of Realist magazines in a red, white and blue American flag shoulder bag from the ’68 Democratic National Convention because he felt Krassner represented him there.

I sometimes transported Paul and Nancy to our dinner parties because I felt they deserved to be carried on a sedan chair like royalty. In 2001, Paul became the second living person named to the Counter-Culture Hall of Fame, one year before Dylan and Joan Baez.

On June 28, I sent him a link to a Los Angeles Times story reporting that the city of Oakland had voted to decriminalize magic mushrooms and other hallucinogenic plants. It seemed like one more victory for Paul in his battle for social change.

Instead of a witty reply, he responded with a final e-mail revealing his physical pain. He had made valiant efforts to ignore his debilitating condition in my presence, but now his normally brilliant syntax betrayed him. He wrote on June 29, “THANKS FOR CONTINUING YOU AND JANE FRIENDS MORE THAN NANCY AND ME OVER TWO DECADES.”

Believe me, Paul, the pleasure was all ours.

BRUCE FESSIER has written about arts and entertainment in Southern California for more than four decades; his articles appeared in the Desert Sun newspaper. He and Paul Krassner were friends for over 20 years.

PHOTO OF PAUL KRASSNER PROVIDED BY NANCY CAIN.

EVOLUTION DOESN’T PROCEED IN

By Quentin wheeler, antonio G. valdesacas, and cristina cánovas

volution doesn ’ t follow a preordained , straight path. Yet images abound that suggest otherwise. From museum displays to editorial cartoons, evolution is depicted as a linear progression from primitive to advanced.

You’ve certainly seen the pictures of a chimpanzee gradually straightening up and progressing through various hominids all the way to a modern human being. Yes, they can be humorous. But these kinds of popular representations about evolution get it all wrong.

As three scholars of biodiversity and biology, these images bother us because they misrepresent how the process of evolution really works — and run the risk of reinforcing the public’s misconceptions.

Climbing a ladder to perfection

This misunderstanding is a holdover from before 1859, the year Charles Darwin first published his scientific theory of evolution via natural selection.

Until then, the traditional view of how the world was organized was through a “progression in perfection.” This concept is explicit in the idea of the “great chain of being,” or “scala naturae” in Latin: All beings on earth, animate and inanimate, could be organized according to an increasing scale of perfection from, say, mushrooms at the bottom up through lobsters and rabbits, all the way to human beings at the top.

Originating with Plato and Aristotle, this view gets three main things wrong.

First, it holds that nature is organized hierarchically. It is not a random assortment of beings.

Secondly, it envisions two organizing criteria: things progress from simple to perfect and from primitive to modern.

And thirdly, it supposes there are no intermediary stages between levels in this hierarchy. Each level is a watertight compartment of similar complexity — a barnacle and a coral reef on the same rung are equally complex. No one is halfway between two steps.

In the 1960s a variation of the scala naturae conceived by Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin became popular. His idea was that, although life is somewhat branched, there is direction in evolution, a progression toward greater cognitive complexity and, ultimately, to identification with the divine, that is, God.

Gradual changes, in every direction

At least since Darwin, though, scientists’ idea of the world is organized through transitions — from inanimate molecules to life, from earlier organisms to different kinds of plants and animals, and so on. All life on Earth is the product of gradual transformations, which diversified and gave rise to the exuberance of organisms that we know today.

Two transitions are of particular interest to evolutionary biologists. There’s the jump from the inanimate to the animate: the origin of life. And there’s the appearance of the human species from a monkey ancestor.

A STRAIGHT LINE — SO WHY DRAW IT THAT WAY?

The most popular way to represent the emergence of human beings is as linear and progressive. You’ve probably seen images, logos and political and social propaganda that draw on this representation.

But none of these representations capture the dynamics of Darwin’s theory. The one image he included in his book On the Origin of Species is a tree diagram, the branching of which is a metaphor for the way species originate, by splitting. The absence of an absolute time scale in the image is an acknowledgment that gradual change happens on timescales that vary from organism to organism based on the length of a generation.

According to Darwin, all current organisms are equally evolved and are all still affected by natural selection. So, a starfish and a person, for example, are both at the forefront of the evolution of their particular building plans. And they happen to share a common ancestor that lived about 580 million years ago.

Darwin’s theory doesn’t presuppose any special direction in evolution. It assumes gradual change and diversification. And, as evolution is still operating today, all present organisms are the most evolved of their kind.

An enduring misconception

Having been around nearly 2,000 years, the idea of the scala naturae did not disappear during Darwin’s time. It might actually have been reinforced by something so unexpected as a cartoon. Illustrator Edward Linley Sambourne’s immensely popular caricature of evolution “Man

Is But a Worm,” published in Punch’s Almanack for 1882, combined two concepts that were never linked in Darwin’s mind: gradualism and linearity.

Given centuries of religious belief in a “great chain of being,” the idea of linearity was an easy sell. The iconic version of this concept is, of course, the depiction of a supposed ape-to-human “progression.” Variations of all kinds have been made of this depiction, some with a humorous spirit, but most to ridicule the monkey-to-man theory.

A linear depiction of evolution may, consciously or not, confirm false preconceptions about evolution, such as intelligent design — the idea that life has an intelligent creator behind it. Historians can work to unravel how such a simple caricature could have helped distort Darwin’s theory. Meanwhile, science writers and educators face the challenge of explaining the gradual branching processes that explain the diversity of life.

While less pithy, it might be better for the public’s knowledge of science if these T-shirts and bumper stickers ditch the step

Previous page THE TRUTH SEEKER, FEBRUARY 27, 1909. Left THE SCALA NATURAE PRESENTS A HIERARCHY OF CREATION. RETORICA CHRISTIANA, DIDACUS VALDES, 1579.

Below “MAN IS BUT A WORM” CARICATURE OF DARWIN’S THEORY IN THE PUNCH ALMANAC FOR 1882. EDWARD LINLEY SAMBOURNE.

by step images and use branching diagrams to make a more nuanced and correct point about evolution. Contrary to the Sambourne picture, evolution is better represented as a process producing continuous branching and divergence of populations of organisms.

QUENTIN WHEELER is Senior Fellow for Biodiversity Studies, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

ANTONIO G. VALDECASAS is Senior Researcher in Biodiversity at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC – Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.

CRISTINA C Á NOVAS is a Biologist at the Natural History Museum in Madrid, CSIC – Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.

This article was originally published on The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/evolution-doesntproceed-in-a-straight-line-so-why-draw-it-that-way-109401

Suicide and the Super-Old

As Goodall experienced, when the pain and strain of day-to-day living exceeds the tolerance of super-old people, death, regardless of ethics, morality, or faith, is welcome and sought.

By Joel larus

n May 2, 2018, Dr. DaviD GooDall, a 104-yearold world renowned botanist and ecologist, flew from his home in Perth, Australia to Basel, Switzerland, a flight of 8,000 miles, to end his life by taking advantage of the physician-assisted suicide law of Switzerland. Australian laws restrict suicide to those who are terminally ill; Goodall did not qualify. Surprisingly healthy and mentally alert for a man of his advanced years, he decided some weeks earlier after a serious fall that he did not wish to continue living. In discussions with family members, he informed them he no longer was able to live alone and had booked a flight to Switzerland where physician-assisted suicide, or as it is sometimes called aid in dying, has been legal for over seventy years and where he was confident he could end his life with dignity, a cause he had long championed.

Landing in Basel and completing the required paper work that included being interviewed by local doctors who agreed he had the mental capacity to make such a momentous decision and carry it to completion, he entered a designated euthanasia center. According to Swiss records, Goodall died two days later after a self-administered dose of barbiturates.

The day before he ended his life, Goodall held a widely-publicized press conference that was attended by journalists representing many of the leading newspaper of the world. As anticipated, he spoke candidly and extensively about how growing old invariably results in negative changes in one’s life. “Up to the age of 90,” he began, “I was enjoying life, but not now. It [i.e. life--ed.] has passed me by.” Describing his normal day in Perth, he said, “…I get up in the morning. I eat breakfast. Then I just sit to lunch-time. Then I have a bit of lunch and just sit. What is the use of that?” Concerned that his suicide would might be disparaged or misinterpreted and determined to explain why he planned to end his life the following day, he said, “I am not happy. I want to die. It’s not particularly sad. What is sad is being prevented from dying.”

A reporter asked the doctor how he would like to be remembered. Determined to use the occasion to publicize a central theme of his writings and lectures on death and dying, he began by stating that very old people do frequently grow tired of living and, if deciding that life a too heavy burden, they have a right to select the time and means of their end. He hoped his physician-assisted suicide in Switzerland would be “an instrument of freeing

the elderly from the need to pursue life irrespective of their medical condition and wishes.” Wanting to be confident that his views were understood, he ended his remarks he repeating, “One should be free to choose death, and when death is at an appropriate time. I don’t feel that anyone’s choice is involved.” Thereupon he left the stage.

Goodall’s statement that elderly men and women who are not terminal or experiencing cognitive impairment find day-to-today living so grim that suicide is a desired goal has been expressed often by many. Of greater consequence and perhaps the most lasting aspect of Goodall’s press conference was that he, unknowingly, may have become a spokesman for the growing number of elderly who today are in situations similar to his: nonagenarians and centenarians who decide to end their lives prematurely because its quality no longer is acceptable. As Goodall experienced, when the pain and strain of day to day living exceeds the tolerance of super-old people, death, regardless of ethics, morality, or faith, is welcome and sought.

In the acrimonious and tortious history of suicide and efforts to make the public more understanding and tolerant of those who suicide, the issue whether super-old people have the right to decide to end their lives prematurely because continued living is unacceptable may be the next frontier between those that consider suicide as a right that the super-old have and those unalterably opposed.

In this country the population of men and women who live long past retirement and the so-called golden years has grown significantly. While statistics indicate most will die of natural causes, medical issues, or accidents, the emphasis here is on the oldest of the old, those whose life span has significantly exceed longevity projections, not terminal or depressed, and who are determined to die a peaceful death and at a time of their choosing.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the death wishes of U.S. nonagenarians and centenarians were not a major concern of actuaries because relatively few Americans lived to be super-old. A major change in American longevity occurred in the years preceding World War II when people began to live longer as a result of medical science advances and improved eating habits. As death rates declined, the number of super-old increased slowly until the early years of the 21st century when there was an explosion. Specifically, between 1980 and 2017 there was a three-fold increase of Americans who lived beyond 90 years, an escalation that totaled approximately 1.9 million men and women according to a recent study of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Also, the Center has predicted that in the next 40 years the popu-

“SAINT JEROME IN HIS STUDY” (DETAIL) BY MICHELANGELO MERISI DA CARAVAGGIO (1571-1610)

lation of Americans in the same age group will increase to 7.6 million. Supporting the Center’s prediction, a recent article in The New York Times called people of these ages “one of the fastest age group in the country.”

Greater awareness of what many super-old experience is a first step in bringing about greater tolerance of this age group who are life-weary. Often complemented for their fortitude and courage, the closing years of the super-old people more accurately should be identified with medical crises, growing languor, and monotony. Generalizing but not overreaching, being super-old means experiencing inertia, tedium, listlessness, and sharply reduced ability to engage in normal activities requiring physical effort and energy. Living to be a nonagenarian or centenarian is not an unalloyed blessing, as so often claimed, but more often a time of emptiness, ennui, and medical problems. In short, longevity may seem beautiful, but it is also deadly.

When discussing the ending one’s life by the superold, religious faith is a factor of major importance. Western monotheistic religions in recent years have softened their position concerning suicide, now advocating greater tolerance and understanding than formerly and the new theology promises to influence the behavior and ethics of the super-old. The faith that for over two millennia was most rigid and unforgiving of those who commit suicide was Roman Catholicism. Its believers were taught that committing suicide was a mortal sin, an unforgivable crime that would be punished as being denied a funeral Mass and not being allowed to be buried in hallowed ground. Evidence of a more liberal view was recognized in the 1960s when suicide-parishioners were allowed to have a traditional Catholic funeral and burial rite.

Greater tolerance to Catholic suicides was suggested by John Paul II, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae “Euthanasia”, he wrote, “fails to respect the image of God within the self, but includes further complexities that ought to arouse the Church to compassion.” At another section he stated, “Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering ….can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.” Accordingly, suicide remained a sin, but, as Peter Steinfels of The New York Times noted, “the document indicates where the Church is moving, particularly his call to Catholics to be compassionate toward the mentally ill.” Celestine Bohlen, a Times reporter who discussed in some depth the encyclical, wrote astutely, “…as the Church knows well, once the case can be made for even a rare exception, then the case for a moral absolute crumbles.”

A number of lay authorities do not agree than there has been a shift in the Church’s position, however.

The Vatican did not act alone: the leading Protestant sects, as well as Reformed Judaism, advocated and adopted at approximately the same time a more tolerant position.

The growing sentiment among the various faiths of liberalizing the traditional theology concerning suicide, we believe, will have importance for America’s super-old men and women of faith. As they learn that their individual faith currently views suicide with greater understanding and the former rigid doctrines of the past no longer hold, it can be expected that a significant number, tired of living, either will seek out states that have passed legislation that permit physician-assisted death or, alternately, they act unilaterally.

Currently nine American states and the District of Columbia have physician-assisted suicide statutes [California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.] Each restricts suicide to adults who are terminally ill and specifies that one or more physicians must attest to the mental competence of the individual and is capable of ingesting the death-causing medications without help. Except for three, it should be noted, the remaining states are located in the western part of the country. If the population of super-old Americans grows at the rate predicted, many nonagenarians and centenarians will be unable to take advantage of these pro-suicide states because of travel costs, waiting period, and residency limitations. Nineteen states are currently considering legislation, but are facing stiff opposition.

Globally, as the number of super-old people increase significantly and more is learned about their end-of-life problems and desires, we believe Dr. Goodall’s message at his press conference of accepting suicide will become policy in more Western-industrialized counties. Acceptance of the validity of his message, as well as its acceptance by groups currently opposed, can be expected to be slow and complicated. But the campaign for change already has its theme: when super-old men and women grow tired of living because of various reasons, as is inevitable, they have a right to suicide, assisted or otherwise, because it is the rational way to end a life that has become a nightmare. Family and friends, reluctantly, will accept the action with increasing tolerance and understanding as social norms are liberalized.

JOEL LARUS is a 95-year-old retired academic and a resident of Pittsboro, North Carolina. © Joel Larus 2019

The faith that for over two millennia was most rigid and unforgiving of those who commit suicide was Roman Catholicism.

It’s great to see that you have included some of Truth Seeker cartoonist Watson Heston’s editorial cartoons. Can you tell us a little about how you view his illustrations in regards to race?

That’s an interesting question. I think it’s true that Heston — like many of the freethinkers in the book — accepted common racial stereotypes of the time, in regard to African Americans and immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. (For example, his cartoon “The Emigration Question” shows this.) But he could also be subversive as well — again like many of the freethinkers in the book — and this comes through in various cartoons. For example, one cartoon shows a Chinese man pointing out the hypocrisy of America condemning China for violence toward Christian missionaries, when white Americans were equally guilty of committing violence against African Americans.

I’m wondering if you can comment on an 1889 Heston cartoon in the Truth Seeker titled “A Question for Theological Ethnologists”?

In the 19th century, “ethnology” was the study of racial differences, and here Heston poses a question to socalled “theological ethnologists.” Heston has in mind two competing theories about the origin of human races: the theory of polygenesis — which said that different races were created separately – and the theory of monogenesis – which said that all races had a single origin (in the Christian view, Adam and Eve, created in the image of God). The cartoon is asking how monogenesis can be true when the races all seem to look so different. And if monogenesis isn’t true, then the whole Bible story starts to fall down. In particular, the cartoon is criticizing the line in the Bible about God making humanity in his own image. But, the cartoon asks, which race exactly was the image? In other words, the Bible story didn’t really make sense given how diverse the human races were. The issue, though, is that the cartoon exaggerates racial differences and relies on racial stereotypes to make the case against Christianity.

In your book you mention that Truth Seeker editor Eugene Macdonald believed that Booker T. Washington was “probably the brainiest colored man in the country today.” Did most freethinkers share Macdonald’s opinion of Washington? And can you elaborate?

Yes, most freethinkers (and indeed most white Americans) held this view of Washington. He was born into slavery but after emancipation rose to become the leader of the Tuskegee Institute, which promoted agricultural and educational training for blacks. For this, Washing-

ton was widely revered, but he also preached moderation on the question of equal rights for blacks. Washington wanted blacks to avoid rocking the boat by directly challenging segregation and to instead focus on self-improvement. This moderation made him seem like a safe voice to many whites and blacks, although other African Americans, most prominently W.E.B. Du Bois, rejected the compromise proposed by Washington and instead confronted segregation by forming organizations to advocate for equal rights.

You assert that the racial views of freethinkers “could vacillate based on the needs of one’s argument.” I suspect that one of the best examples is Eugene Macdonald. Can you share this with our readers?

Yes, Macdonald was the second editor of the Truth Seeker after D.M. Bennett. Macdonald was what I called a “racial pessimist.” In the decades following the Civil War, as the newly freed slaves received the right to vote (at least the male ones), there also grew up a pessimistic view among whites that granting blacks the vote had been a mistake and a frustration that blacks were not progressing as quickly as they had hoped. Macdonald was a member of this school and could express quite hostile views to African Americans. In a particularly harsh editorial from 1903, he wrote, “The uneducated negro will not work unless driven to it by hunger, and he works then only enough to satisfy his appetites. Few of them have the ambition to acquire an education. Many of them are lazy, lying, shiftless, immoral, superstitious, and dishonest.” However, Macdonald also condemned a work by Charles Carroll, called “The Negro a Beast” or “In the Image of God” (1900), which argued from a biblical perspective that blacks were literally sub-human. The main goal of the work, Macdonald thought, was “to injure the negro” and “it reminds one very much of the old church arguments used to prove that God intended the negro to be a slave.” Here, then, Macdonald criticized explicit racism, although the fact that the Carroll was defending racism from a Christian perspective likely shaped Macdonald’s outrage at his views.

Your book is especially timely since racism is currently a hot topic in America. As is immigration. Some of Watson Heston’s cartoons seem pretty harsh on the immigration issue. As you know the opposition to immigration by freethinkers, however, had more to do with the religion they were bringing along with them. The Italians and Irish were often targeted by Heston. But is it true to say that Roman Catholics were deeply distrusted not only by freethinkers but also Christian Americans?

Yes, this is absolutely right. This is again a case where freethinkers broadly followed national patterns. The Protestant majority was distrustful of Catholic immigrants since Protestants feared they would always be more loyal to the papacy than to their adopted nation. But there was also a racial dimension to this. At this time, it was common to divide up the white race into different branches. Some scientific racists contended that those from the Catholic countries in Southern and Eastern Europe were inferior stock who would corrupt the good stock of the Northern European majority. We can get a glimpse of this attitude based on the way Heston portrayed immigrants as degraded and sickly in his cartoon “The Emigration Question,” mentioned above.

While freethinkers accepted some of these prejudiced

religion these days and the increase of non-believers or “Nones.” But as you probably know, freethinkers around the turn of the 20th century were convinced religion was on the wane. Unfortunately they were a little too optimistic. Do you think some of today’s secularists are also a little too sanguine about the decrease in church membership?

You’re right. Freethinkers at the end of the 19th century were confident that religion was pretty much in its death throes. Of course, it turns out in hindsight that they were widely overconfident. That historical example should therefore make us hesitant about predictions of religion’s imminent demise, but I do think polling numbers show that religion is declining throughout the West,

Yes, I think that’s right in general. This is not to suggest that atheists had a monopoly on progressive views about race or that Christians were totally prejudiced. But I do think on the whole atheists and freethinkers’ views were far outside the mainstream, and that these kinds of progressive views were found disproportionately among atheists and other non-believers. This is because of a general skeptical mindset among atheists, but also the experience of marginalization which made them more likely to question things that others took as obvious and natural (like racial superiority).

I’d like to hear your opinion on something that D.M. Bennett wrote while he was in the Ludlow Street Jail in New York City after his conviction for violating the Comstock obscenity law. His meals were delivered by “Boss” Tweed’s African American servant who was working in the jail. While venting in the Truth Seeker about his conviction, Bennett accused his trial judge of being a dupe and carrying out “the behests of the aristocratic clergymen of the uptown pulpits, who really were the power behind the bench.” Bennett went on to say that he thought “more highly of the dark-skinned Luke” than of Anthony Comstock, his pious employers and “his Honor (?) Charles L. Benedict.” How would you char acterize Bennett’s comment?

It’s an interesting remark. I think Bennett here is draw ing on popular ideas of the inferiority of black people. For him to then say he thought more highly of a black servant than Comstock is to say how little he thought of Comstock! Of course, this relies on the expec tation that blacks would already be viewed quite low on the social hierar chy. But I think Bennett is also subverting these racial expectations by making this remark and perhaps even express ing some kind of racial egalitarianism.

As you know, 19th-century freethinkers believed that the Christian church and the Bible supported slavery. William Lloyd Garrison was critical of the Bible and dubbed the unholy alliance between the church and slave owners as the “sum of all villainies.” Do you mention that material in your book?

I discuss briefly Biblical support for slavery and how freethinkers condemned Christianity for this reason. In short, slave-owners could cite a number of different biblical passages explicitly in support of the institution, as well as stories derived from the Bible, like the Curse of Ham myth, which suggested that Noah cursed the descendants of his son Ham to perpetual slavery and that therefore Ham’s ancestors must have been black. Additionally, most denominations refused to speak out against slavery, with a few rare exceptions like the Quakers. It should of course be noted though that abolitionists, including Garrison, frequently drew on the Bible to argue against slavery, even if they were often theologically unorthodox.

We know that during the period you cover in your book, the overwhelming majority of freethinkers

Previous page “THE EMIGRATION QUESTION” CARTOON BY WATSON HESTON IN THE DEC. 3. 1892 ISSUE OF THE TRUTH SEEKER.

Right “THE HEATHEN AND THE HYPOCRITE” CARTOON BY WATSON HESTON IN THE SEPT. 14, 1895 ISSUE OF THE TRUTH SEEKER.

ment, most notably abolitionist Frederick Douglass. What role, if any, did black freethinkers play and do you mention any in your book?

It is true that black freethinkers were often few and far between in the 19th century, but their numbers begin to increase towards the end of the century. As you mention, they often had more pressing concerns than the more abstract debates that white freethinkers were involved in. That said, there did develop a tradition among black freethinkers, such as Hubert Harrison, that a belief in supernatural religion made black people more willing to accept injustice in the here and now since they held out for the promise of a better life in heaven. The full story of black freethought is to be found in Christopher Cameron’s book, Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism, which came out in September 2019. I was fortunate to read an early version of that book and I can highly recommend it.

It’s been suggested that it might be better to use the word “freethinker” instead of atheist to define ourselves. What are your thoughts about those two words?

This was something I thought a lot about while writing the book. I use “atheism” in the title and often refer to “atheists” but many in the 19th century called themselves “freethinkers.” Ultimately I went with “atheism” — a lack of belief in God or gods – because this seems to be a more well-known term than “freethinker.” “Freethink-

er” is much broader and can encompass a greater range of positions, including those who might believe in some kind of God but who otherwise reject supernaturalism and want a secular government. I like the label of “atheist” though since it lets someone know where you stand without the need for much explanation. Of course, the label of “atheist” carries a lot of negative baggage, but I like the position of the 19th-century British atheist Charles Bradlaugh, who thought we should try to fight against the negative associations with the word. However, I don’t think nonreligious people should argue too much about their labels but rather focus on what unites them.

What’s your next book or project?

I am working now on a book about the history of the word “racism.” So much of the present-day debates about race concerns the meaning and application of this word (for example, is Donald Trump a racist?), and so I wanted to investigate the history of the word to shed some light on these debates. I hope that this book will be finished in a few years and of course I am still interested in the history of atheism and freethought and will continue writing about this topic as well.

Nathan Alexander’s book Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850-1914 is available through NYU Press https://nyupress.org/9781479835003/ and Manchester University Press https://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526142375/ Follow Nathan on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/nathgalexander

“A QUESTION FOR THEOLOGICAL ETHNOLOGISTS” CARTOON BY WATSON HESTON IN THE APRIL 20, 1889 ISSUE OF THE TRUTH SEEKER.

Paperback: 256 pages. Northwestern University Press, September 15, 2019. ISBN 978-0-8101-4078-3

Our Contributor

Christopher Cameron on his new book

CHRISTOPHER CAMERON is an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the founder of the African American Intellectual History Society, the author of To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement, and a co-editor of New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Northwestern, 2018).

While both historical and popular sources often portray African Americans as naturally or overreligious, Black Freethinkers argues that secularism has been a key aspect of African American political and intellectual life from the nineteenth century to the present. The book begins with a discussion of freethought among slaves and free blacks in the mid-1800s and argues that the brutality of slavery led many African Americans to question the idea of God. It then turns to the twentieth century to demonstrate that freethinkers were a critical part of literary movements such as the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, as well as political movements such as Socialism, Communism, and Black Power. Some of the most wellknown figures in African American history were freethinkers, including Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Huey Newton, and Alice Walker. These were not individuals who just happened to be freethinkers but rather people for whom religious skepticism had a profound impact on their literary works and political ideology/activism. While freethinkers have constituted a small segment of the black population, they have nevertheless significantly impacted African American literary, intellectual, and political life for over 150 years.

–Christopher Cameron

How (and wHy) americans were

B y J ohn F ollis

I f you asked a mer I cans list the most negative labels to give someone, “atheist” would probably be on that list. For the majority of Americans, being an atheist is akin to being amoral and unAmerican. Growing up, that’s certainly the message I got. Sunday School made it clear that atheists were bad, Godless people.

What most Americans don’t know is that if you grew up in the 50’s or 60’s you didn’t need to attend Sunday School to be taught to fear and hate atheists. Because in the early-50’s the US government initiated a massive, multi-pronged, multi-year campaign to demonize atheism — and it worked very well.

The GODification of America

The 1950’s was the height of The Cold War when the omnipresent threat to America was Communism. As the fear of Communism and the Soviet Union grew stronger President Eisenhower felt the need to do something big to help unify and bolster the country. At the strong encouragement of multiple ministers, religious politicians, business leaders, and his influential Evangelist pal Billy Graham, Eisenhower agreed on a bold strategy: Demonize Communism by demonizing a main tenet of Communism: Atheism. The idea was to make the ‘US vs Soviet Union’ a Holy War and draft God as America’s #1 Commie Fighter.

To facilitate that Eisenhower took aggressive executive

action. First, he got Congress to add “One nation ‘under GOD’” to The Pledge of Allegiance — a pledge recited daily in every classroom in America. Then he got Congress to replace “E Pluribus Unum” (the US motto since 1782 meaning “Out of many, one”) with IN GOD WE TRUST. After that he got Congress to approve posting IN GOD WE TRUST in court rooms, government buildings, public schools, on postage stamps, and on all US currency. Even some comic books of the day talked about “Godless Communism.” And New York State created a school prayer specifically designed to “counter the spread of Communism.” As if all that wasn’t enough the Administration teamed up with The Advertising Council, the major religious institutions, and corporate America to create something called the Religion in American Life campaign. With an annual budget of 200K (over $2M in today’s dollars) the campaign goal was to encourage Americans to attend church. It was a well-coordinated, unified effort that in 1956 alone included 5,412 highway billboards, 9,857 bus, train, and railroad station posters, and 59,590 ad cards inside buses, trains, subways, and streetcars. In addition, movie theaters ran PSA’s imploring the public to “Attend the church of your choice next Sunday.” It’s fair to say that during the 50’s nothing in America was marketed better than God, and nothing was demonized more than Communism and atheism.

The true story behind America’s demonization of atheism

TaugHT To HaTe ATHeisTs

Eisenhower agreed on a bold strategy: Demonize Communism by demonizing a main tenet of Communism: Atheism.

Network for Church Monitoring

Evidently, the end of the Cold War and the passing of 60-years has not softened America’s attitude toward atheists. According to a 2016 University of Minnesota study, Americans have actually sharpened their negative views. It showed that atheists are still perceived as cultural outsiders who “have rejected cultural values and practices understood as essential to private morality, civic virtue, and national identity.” They were chosen “the most disliked religious minority” in the U.S. Clearly, Eisenhower and company embedded an anti-Atheist cultural bias that still remains strong today.

Yet, in one religion-related sense Americans are becoming more tolerant. When the same survey asked if it’s a bad thing that increasing numbers of Americans claim no religious identity, 60% of the respondents said it’s either “a good thing” or “neither good nor bad.” And, while most Americans still have a problem with atheists more Americans are actually becoming atheists. A 2014 Pew Research Study reports that the number of Americans who identify as atheist doubled in the 7-year period from 2007 to 2014. And now, for the first time ever, “Nones” (no chosen religion) have become the largest “religious group” in America. Even clergy members are increasingly coming out as atheists as reported by Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola who published their initial findings in 2010. The award-winning documentary “Leaving God” (2017) which explores these shifting attitudes can be viewed online for free.

Opposite “IN GOD WE TRUST” SHIELD TWO CENT COIN INTRODUCED IN 1864. Right SALMON P. CHASE (1808-1873) WAS THE U.S. SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY AND CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT. CHASE, THE MOST RELIGIOUS MEMBER OF LINCOLN’S CABINET, CLAIMED RESPONSIBILITY FOR HAVING “IN GOD WE TRUST” STAMPED ON THE TWO-CENT COIN. CHASE ALSO TOOK CREDIT FOR LINCOLN’S INVOCATION OF GOD AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION.

Unfortunately, most biases, be they racial, gender-based, sexuality-related, or religious, tend to die hard. Which is why it’s so important to continue having open forums to help educate and enlighten the public.

Reprinted with permission from the author.

JOHN FOLLIS spent a 30-year career on Madison Avenue creating award-winning ads. Now he’s creating award-winning films. His latest documentary “LEAVING GOD: Why I left God and why so many others are too” won a “Best FirstTime Filmmaker” award from the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Film Festival.

Let us look upon death, not with apprehension and dread, but as it really is, a necessary change in Nature. . . Death is essential to life and equally forms a part of the laws of the universe. Let it then be regarded not as an enemy, but rather as a friend. . . At the close of a wearisome life we pass into such a rest, such an undisturbed repose. Cares, anxieties, toils, and troubles are superseded by a state of rest. This short word, rest, is full of meaning — full of consolation. To him oppressed with care, with distress, anguish, and pain, how sweet is rest. This word is replete with bliss; more suggestive of a perfect freedom from trouble and sorrow and ills of all kinds, than any other word in our language. Our departed brother is now at rest.

– d.M. Bennett

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