Artist	Song
Modest Mouse	Fire It Up
The Shins	Know Your Onion!
Of Montreal	Forecast Fascist Future
Radiohead	Go to Sleep
The Arcade Fire	Keep the Car Running
Queens of the Stone Age	Go With the Flow
The Dismemberment Plan	Manipulate Me
Aesop Rock	Save Yourself
Elvis Costello	Blame It On Cain (alternate version)
Loretta Lynn	Have Mercy
The Beatles	Don't Pass Me By
Rogue Wave	Own Your Own Home
Animal Collective	Turn Into Something
Radiohead	Sit Down, Stand Up
The Dismemberment Plan	Pay For the Piano
Sean Watkins and Glen Phillips	Let It Fall
Andrew Bird	Don't Be Scared
Belle & Sebastian	Ease Your Feet Into the Sea
Sufjan Stevens	Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)

Comment:

"That's all well and good for [i]good[/i] stories, Ellen, but - again - you're going to run into some problems when you discover the compellingly-written story of Hitler's adequate job satisfaction. Or, to use a more contemporary example, the story of how Iraq disproved the morality of intervention."

"Well, that second story doesn't sound too bad.."

"Yeah, but Carrie, you're talking to Ms. Coulter here."

"Damn, you just can't stop comparing me to Skeletor, huh? I'll repeat what I told you before: her problem is that she doesn't go nearly far enough. What we should really do is invade their countries, kill their leaders, kill their insurrectionists with [i]much[/i] more haste, and convert them to secular humanism."

"You're not going to get anywhere enforcing your context on them."

"Debateable, Carrie, but only as a matter of tactics. Morally, there's not a thing wrong with the invasion."

"Is it moral to disrespect the customs of-"

"Moral to disrespect the punishment of rape victims, homosexuals, and religious deviants? Absolutely. Such cultures deserve neither respect nor tolerance."

"Wait, what was your point here Ann?"

"This: stories can only proxy for morality if they are moral stories. And even experience can lead one down the wrong path. What's needed in the very first place is an objective moral law."

"And how does the atheist propose...discovering, I assume, this objective moral law?"

"By sticking to and drawing from the obvious, from common sense. Yeah, yeah, Carrie, I can already hear Voltaire's words in the back of your throat - but he's wrong. There [i]are[/i] some very common axioms out there. It's wrong to be cruel for fun. It's wrong to kill without need. It's wrong to steal for comfort. It's wrong to lie for personal gain. Everyone knows this, they just pretend not to when it suits them."

"And if I challenge one of your sacred axioms?"

"Then you're wrong, and obviously so. No narrative, no matter how clever, will change that. It is, to use that word the hermit upstairs hates, self-evident. It is out of our hands."

Feedback: