Wednesday, May 30, 2012


I just got in a fight about this one!
Well, the first problem with this chart is obvious. These states are not drawn to scale.
Second problem: these state constitutions do indeed prohibit atheists from holding public office. But since 1961, when Torcaso vs. Watkins was argued before the Supreme Court, there are no religious tests for statewide office. In 1789, the US Constitution banned religious tests for office, and slightly later, thee 1st amendment disbarred the establishment of religion. Under the generally held interpretation of the 14th Amendment, any state law, constitutional or statutory, that contradicts this, is invalid.

So the more accurate statement should be "7 States which have not yet edited their constitutions to remove language about atheists holding public office."



I saw this around Facebook, and decided that it would be my first image on propagandander.

It is actually interesting information, and it is well formatted, with the color wheel naturally drawing attention to the fact that the United States does not have the type of paid parental leave that some other nation’s have.

One possible propaganda element is the usage of cool colors for countries with high amounts of parental leave, shading into darker, earthier reds for countries with less. I don’t know if it was intentional, but in some ways that suggests that social policies like this are “cool and rational” while lack of such policies is “unthinking and irrational”.

But the real problem I have with this is I don’t know how true the claim is. The source is from nationmaster.com, which is a great site for graphs: I’ve used it for some of mine. However, while the laws in these countries might dictate paid parental leave, such laws might only apply to workers in the formal sectors of the economy. I would imagine that in countries like South Africa, Mexico and Pakistan, there are many women and men employed informally, who don’t have these legal protections. In fact, that is probably the case as well in some of the more developed countries.

In addition, the United States does have unpaid parental leave, and in some states, there is paid parental leave. If you are interested, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Americas gives a description.

Which is not to say the graph doesn’t raise a good point, but by giving a single source and assuming that this presents a complete view of the societies in question, it is somewhat misleading.