An atheist protecting a cross?

I’m an avowed atheist; I believe that religion is detrimental to the advancement of the human species. I dismiss all religions as merely man-made fairy tales, and it is my belief there is no redeeming virtue or practical benefit to be found in any religion. Simply put, to quote Christopher Hitchens, religion poisons everything.

It may offend people to read statements like this, but that’s OK with me. It’s OK for people to be offended.

I’d like to emphasize that point. Many people truly believe they somehow have a right to live without having to confront opinions or values different from their own. Let’s get one thing straight: You do not have the right to not be offended.

Religions offend me for a variety of reasons. When I drive past a church on a Sunday morning and see smiling parishioners spilling out into their communities, it bothers my conscience. I find it to be deeply disturbing. But I acknowledge and appreciate their right to the free exercise of their religious convictions, and that those rights are justly protected by the law. It would be wrong for anyone to attempt to take these rights away.

So, at what point do the nonreligious decide it is time to object to religious practices? Many atheists have fought legal battles against government endorsement of specific religious institutions or practices. Some of these battles have been legitimate and some frivolous, at best. An example of a frivolous skirmish is currently taking place just north of here.

At Camp Pendleton, there is a hilltop memorial dedicated to the memory of marines who died in Iraq in various engagements throughout the last decade. This memorial, which was erected on Veterans Day last year, is a 13-foot tall cross. The existing memorial was built to replace a previous one, which was destroyed by a fire. The original memorial was built by a group of marines in 2003, who put it on the hilltop before leaving for Iraq. Three of the marines who built the original cross were subsequently killed in combat. A group of Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans and the widows of the soldiers who built the original memorial carried the new cross to its current location.

This is not OK with Jason Torpy, president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, who has objected to the memorial.

According to Torpy, “No cross or statue of Jesus represents military service.” In a written statement, he continued to argue, “Military service is being exploited to secure unconstitutional Christian privilege.”

However, according to the Camp Pendleton public affairs office, “The memorial cross activity… was conducted by private individuals acting solely in their personal capacities. As such, they were not acting in any official position or capacity that may be construed as an endorsement of a specific religious denomination by the Department of Defense or the U.S. Marine Corps.”

Torpy has taken issue with this, arguing that knowledge of the memorial was akin to official approval. Torpy has posed the question, “Would they allow that for anyone else who wanted to put up something for atheists?”

This type of position is how atheists have earned a reputation for being obnoxious. As an atheist, this bothers me. Atheism is, by definition, the absence of religion. There is currently no equivalent symbol that atheists could (or would) place on a hilltop to memorialize fallen comrades. If there were such a symbol, our laws would provide equal protection for such a symbol to be displayed.

There is no place in this nation more sacred than Arlington National Cemetery. I don’t care what anyone has to say to the contrary. In the United States, there is no ground more hallowed than that place. When I visited Arlington, I was overwhelmed with solemnity and gratitude. The weight of the sacrifices that have been made by service members is incalculable, and that is all I thought about when I walked through that special place, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of gravestones, the majority of which have crosses on them. I would have to be thoroughly solipsistic to take offense at the presence of crosses in memorials to soldiers.

When I see a cross on a hilltop at Camp Pendleton, I have freedom in how I interpret that symbol. I can see a symbol of torture and oppression, responsible for untold misery and suffering through the last 2,000 years, or I can see the meaning that this symbol carries for a third of humanity. For most people, the cross is a completely harmless symbol that gives hope and meaning to their lives. I completely disagree with their position and the cross is a disgusting thing to me; but how big of an egomaniac would I have to be to attempt to ban the display of crosses, or other religious symbols?

It’s disappointing the atheist community feels the need to resort to litigious action instead of promoting a more healthy dialogue. The problem of religion will not be solved in the courtrooms.

The Hero America Deserves

Thespian.

Environmentalist.

Animal rights activist.

Martial artist.

Musician.

Producer.

Reserve deputy sherrif.

Add all of these together, and what do you get?

Steven Frederic Seagal.

Pictured: Steven Seagal, preparing to impregnate an endangered panda. He's just trying to help.

I spent a good chunk of my childhood watching Seagal's masterful portrayals of a complex range of characters, and I'm sad to say that it appears his movies are fading into obscurity. Over the last decade, Seagal has had limited (meaning absolutely zero) commercially successful films. He has released over twenty direct-to-dvd films, continuing to do what he does best.

What, exactly, does he do best?

It's hard to describe what Seagal does. It's best to watch. He has an uncanny ability to do devastatingly violent things to people in a highly, uh, violent way. The guy made the most over-the-top action movies of the 1980s, which was an era of unprecedented production when it came to over-the-top action movies.

Pictured: An action movie from the 1980s that was literally Over The Top.

Seagal had an unlikely string of hits in the late '80s, culminating in the classic action thriller Under Seige back in 1992. He hasn't had a substantial hit since. Why hasn't he had a hit since then? What went wrong? Hollywood had stumbled upon a surefire hit movie formula wherein a giant, balding, functionally illiterate (probably), Aikido master with limited verbal capability beat the ever-loving dogshit out of people for an hour and a half. I don't understand why Steven Seagal didn't star in every major action hit over the last twenty years.

Sadly, Seagal's career essentially fizzled and died twenty years ago. Let's take a stroll down memory lane and identify the top five movies of his career, starting with...

Pictured: Marked For Death

To summarize the plot of this sublime film (wherein Seagal makes origami figures out of several Jamaican thugs): Seagal's family gets killed by the unluckiest drug dealers of all time. Truly a classic of the late 1980s action film canon, Marked For Death is a highly enjoyable bad movie. It's well-paced and competently directed. Fortunately for the audience, Seagal doesn't really attempt anything resembling acting, and the social commentary is kept to a minimum (there are obvious "drugs are bad" hints sprinkled throughout the narrative, just to be safe). He pretty much just beats the shit out of a lot of people, which (let's be honest) is exactly what we, the audience, have come to see.

The highlight of this viewing experience is the highly nuanced way in which Seagal dispatches the head bad guy, named "Screwface" (of course). He whoops the guy's ass, repeatedly cuts the guy up with a ninja sword, breaks the dude's spine, and throws him down an elevator shaft where he gets impaled on a giant spike... I feel like I'm forgetting something... Oh, yeah. He also shoves the dude's eyeballs into the back of his head, for good measure.

Next up, we have...

Pictured: Above The Law

This movie has Pam Grier in it. It was actually Seagal's first film, and one has to wonder how the hell this career got off the ground in the first place. Also, inexplicably, Seagal has way less hair in this movie than in any other movie in his illustrious career. No worries, though. We all know that practicing Aikido causes ever-thickening hair growth for middle-aged men. 

Imagine it's 1988. You take your sweetheart to the movies, to go check out a fun summer action flick... 

Now, I haven't seen Above The Law in a few months (yeah, months), but I am pretty sure that Seagal snaps a dude's arm so that it's facing the wrong direction. He does this with the same careless disregard one might show when breaking apart a turkey carcass on Thanksgiving, after you're done carving the thing and you're trying to get it to fit in your trash can. As far as I know, this type of violence was absolutely revolutionary. Chuck Norris or Jean-Claude van Damme would kick a bad guy in the face, and the guy goes down. Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger would shoot people, and they would just drop. In Steven Seagal's films, starting with his very first one and continuing on to his present direct-to-dvd endeavors, at some point he is going to get his hands on a bad guy and you, the audience member, will watch him wrench bones out of sockets and snap limbs with reckless abandon. The bones make delicious crunching sounds. The faces of Seagal's victims twist and contort in agony as the scream in vain for mercy. What was going through the shocked minds of audience members back in 1988!?

By the time 1990 rolled around, audiences knew what was coming, so there was no excuse for people to actually pay money to go see...

Pictured: Hard To Kill... presumably a movie produced by people who had seen Above The Law

Hard To Kill has the distinction of being the movie with the single greatest line of dialogue in the history of cinema.

You just can't top that. So, anyways, the movie is about a cop (surprise!) who is out for revenge (surprise!) against the assassins who tried to kill him. Seagal begins stretching the limits of an audience's ability to suspend their disbelief in this film, but we forgive him for it because we all secretly enjoy watching him snap limbs like some kind of deranged chiropractic school dropout. 

Coming in at number two on our countdown to the greatest film in the celebrated career of America's greatest action hero is...

Pictured: Sadly, the only film featuring Steven Seagal AND Gary Busey

This was the most commercially successful movie of Steven Seagal's career, by far. It was really well made. It had a huge budget and several really good actors (also, Steven Seagal). Tommy Lee Jones was in it, and appears to seriously enjoy himself while playing the villain. Under Siege has also held up surprisingly well over time, and is very watchable, even by today's standards. 

Seagal plays a disgraced former Navy SEAL who is now a cook onboard a soon-to-be decommissioned battleship that gets taken over by terrorists (led by Jones). Seagal turns from docile cook to one-man wrecking machine in a hurry and saves the day. Shockingly, Seagal doesn't snap a single bone in this film. He kills people in horribly violent and ridiculously creative ways, but nary an ulna was molested by the master of man-on-bone violence. Disappointing.

Finally, the moment you have been waiting for...

The greatest Steven Seagal movie of all time is...

Pictured: Probably the best movie ever.

This is the one, folks. This is the pinnacle of a twenty-five year career as an action icon. 

The story is simple. A tough Italian cop searches the neighborhood for the psycho who killed his... Friend? Brother? Partner? I don't remember. Who cares? As is often the case, the journey is more meaningful than the destination, and this journey involves Seagal mercilessly and gleefully battering dozens of thugs. It's the most over-the-top movie of the most gloriously over-the-top period in action movie production (1980-1994). In the final fight alone, Seagal beats up William Forsythe with a salt/pepper shaker, a frying pan, a corkscrew, a kitchen knife, and (maybe?) a rolling pin. Seagal tears through New York like a giant greased-up, leathery tornado for 91 minutes of ridiculousness. 

This film boasts Seagal's best action work, coupled with the rare treat of Seagal actually trying to act. He actually attempts an accent! It's fantastic and totally unnecessary. Seagal really explored the hell out of virtually every Italian stereotype in this film, and his commitment to godawful acting really shows. 

So, there you have it. If you should choose to sit down on a Saturday and have yourself a Steven Seagal movie marathon - and you should - these movies are unquestionably the ones to view. Seagal's so-bad-they're-good movies reveal parts of the American psyche that are easy to forget about. His films are a window into a bygone, simpler era where a man could snap more limbs than an obese New Englander at an all-you-can-eat lobster buffet without audiences freaking out about it. 

No CGI. No special effects. No attempt at actual storytelling or self-awareness from the protagonist... 

Just fun. 

By the way, if you think that what Steven Seagal does to a limb causes pain, you should see/hear what happens when he gets his hands on a guitar.

Pictured: Seagal playing a tune for his best friend, who happens to be a tree.