Friday Atheist Magician

(I am not Inv2)

Despite being a regular reader and commenter of Inv’s for a fair while, mostly what we share in common is sports-nuttery and a pretty firm conviction that the Labour party are a bunch of muppets. I’m not a National Party party vote voter and I’m not a Christian either (although I’d probably accept Richard Dawkins self-label of “cultural Christian”). I’ve known I was an Atheist since I was about 10 years old but I’ve only really become engaged politically in the last few years and refining where I actually stand politically has been a drawn-out process.

Where I’m going with this, is that I’m surprised to find that one of my favourite outspoken Atheists is also a self-confessed Libertarian. One of my Bookface mates in the US alerted me to this Piers Morgan interview with Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame:

A fuller two parter can be found starting here: YouTube linky

Shockingly bad interviewing, I think you’ll agree. Piers would fit in well here with that “tough interviewing means interrupting your guest and not letting them finish a sentence” technique.

So Penn has written this subsequent opinion piece at CNN.com and I want to pick out this quote which I will save to repeat every time some lefty gets on the “evil, greedy right-winger” meme.

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.

So, really, it’s a “Thank you” from me to Penn Jillette, the aim of his book may well be to make more Americans look inside and think “Yes, I’m an Atheist”, but he’s made this expat Pom in Noo Zeelund say “Yes, I am a Libertarian”.

Read the whole thing here.