Jose Rizal, HAPPY BIRTHDAY - 2009

You gave your life for our country so, on the anniversary of your birth, I will report how they are faring. Sadly there is little progress since last year. Your old enemies – those in authority who had you arrested, incarcerated, and executed – are still here. They are still in control of the minds and hearts of our people and most of our schools, colleges, and universities. They still teach our youth how to pray - how to solve real problems by reaching for fantasy solutions. It is terrible training for their emotional growth and intellectual maturity. Worse yet, our youth are still taught to believe that after birth there is a better foreign country to go to; like after death there is a better next world to go to. Yes sir, we continue to be the same victims of indoctrination, not the masters of education. We are still into the religious way of believing when we should have progressed into the scientific way of thinking. Rather than allow science and clear thinking to transform us into a nation of dignified men and self-respecting women we try to solve the problems of faith with more faith. Even more painful to admit, millions of Filipinos continue to contribute daily to keeping the Philippines poor and backward. The believers running our sick society continue to insist that there is no such thing as overpopulation problem today. They insist that our society can provide Filipinos with adequate food, housing, and schooling, even saying that there are resources for a population of 200 million. And so in the Philippines an average of 3 babies are born every minute of the day or 1.8 million yearly. When they grow up, if at all, such children are also taught in schools to refer to the bible for moral growth and spiritual development. Indeed, the same bible that teaches us to love not this world, neither the things that are in this world; and to take no thought for tomorrow for tomorrow will take care of itself. In the meantime, life in the Philippines can be characterized as the daily competition to be the criminal rather than be the victim of the criminals. The forgiveness of sin and the pardoning of crime provide the basis for our social, moral, and political values. Indeed, in our country, if one Filipino suffers from a delusion, it is called "insanity" if, however, millions of Filipinos suffer from the same delusion, it is called "Christianity." Sir, again this year, as it was during the previous years, the politicians in government 'serve' our country not by telling the bitter truth, but by telling sweet lies. The sweeter the lies, the sweeter their promotion in government office. Ours continue to be a government of the corrupt, by the corrupt, and for the corrupt. To think that the worst kind of poverty is the poverty of the mind. Such horrors come from our schools, colleges, and universities. Millions of our college educated men and women are working not for our national growth and development, but are employed in foreign countries enjoying the wealth of real education. The kind of wealth that comes from science which is all about the courage to change and to improve under a fearless, and self-correcting, enterprise. Sir, you were certainly a real hero during your century. Today, in our own century, instead of heroes in our God-fearing country we have God-fearing politicians indoctrinated to embrace blind Christian faith. They neither make use of the power of knowledge nor are interested in its diffusion. Our politicians would readily pray to a Jewish foreign divinity to remedy the traditional ills of our sick society. They do not pay any serious attention to remedy the rotten core in of our system of education - the root cause of our daily confusion as a people and yearly delusion as nation bereft of any sense of direction. Dearest sir, Happy birthday. We miss you. We respect you. We admire you. We love you! Yes sir, thanks to you, the few of us who have seen through the evils of your enemy - Christianity, - we know what it means to love our own country and what it means to always be on the side of our fellow-countrymen, not for what we are today, but for what, with the power of education, we Filipinos can become tomorrow. Yours sincerely, Poch Suzara,