By Sally Morem
We now know that the terrorists have tried to do very serious damage to America many times in the past, each time thwarted by our security forces. This time the terrorists succeeded. I am very sad and extremely furious. The terrorists ripped into America, erasing thousands of our fellow Americans’ lives from the universe.
As secular humanists, we can’t give their families religious comfort by promising life after death for their loved ones. We can only give meaning to this horrendous travesty by accepting the challenge history and the terrorists have flung at us: The systematic tracking down and destruction of every terrorist organization in the world. We are the only nation with the military and technological know-how for the job. We must take the responsibility. We can’t duck it the way we did after World War I. I believe our Jewish friends will not mind if we borrow their saying, “Never Again.”
Appeasement is dead. Pacifism is dead. Cultural relativism is dead. Moral relativism is dead. Equivalence theory is dead. We know evil when we see it. The Islamic extreme fundamentalists are evil. They would kill every single American if they could, Israel or no Israel. They would stop at nothing. Why? Because we Americans are sinners in their eyes with our freedom, our wealth, our culture. We stand in their way merely by existing. So, they believe Allah ordered genocide. We are at war.
What, besides donations, can we do? We can engage in a secular humanist wartime propaganda blitz. At every opportunity, we can use our humanist connections around the world to spread the word against promises of God’s virgins in heaven to murderers of Americans. We can repeat over and over again how secular America is THE force for good in the life of the world. We could link ourselves again and again to the moral virtues of secular America. We could end any semblance of anti-Americanism we’ve ever engaged in. We may remain critical of specific problems, but America—after accounting for all human frailties—must be named by us as secular humanists to be the grandest political, economic, cultural, and social invention in human history. Why? Because it will help our movement and because it is true.
We are at war. This war will take years. We secular humanists must take sides. Folks, I tell you, cultural evolution has brought us to this: The world can either choose the Enlightenment West led by America, or it can choose the terrorists with their promises (threats) of theocratic tyranny. There is no longer a third way.
I realize humanists normally consider the Christian religious right as our ultimate enemy. This is no longer true. Our religious right is a pitiful joke—witness Falwell’s and Robertson’s recent sick statements, practically excusing those attacks on our country. Our new ultimate enemy is the Islamic religious right. They are the ones who are willing to slam airplanes into buildings full of people. Falwell and Robertson are only will to flap their yaps. It’s time we secular humanists choose America—our beloved democratic and free secular nation. Our beloved home.