University of Virginia Library

By David Giltinan

The Great American Religion

Separation of Church and State
is a quaint delusion some share here
in Amerika. The State has
become its own Church. The
secular has been sanctified. The
Neo-Protestant production ethic,
the Silent Majority's Silent Cannon
of 'work hard and don't rock
the boat,' the religiously dogmatic
assertion that Amerika is the 'Land
of the Free;' this unofficial Litany,
this doggerel delusion is as real and
intolerant and insane as a 'Love It
or Leave It' bumper sticker or a
witchcraft trial.

State-Worshipers

What else but a State-worshipping
religion or religion substitute
explains the hundreds of thousands
of so-called Christians and Jews
who are presently murdering people
in Vietnam? What else accounts
for the wording of the Military
Service Act of 1967 that grants
Conscientious Objector Status only
to those people who refuse to kill
on religious grounds as specifically
opposed to "...essentially political,
sociological, or philosophical
views or a merely personal moral
code." What else accounts for the
incredible arrogance of the phrase
"merely personal moral code?"

A person's moral code doesn't
count as much as the State's moral
code here in Amerika. There can be
no other conclusion. Indeed the
only thing that the State will
consider as 'valid' as its' religion is
another, and very emphatically
religious, religion.

It's insane, but that's all right,
cause Amerika's insane and that
makes insanity good.

'Transcendence Gap'

It seems that our entire generation
has been raised (intentionally
or not) without any type of
transcendent, miracle working,
fire-breathing, Hell-raising religious
awe. This is fine, but what isn't fine
is the State's attempt, largely
successful, to fill the 'transcendence
gap.' Whenever a State can get
clergymen to support a policy of
continued genocide in the name of
national honor, one senses that
transcendent morality has hit some
sort of all-time low.

I use 'transcendent morality'
advisedly, in contrast to our prevailing
mood of expedient morality,
which has become the most valuable
tool of the state. Expedient
morality, the '...and don't rock
the boat' part of the Silent Cannon,
is an ugly thing. It is also known as
selfishness. It is candy-coated as
'helplessness' when it lets six-million
Jews get butchered in Germany
"just outside of town." It is praised
as 'capitalism' when it builds
ten-million automobiles to foul the
air around the ghettos it chooses to
ignore. It is excused as 'shortsightedness'
when the people it
blithely abuses and ignores suddenly
murder each other and burn its
appliance-store-symbols.

You don't have to live in the
ghetto to be a sucker for and
victim of expedient morality. All
you have to be is a college student.

Every male college student who
has accepted a 11-S deferment,
(sie!), and I am one, has agreed to
become a charter member of the
Silent Majority, whether he resents
the tag or not, vocally or not. If
you've got that draft card, consider
yourself silent.

Manipulation

The situation is a classic case of
Governmental manipulation of our
expedient morality, (or immorality).
We agreed to support the
draft system, making it that much
harder for anyone else to resist, we
give our de facto support to the
murder of 40,000 of our generation
(less lucky then us), we give
strength and life to a system that
will sooner or later try to kill
us ...because its expedient.

Everyone of us who holds a
draft card is responsible for the
war. We are all accessories to
genocide, unless you have a more
polite word for the death of
300,000 civilians. Even those of us
who would drag their true religion
down to the level of the State
Religion by accepting C 0 deferments
and "contributing to the
maintenance of the national health,
safety or interest as the local
board ...may deem appropriate,"
even those of us who won't support
the war but will support the
system, have hands as bloody as
LBJ, or Westmoreland, or Lt.
Calley.

Today nobody can be nineteen,
male, moral and Amerikan all at
once, unless he wants to go to jail.
Its that simple.

Because we support the draft,
half of us will be drafted and half
of us will condemn our fellows to
be drafted. Because we support the
draft the war can go on. Because we
support the draft we will continue
to release into Amerikan society
thousands of men who have murdered
(once the highest crime) for
their country and the lie that is its
honor.. Because we support the
draft we will continue to force
those among us who are too moral
both to kill and to support killing,
to leave the country or become
felons.

Amerikan Religion

When all the people who are too
moral, in the good old transcendent
sense, to live in Amerika ... have
left ... what are we going to have?
A million megaton nation of cops?
or cowards? Holy crummies all over
the world to spread the Amerikan
religion with fire and sword?

If the youth of Amerika don't
get interested quickly in getting
together to stop supporting this
madness, then one thing we will
most assuredly not have, is a
democracy.