Now we are even being told by the police state how we can remember the dead. It's bad enough that our putative secular authority can only speak in religious imagery, and only Christian imagery, when he can get away with it.
In heavily religious language, Mr. Bush sought to comfort the family members of the astronauts seated in the front row.Elsewhere in Texas, three days ago a pair of artists, Robert Ladislas Derr and Lynn Foglesong-Derr, who live in Nacogdoches, began a beautiful and totally secular performance intended to memorialize the seven astronauts lost in the Columbia disaster above their home."Some explorers do not return, and the loss settles unfairly on a few," he said, as the wife and sons of Cmdr. William C. McCool, the shuttle's pilot, wept.
The sorrow, the president said, is lonely, but he added: "You are not alone. In time, you will find comfort and the grace to see you through. And in God's own time, we can pray that the day of your reunion will come."
Dressed in black to show mourning, Ms. Foglesong-Derr somberly outlined Mr. Derrs body with chalk within the site of one of the debris from the shuttle in the town center. Once the silhouette was drawn, the artists walked into the crowd and recited from Jean-Paul Sartres book Essays in Existentialism, speaking the words, When we say that man chooses his own self, we mean that every one of us does likewise; but we also mean by that that in making this choice he also chooses all men.Minutes into the performance, Texas state troopers stopped them and told them that flowers and flags were a more appropriate way to remember the deceased. The world is being made poorer by the ascendancy of small minds.The artists chose this quote from the French philosophers book because it speaks to the effect of an individuals action upon the many. This tragedy involving seven astronauts emotionally touches humanity throughout the world.
[Thanks to Douglas Kelly for the Nacogdoches story.]