The following commentary is reprinted with permission from Nicki Kelly. It is from her wildly popular Between The Lines column, printed in The Punch every Monday and Thursday.
The German philosopher, Karl Marx, whose socialist theories fostered the rise of the Communist state, had good reason for describing religion as the "opium of the people."
In this country especially, it has been used to drug people into believing that going to church, putting the better part of a week's wages in the collection plate and screaming "Save me, Lord," absolves them from any personal responsibility as to how they live their lives the rest of the time.
Some of the biggest adulterers and fornicators are to be found sitting front and centre in church and at religious revivals. Rather than acknowledge that it is their immoral and amoral behaviour that has produced the high level of criminality, they hypocritically look for scape-goats.
The prison, the police, the court, the school have all come in for blame, though they simply reflect the attitudes of society. We can talk all we want about reforming these institutions, but they are only symptoms of the disease, which continues to eat at the heart of the community.
Criminal behaviour has become endemic in this society, with many parents living off their children's criminal earnings. White-collar crime is at an all-time high, with seemingly respectable people prepared, without qualm, to rip off their employers in time, money or goods. The only reason there is such an outcry now is because the criminals have resorted to killing instead of just stealing.
To conquer crime we have to take a long hard look at ourselves, and recognise that we are a promiscuous society, producing throwaway children. Facing the truth is something Bahamians have a hard time doing. Hence the belief that if they sit in church long enough, God will magically make things right.
Unfortunately, many greedy and unscrupulous church leaders have encouraged this psychological escapism, particularly in women, who leave their children to fend for themselves while they camp out in church prayer meetings. Neglected children result in low school performance, poor productivity, high unemployment, escalating crime and a stagnant economy.
The world is becoming more competitive, but the Bahamas is falling far behind, and that trend will continue until we recognise what we've become and do something about it.
Bad End
Bishop Neil Ellis' influence on PM Perry Christie is being compared to that of the monk Rasputin on the Russian royal family of Czar Nicholas II.
The relationship ended badly. In 1916 Rasputin was done in by a group of ultra conservatives who resented his political interference, and in 1918 the Czar and his family were done in by the Bolsheviks following the Russian revolution.
Big Brother
US Ambassador J Richard Blankenship puts me in mind of those famous lines from Shakespeare's Macbeth, which aptly sum up His Excellency: "ﾅa poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more."
Mr. Blankenship is on record as saying that he is more interested in getting things done than making friends. And that is precisely why he has no friends and can't get anything done.
Just what exactly has the Ambassador accomplished since his arrival 15 months ago except to rile Bahamians with his ignorance of the country's legal and political systems, and strain US-Bahamian relations with his unreasonable demands and threats of retaliation.
Did it every occur to the Ambassador, and that cowboy president of his, that perhaps the Bahamas, which has always stood with the US through thick and thin, would be more inclined to do so now if it had not felt America's whip on its back for the last two years. Threats, intimidation and coercion don't win friends. They didn't do it for Adolph Hitler and they ain't gonna do it for George W. Bush.
A big bee in the Ambassador's bonnet is security at Nassau International Airport, which everyone agrees needs to be beefed up. But Mr. B should can his self-righteous indignation over that knife and corkscrew which escaped the attention of NIA security.
Is the Ambassador aware of the laxness found to exist at a number of major US airports, where weapons deliberately planted in baggage – including guns – were missed during screening? If things don't improve at NIA, he threatened, the US would have to pull its pre-clearance facilities, which he says are costly to maintain.
If the US were to eliminate pre-clearance in the Bahamas, it would only add to the al-ready considerable delays in clearing overseas passengers at Miami International.
In turn, airlines departing Miami for other destinations would have to spread their flights by an additional two hours to accommodate passengers making connections. The American Embassy website actually touts the advantage of Bahamian pre-clearance for the 1.5 million visitors and returning residents to the US in the past year.
The Ambassador insists that if he wants information on the airport or anything else, he in-tends to deal directly with the Ministers concerned, and bypass the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, because that only adds another layer of bureaucracy.
In the past US Ambassadors have encountered no difficulty speaking directly with various Ministers, and making their views known. The difference here is attitude, and Mr. Blankenship's expectation that Ministers conform to his demands, even though to do so may require Cabinet approval or necessitate discussing matters that are none of his business.
The trouble with this Ambassador is that he is confused as to his role in the Bahamas. For better or worse, Perry Christie is the Prime Minister of this country – not J Richard Blankenship. And if Ministers don't feel comfortable dealing with him directly, they won't, no matter how much he rants and raves.
Just how screwed up this man's thinking is was demonstrated by his cry of censorship, when an initial attempt was made to keep him off ZNS's Steve McKinney radio show. The Ambassador feels he has a right to speak his piece, and the Bahamas Constitution guarantees him that right.
On the other hand, he does not recognise the right of Bahamians to "freedom of conscience" and " freedom of association," also guaranteed under the Constitution. "The US remembers how countries align themselves," he warned, making it patently clear that by aligning itself with CARICOM in support of the UN on the Iraq war issue, the Bahamas risked reprisal.
Ambassador Blankenship was on the mark when he described the United States as "Big Brother" during his latest exposition on the US's role as the world's peacekeeper.
Since I doubt he knows the origin of the term, I suggest he read George Orwell's Nineteen Eight-Four, a horrifying vision of a totalitarian society in which independent thought ceases to exist because of the presence of "Big Brother" everywhere. That about sums up the world ac-cording to "Big Brother" George Bush.
