Without Questions We Are All Sheep

I remember back when I bothered to go to church and when George W. Bush was in office that I'd often be scolded by my peers for not supporting the president. "The Bible says that we should support and obey our leader" they would say after I criticized him. Of course even back then I knew they'd never support a Democratic president if he or she was in office -hypocrites are like that- but that phrase always disturbed me greatly. That attitude in itself is disturbing, and yet I used to hear it all the time. "You shouldn't question our president, he knows what he's doing." "He has the hardest job in the world, people who criticize him just don't understand." "I believe that anyone who doesn't support the leader of the free world is just as bad as the terrorists who caused 9/11." Each of those phrases came from the mouth of someone I knew at the time. It was frightening, scary, and I constantly worried that this mind-set of blindly obeying higher authorities like sheep was going to grow, and eventually cause another Hitler to rise to power.

Luckily, that didn't happen, and the overall attitude of the community I live in seems to accept criticism of higher authorities now -though sometimes that criticism gets out of control and becomes people simply spitting out the first hateful thing which comes to mind. The Tea Party and FOX News are examples of this- but I still find myself disturbed that people back then could even dare to say such things. What on earth set in motion the idea that we should blindly obey a president who was clearly incompetent, stupid, and overall dangerous? Was it 9/11? Possibly, but even such an event shouldn't blind people to the truth. Was it because of his religion? Again, that's a possibility, but the president we have now is of the same religion and it's okay to attack him. Was it because of his party? That could be another factor, but I did hear some Democrats make the same "we should support our president" speech as well. I believe it comes down to a mixture of all three -possibly more- in the end, but fear and loyalty along religious and party lines are no excuses to act like sheep.

Simply obeying someone because you're told to obey them is just as dangerous as believing something because you're told to believe it. Doing everything you're told to do, believing everything you're told to believe, being blind to the truth, accepting something based on no evidence, is a formula for disaster. I can use 9/11 as an example for this. The "terrorists" who brought down the towers were told by a mad man to kill themselves, and that mad man used passages out of a religious text to claim that he was doing good. Since this mad man was their leader, and the religious text was also their guide to their beliefs, the men who followed him asked no questions and believed what they were doing was right. Look at the consequences, thousands of people were killed, families destroyed, all because the men who hijacked the planes refused to question their leader, and their religion.

Who's to say such an event couldn't happen again, here within the boarders of America? Those born into religious families of any kind are taught not to question their religion. From birth religion is pounded into their heads, the children are taught to blindly obey and accept this religion without any evidence to prove it. They're taught not to ask questions, that their god will solve all of their problems, make everything clear in time. What if someone then took their child and raised them to be a killer in the same manner? What if someone picked out those verses which appear in any religious text that justifies war, murder, as long as it's in the name of their god and pounded them into a child's head from birth? What if that child in turn grew up and raised his or her family in the same manner, and his or her children carried out the brainwashing to their own children? It sounds scary, right? Because it is scary, and it's happening. Not on such a drastic scale per-say, but happening.

What if "God" tells them to kill? It's frightening that something like this is happening in our own country, but it can be stopped. If people would just learn to ask questions, seek out reason, then these ideals won't spread so quickly. If people were taught to accept nothing without proof, question everything, everyone, then events like 9/11 and the Holocaust could have been avoided, along with whatever the next man-made tragedy will be.

- Pako