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" WASHINGTON DC -- Like justice, as Lenny Bruce would have it, all of the action at something like CPAC, the annual gathering of the cream of American conservatism, is out in the halls. Oh, you can go in and listen to Ted Cruz talk about how &amp;quot;we need to pass a strong constitutional amendment...for term limits,&amp;quot; or Pat Toomey pour the blood of Officer Daniel Faulkner over his head like baptismal water one more time while describing the great victory won the other day over Debo Adegbile, or watch Paul Ryan, the old zombie-eyed granny starver himself, bat his baby blues and explain how &amp;quot;Big government sounds great in theory but it looks a lot different in practice&amp;quot; -- like, one presumes, it looked while Social Security was putting him through high school and college -- You&amp;#039;re welcome, dickhead -- or paying his congressional salary. But that&amp;#039;s the stuff you can hear, day in and day out, all over your teevee. To get the real flavor, however, you have to go out and watch David Silverman chatting around with a delegate from North Carolina. Silverman is a conservative. He is also the president of the American Atheists. On CNN a while back, Silverman said that the Christian Right should &amp;quot;feel threatened&amp;quot; by his presence at the conference. That cost him and his organization its booth in the great wingnut trade show in the convention center. Today, his conversation with the delegate beaches itself on the issue of abortion, as so many political discussions do. &amp;quot;There are some atheists who are opposed to abortion, so I&amp;#039;m not going to disagree with you on that,&amp;quot; Silverman said. &amp;quot;Gay marriage, death with dignity, all of the social issues, evolution in the science classes, this is all strictly separation of church and state.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;If you reconsider that question of life, you would have a lot more people listening,&amp;quot; said the man from North Carolina. &amp;quot;You see people arguing that it&amp;#039;s not life, I&amp;#039;m not there. The other side says you can&amp;#039;t take eagle&amp;#039;s eggs, but you can have an abortion.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;This is a very religious gathering, but there are a lot of atheists here,&amp;quot; Silverman said later. &amp;quot;A lot more than I expected. I&amp;#039;m getting a lot of thank you&amp;#039;s. If conservatives want more votes, they need to solicit the growing portion of the community, not the shrinking portion. You&amp;#039;re losing people when you say that creationism should be taught to my kids, taught to other people&amp;#039;s children, in the public school. That&amp;#039;s mythology. That&amp;#039;s not what should be taught. That makes the rest of conservatives look bad. School prayer? Out. Why in the world is there prayer in schools? Why in the world do they have to make other people&amp;#039;s children to pray? That&amp;#039;s not conservatism. That&amp;#039;s theocracy. Conservatism is that government stays out of lives. It means government doesn&amp;#039;t go into the doctor&amp;#039;s office or into the bedroom. That&amp;#039;s big government. And I&amp;#039;m here to say that that&amp;#039;s big government, and it should be dumped.&amp;quot; He went off down the corridor again, stopping every now and again to talk to people he will never convince. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a27758/atheist-david-silverman-cpac-2014-030614/>