The cinder-block cross was butt-ugly and as Smash noted was "visible several miles out to sea." From a distance you saw beautiful trees, green hills and then the cheap white cross. Esthetically it was never attractive a post-modernist construct that marred the purity of the vegetation before it was built. And, like it or not, it was a billboard for torture, though most folks probably didn't see it that way or think much about it at all.

Every time I saw that cross (and I saw it twice a day for years and years) I saw the Romans favored method of public execution. It reminded me of how the uneducated worship the symbol of murder/death in a display of pagan ignorance.

Christ was murdered and his murderers turned the instrument of his death into a symbol to cause untold more suffering.

I mean, really, how many generations, how many billions, of humans will still live with the ancient guidance, indoctrination and beliefs passed down from a bunch of illiterate folks who had a functional IQ of around 40-75?

No, don't answer that. It's way too painful to hear the answer. We see the result all too painfully in the Middle East almost daily.

Religion is a necessary form of slavery of the mind. It's necessary as a learning tool/society pacifier. As long as science can't tell folks what happens to them when they die, the pagan religions will fill the blank with mumbo jumbo, heaven, hell, harps, 50 virgins or whatever placates that universal and nightmarish fear of death.

No edifice to mass ignorance must stand forever. Nothing material lasts forever. Yet that concept and realization has yet to be embraced.

Smash's "Aw, I'm going to miss the landmark" blog entry is content-less fluff. I'ts so tiresome reading these right-wing blogs that pose for acceptance by what they perceive to be their gun-toting, church going readership. Reverse activists aren't conservatives at all. Their a bunch of "me too!" folks that like to feel like they are a part of a larger movement, just like the dolphin riding humanists, hoping to be carried by the tide all while quelling their own insecurities.

Anyone claiming to be a standard-bearer of conservatism is a farce. Conservatives have no flags to wave around. Pandering to the lowest common denominator to rally resentment isn't that difficult. Chain blogging the issue of the day takes the intellectual capacity of a chimpanzee.

Martyrdom doesn't suit a true conservative. True conservatives don't give a rat's tush whether some activists remove crosses or "God" from the pledge of allegiance. They have a moment of bemusement (or whatever) and then it passes and they get on with their life. No crusades to repel, condemn or quell the activists or claim persecution are part of their agenda. Even if they are Christian conservatives, they simply retire to their own closet and pray for the misguided, the veterans and whomever else. They certainly don't need a cement cross to cement their faith. And if they do...well God help them.

All this stuff just amuses me anymore.

Folks' ignorance is bliss. Millions sing the Star Spangled Banner at ball games, not knowing it's sung to the tune of an old English drinking song composed by a cult dedicated to debauchery. (Which was a theme most drunks of the era could sing along with)

If they knew the true unexpurgated history of their religion, their cross and had actually witnessed someone dying slowly and painfully on them as sadists watched, threw stones or taunted the dying victim - they would yank em from their necks but fast! They would take them down from the walls and look on them as we look on the bloody blades of Islamic fanatics intent upon beheading some innocent - a symbol of human depravity at its worst.

But irony loves mankind.

Anyway, that's just my educated opinion. Some folks, somewhere are bound to be offended. The trick is not let some concrete rule your life, one way or the other.