In a one off for this year the meeting was held at Rico’s pub in Pullman. While the location was not particularly busy, our party of 9 was large enough to get us access to the downstairs “music room”. We had 3 new members and six returning members. While we were hindered in our discussion by the piped in Irish music, we did manage to hit the following topics.

The discussion started off with a mini lecture and discussion of the concept of gravity not being a force. There was quite a bit of head scratching over this. Next a concern over education and the plight of the Montessori school in Pullman was described, along with questions about public funding of religious and non-religious charter schools. This, of course, lead to a discussion of Christian nationalism as a rewriting of American history and ideals to be the exact opposite of what was really happening at the time. Mention was made of a current organized attempt to replace the constitution with a different document.

Discussion moved to the Greek and Roman foundations of the American republic and liberalism. A short digression was made to Plato’s Republic and his evaluation of different types of government. I went ahead and put a (copyright free) copy on the website, here: https://palousefreethinkers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Republic-1645717413.pdf . Mention was made of early American philosophy and free thinkers like Emerson and Thoreau who were both active before the civil war. I believe all of these things deserve more deliberate investigation (Sorry, my opinion…)

A mention was made (not for the first time in this group) of a need for a new myths, stories or other viral ideas to counter the Xtian nationalist movement and conservatism in general. Adam Smith was mentioned in a discussion of the original ideology of free market capitalism as opposed to the reality of its historical flaws.

There is a lot of content here that could be covered in more depth than simply our recollections and off the cuff comments. Anyone who would like to lead a meeting covering any of these topics is encouraged to volunteer.

Today’s meeting was held in Pullman at Neil’s ice cream and coffee shop. There were 12 people in attendence, including 4 who hadn’t attended before. 3 of these had travelled from outside the Pullman/Moscow metro area to join us.

We started the meeting with a quick synopsis of the history of the current group and it’s connection with the humanists of the palouse.
Then: we discussed an article in the Lewiston paper about how the USA is not founded on Christian principles and branched out from there to the following topics, which all got at least some discussion before branching out to the other topics, including:
Israel current and ancient roots/mythology
Water issues on the palouse, especially Pullman
Political action and being ignored by politicians at all levels of government
Rural healthcare issues compounded by corporate and catholic ownership of hospitals, including insurance and access
Broadcasting monopolies and persistent political bias, also especially in rural areas
How political upheavals have affected lives, including bringing many of our ancestors to the USA.
Somewhere in there we introduced ourselves by first name, not needing to go into prolonged introductions.

There were other side discussions after the meeting, and the discussions were orderly and respectful.