Destroy All Idolators! [Dec 9, 2004]

Apparently, my quasi-atheistic appearance on Dennis Miller, the highest-rated show on CNBC at 9 PM and midnight Eastern, didn't halt our country's leper pilgrimage to the valley of ignorance. The Bush Administration has filed a brief in support of two Kentucky counties that are suing to end a ban on framed copies of the Ten Commandments in courthouses. I think, if you care, that civil libertarians overplay their hand by seeking such bans. But should the Justice Department really be talking about religion's "defining role" in our nation's history? That's just a circumspect way of talking about fundamentalist Christian takeover of government. Try to find the difference between that point of view and the one expressed by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in his most recent online column. And I quote:

"Our Founders were men who explicitly embraced Judeo-Christian principles in the founding of this nation. Even those who were Deists openly recognized the need for the citizenry to fall to their collective knees and beseech God’s favor. They understood the need to recognize God in our Constitution, in our courts and in our schools."

Rev. Falwell, I fall to my knees for nothing unless I've specifically paid someone for the privilege. The only commandment these people care about is Number One: "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange Gods before me." Well, to paraphrase E.B. White, "I say it's theocratic fascism, and I say to hell with it."

A new Eleventh Commandment is also floating about these days: Thou Shalt Not Allow Books That Contain Homosexual Characters In Public Libraries. The main proponent of that point of view, state representative Gerald Allen of Alabama, will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. This will be his fifth meeting with the President. Apparently, they will talk about the attempts of evil gay liberal librarians to re-engineer "society's fabric in the minds of our children."

Now, who would try to do something like that?