The current fight over crosses honoring troopers revisits the common concern of separation of church and state.  The sentiment of those against the crosses is that by using crosses, the government is endorsing a specific religion.  The current fight comes from American Atheists, which is certainly significant. 

 

The significance is in the grouping of the Atheists into a coalition.  Atheism is defined as "the doctrine or belief that there is no God  (dictionary.com)."  It comes from the Greek (Give me a word, any word, and I show you that the root of that word is Greek! - Gus in MBFGW) with the 'a' meaning 'without' and 'theism' meaning 'God.' 

 

Thus an Atheist is someone who does not believe in God or lives a life following the doctrine of Godlessness. 

 

That is significant because Atheism does NOT mean without religion.

 

The significance of the grouping of Atheists into the American Atheists, they have become an organized group that could be classified a religion under one of the definitions of religion: "A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion. (dictionary.com)" 

 

Looking at it this way there is no way to remove religion from interactions of government with society.  This however does not mean that Churchs will be run by the Government or that the Government will require a specific belief.  Instead it means that in the day to day running of minor parts of the government that the people will chose by majority how to implement what they feel is best for the majority (imagine that...in a democracy no less!)

 

The cause of the atheists is evangelising.  They are converting the government and the nation to the religion of anit-Deism.

 

The real question is whether or not using the cross signifies government endorsement of a specific belief.  The approach that is being taken is that the cross can be used separate of its religious connotation. 

 

A better approach would be to look at the overall effect.  By removing crosses and replacing them with something else, would a specific belief be endorsed?  The answer is of course 'yes.'  It is the belief of anti-Deism.  The coalition of those who do not believe in God quickly approaches the definition of being a religion, with specific doctrines that are becoming accepted as the Government being 'without religion,' which is certainly not the case.

 

I do not believe that separation of church and state was intended to create a government the evangelizes atheism.  Interestingly, one of the definitions of atheism is "immorality (dictionary.com)."  I find it troubling that the ACLU and other groups would pursue a course that preaches this doctrine to the nation.  Atheism is not 'without religion' it is in fact a religion, one that should certainly be kept separate from the decisions made by the state.

As a person I personally have NO issue with President Bush's program of eavesdropping to help protect Americans.  As a Democrat I'm supposed to be out-raged, but I just can't bring myself to that.  In fact my only concern at the unfortunate disclosure of these acts is the response of the political parties. 

 

Far too often it seems that the parties respond based on their allegiance to party instead of their own personal beliefs.  Notably several Republicans have spoken out against the eavesdropping while the entire Democrat party seems to be at Bush's heels.  I believe that if it were a Democrat president that the Republican party would be up in arms and a few Democrats would have spoken out.

 

My concern is 'what is right?' is based on what party you belong to instead of what you believe to be right.  When you let your political party take precedence over what your conscience says, you are political.  You IS politics.  I yearn for policy makers to make their decisions based on what they believe to be right instead of what their party says and challenge them to do so.  If you react differently to someone, especially the president, based on their party instead of their actions then you might question what you really believe in.