[Buddha-l] S. Pinker (linguist, cognitive psychologist)

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2005-06-28 at 09:17 -0400, Stanley J. Ziobro II wrote:

> Your mention of a Buddhist running for President is an interesting
> thought, however.  I wonder how that would play out in our nominally
> Christian country.

The United States is NOT a nominally Christian country. There is
absolutely nothing in any of the legal documents on which this country
is founded making it a Christian nation. It may be true that a majority
of citizens south of the Mason-Dixon line are Christians, but there is
such a large minority of non-Christians in the rest of the USA that it
is offensive in the extreme to try to pass this nation off as being of
any one religion. Please apologize immediately to the denizens of
buddha-l or face deportation to an evangelical news group. And say 108
Hail Marys to atone for your sin.

The United States has already had four Unitarian presidents (Adams pere
and fils, Filmore and Taft), plus three who belonged to no church at all
(Jefferson, Lincoln and Andrew Johnson), so right there we have seven
presidents who were practically Buddhists. Hoover was a Quaker, so that
makes eight Buddhists. Nixon was also a Quaker, but he was from the
evangelical wing of the Quakers who have ordained ministers and noisy
services rather than silent worship, so he was an anti-Buddhist.
As I have said many times before, William H. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary
of State, was a Buddhist (back in the days when it was still possible
for a Whig turned Republican to be a Buddhist -- being a Buddhist
Republican became impossible in 1964, when Goldwater abducted the GOP
and turned it into a right-wing totalitarian force of darkness
determined to undermine all the principles of the founding fathers).
Seward, as you probably recall, bought Alaska, thereby making Alaska
America's first Buddhist territory.

-- 
Richard Hayes
***
"Above all things, take heed in judging one another, 
for in that ye may destroy one another...
and eat out the good of one another."-- George Fox