TEN COMMANDMENTS REDUX

Using common sense as a source of moral authority, which must be credited with having kept our species from exterminating itself long before any religion enslaved it, I have reworked the Ten Commandments as follows:

1. Don't murder people. Period.

2. Slavery is wrong, so don't make slaves of one another.

3. Don't take stuff that isn't yours.

4. Pedophilia is wrong, so don't do it.

5. Women and men are equals; afford each gender equal respect.

6. Do not lie, unless by lying you cause a greater injustice.

7. Don't engage each other in war over imaginary supernatural things, or to spread your version of Utopia to every culture. Save war as a last resort for retaining your freedoms, helping to maintain the freedoms of allies or preventing genocide.

8. Protect the defenseless from those who lack civility.

9. Be kind to animals even if you are eventually going to kill and eat them.

10. Genetic variances cause racial variation and sexual preference differences. Accept this as fact. Treat everyone as you would be treated.

Admittedly, I have several advantages over the original Ten Commandments authors in that I am not a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infantcidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. I'm just your humble, free-thinking Zootopian.

DECLARATION

As We the People of the United States endeavor to sustain a natural order in which the autonomous human archetype shall certainly persevere, there may come a time when the citizenry must challenge those who would attempt to lift the Curse of Freedom from freedom-loving people; that time is upon us. To this end and for the sake of self-preservation, we will defend and honor these simple truths; that we are all born into a natural state of freedom; that each of us is endowed with the power of free will; that we have established a set of intrinsically sanctioned rights to protect us from government tyranny and among these are the right to speak freely, without constraint, and to use cogency to defend ourselves against all usurpers of freedom, as the majority of us would rather shoulder the burden of responsibility for our own lives than be forced to forfeit individual liberty; the right to procreate and raise a family unbound by government restrictions; the right to determine the path of our own destiny in accordance with our own desire, such that we shall not be made slaves of the State or any controlling agency. Let this declaration signal the clarion call to action as We the People of the United States rise against any and all tyrannies of vassalage and reclaim the freedom that rightly belongs to each of us, individually, one and all.

copyright 2009 Patrick Pierson

FREETHINKING, and the resurrection thereof...

...from the official lexicon of the ZOOTOPOSPHERE:
FREETHINKING refers to an inclination to form one's own opinions rather than depend upon authority, especially about social, political and religious issues; a strong desire to exhibit boldness of speculation and be skeptical of authority; and a willingness to oppose and supplant the mythological narratives of the past and the dogmas of the present with a commitment to promoting science and the arts, freedom of inquiry tempered by the power of reason, and an unflinching embrace of scientific-humanist values: Biologist E. O. Wilson claimed scientific-humanism to be "the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature".