I define (as did Susan Jacoby, last night's guest on NOW) secularism as being opposed to religious hierarchy, orthodoxy, and authority. Secularism includes the spiritual, although not the organized denominations that denounce secularism. Secularists aren't just atheists by a different name, in other words. Most Universalists would likely describe themselves as freethinking secularists, for instance.

There are millions of Americans who describe themselves in surveys on religion as non-religious. I describe myself as a nontheist, rather than an atheist or agnostic, for example.

Guest 15 May 04 - 11:53 AM links to a good website, the American Atheist website. I am all in favor of getting god off the state's symbols and out of the state's rhetoric (ie "under god" out of the pledge--but I'm opposed to the pledge of allegiance too).

As to right wing secularists--from the list above there is Ayn Rand and Walt Disney. The list of right wing avowed secularists/atheists isn't as long as the list of centrists and left leaning secularists and atheists on the political spectrum. But politics isn't necessarily at the center of all secularist people's lives.

Here is a link to a Working for Change article about the right wing conservative movement that talks about this in more detail.