This BLOG post begins with my photo du jour,

a very special picture of a couple of my best friends,

Father and Daughter, Kenton and Maya Hundley.

They remind me that life is good.

Now... back to CONUNDRUM.

CONUNDRUM:  Yesterday as I struggled with a piece of thinking/writing, I could find no satisfactory conclusion… not in my own convictions arising out of dilemmas relating to religion and politics nor in the opinions of philosophers, historians, or theologians, alive and sometimes long-dead) whom I had been researching… so I got back to the problem today when I settled down after breakfast with the daily newspapers as I have often done in mornings since I was blessed (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) with a life of comfortable retirement. On page 7 of the L.A. Times a news report begins with the headline: France targets hate speech; 54 are arrested.  The first paragraph: “PARIS - French authorities tightened security Wednesday in response to last week’s terrorist attacks, ordering a crackdown on hate speech that backs terrorism and deploying the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to support U.S.-led airstrikes in the Middle East…. French authorities issued an order to strictly enforce laws against voicing support for terrorist acts and disclosed that 54 people had been arrested for violating the prohibitions, initially adopted to deter and punish anti-Semitic remarks… Among those accused of speaking out in defense of last week’s attack at the satirical magazine was a controversial comedian, Dieu donne M’bal M’bala…, who had tweeted that he felt was victimized as one of the gunmen, Amedy Coulibaly… ‘whenever I express myself some people will not even try to understand me, they will not listen,’ the comic said in a letter to the interior ministry” 

Under what circumstances does free speech become a threat to public safety and a violation of laws deigned to preserve freedom and right to life of others? 

…so I am back to yesterday’s conundrum: When we see and hear reports of people so tightly, rigidly bound to an ideology that they are eager to hurt, even kill people who have a different ideology from their own, we are left wondering if a way to responsible freedom is possible with all the players agreeing on definitions of both freedom and responsiblity.  A dilemma looms large, doesn’t it, for all of us in the world who want freedom of speech, not just for ourselves but for everybody; and we want security, not just for ourselves but for everybody; and we want freedom for all people to be religious in whatever ways they choose or not to be religious at all; and we want all of this to be possible in a civil society where people live in peace and harmony with each other. Is it possible for such a world to exist? 

Also in this morning’s newspaper:  ‘Godless’ kids turn out just fine’ by Phil Zukerman, professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College and author of “Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions.”

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parenting-20150115-story.html