Support Tyson Foods!

I have been staring at the computer screen off and on for about 3 hours, trying to figure out how to get everything I want to say into a coherant post; praise for Tyson Foods and disgust with some of the crazy people in this country.

The Tyson Foods plant in Shelbyville, TN has exchanged the traditional Labor Day holiday for Id al-Fitr, the last day of Ramadan, at the behest of their labor union. The New York Times story does not give numbers, but some other article I read said that over 700 of the 1200 employees at this particular plant are Muslim. The employees did not gain an extra holiday, they just exchanged one for the other.

I say Good for Tyson, Good for the Labor Unions and Good for the Employees. This is what America (at least the one in my head) is supposed to be all about, freedom. Religious Freedom. The union spoke, the company listened and everyone is happy.

Well, not EVERYONE.

“You are a union that is proud of achieving a Muslim holiday and prayer room?” one person wrote the union. “A union in the U.S.A., a country based on Christianity. You call yourselves Americans? Have you forgotten 9/11?”

Because there will always be some crazy who has no concept of what those pesky little amendments REALLY mean and who want to push their values and beliefs on the rest of the world.

Was this country based on Christianity? Were the Founding Fathers Christians?* Maybe, but what they chose to put in the First Amendment was, " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." To those of us with a brain, that means we get to choose our religious path, or lack thereof. To those of us with a brain, that means we applaud Tyson Foods for working with their employees to provide them with their chosen religious holidays off.

Hey Mom, what's for dinner?

* I read recently (and, of course, can't remember where) that the Founding Fathers were Deists. Deist is defined by Websters as : "One who believes in the existence of a God or supreme being but denies revealed religion, basing his belief on the light of nature and reason." I am pretty sure this is where I fall in the religious order of things, although, after my religion class, I am considering conversion to Islam.