What Do We Do

What Do We Do? By Sally Morem I wrote the following in response to a humanist web site’s request for responses to the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001: 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 power 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 and the beginning of World War II. 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, and our free-wheeling culture. We stand in their way merely by existing. So, they believe Allah orders genocide. We are at war. What, besides donations to survivors, 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 for murderers of Americans. We can repeat over and over again how secular America is the force for good in the world, for freedom, democracy, and a satisfying moral life. We can link ourselves again and again to the moral virtues of secular America. We can end any semblance of anti-Americanism we’ve ever engaged in. We may remain critical of specific problems, but America—after accounting for all the normal human frailties—must be named by us directly as secular humanists to be the grandest political, economic, cultural and social invention in human history. Why? Because it will help our movement, it will help us defeat the terrorists, and 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 usually consider the Christian religious right as our ultimate enemy. This is no longer true, if it ever was. 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 willing to flap their yaps. It is time we secular humanists choose America—our beloved democratic and secular nation. Our beloved home. The bad news is that secular humanist organizations and leaders rejected my vision. They are (at least most of them) leftists. They preferred to do nothing to aid our fight against terrorism, seeing America itself as one of their greatest enemies. In short, they were leftists first and Americans last. Secular humanism itself rated a far distant second in their political priorities. As a pro-American, politically conservative, philosophical agnostic, I couldn’t tolerate this attitude any more, and dropped out of the movement soon after their fundamental anti-American stance became apparent to me.