Syria and the Superstition Exodus

Watching the European refugee crisis unfold, we need to be reminded of what the real cause of the crisis is. It is the giant belching created by the hunger of and hunger for superstition – in the case of Bashar Al-Assad, the superstition of the God-like state and its leader, and in the case of ISIS, the superstition of ancient texts written by our primitive ancestors as being *completely* *literally* true, even in the face of undeniable evidence that this simply isn’t so.

How lucky we are to live in modern liberal democracies – in the case of America, one born out of the Masonic philosophy of the freedom of speech and a rudimentary tolerance of at least different Abrahamic faiths (it’s not clear to me the Masons of that era would have tolerated non-Abrahamic faiths, if I am in error on this please correct me).

I lived in Michigan for five years. Michigan contains the biggest proportion of immigrants from the Middle East. I had friends who were Iraqi, Syrian, Palestinian, Iranian, Lebanese and more, Christian, Chaldean, Syriac Orthodox, Muslim, Sunni and Shia. Truthfully, even here they don’t always like each other, as I found out over many surprising conversations. But never once in my five years there did I see a rocket launched, a window smashed, or a violent act occur, and I certainly have never heard of a different strain of violence occurring above the normal level of crime that still occurs in every community of people, regardless of race or nationality or faith.

When you put human beings in a different environment, their behavior changes, and even though these refugees no doubt hear constantly about how racist, bigoted, and colonialist we in the west have been, they are risking the lives of both themselves and their children to get here at all costs. In spite of our eternal and unforgivable bigotry, they are committing acts of bravery we cannot fathom because life among the bigots is so much more preferable to life among the theocrats of the State or the theocrats of the Book.

I don’t know what the answer is in this crisis, except that these people are in dire need of help. I just hope we work every day to help create a world where people choose to come to Europe or the West out of the luxury of free choice, not out of the desperation of persecution and violence