Civil Commotion

“If it is ever proper for men to kneel, we should
kneel when we read the Declaration of Independence.”
 
Ayn Rand

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

 

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Oh, man, the tweet-o-sphere is going nuts. Updates below:
 

When Paleontologists convened at the University of Cincinnati last week, one of the featured field trips was not to an outcrop with interesting critters exposed. No. It was to the so-called Creation Museum.

Near the entrance to the exhibits is an animatronic display that includes a girl feeding a carrot to a squirrel as two dinosaurs stand nearby, a stark departure from natural history museums that say the first humans lived 65 million years after the last dinosaurs.

“I’m speechless,” said Derek E.G. Briggs, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, who walked around with crossed arms and a grimace. “It’s rather scary.”

[ ... ]

The museum’s presentation appeals to visitors like Steven Leinberger and his wife, Deborah, who came with a group from the Church of the Lutheran Confession in Eau Claire, Wis. “This is what should be taught even in science,” Mr. Leinberger said.

[ ... ]

By the end of the visit, among the dinosaurs, Dr. Briggs seemed amused. “I like the fact the dinosaurs were in the ark,” he said. (About 50 kinds of dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, the museum explains, but later went extinct for unknown reasons.)

The museum, he realized, probably changes few beliefs. “But you worry about the youngsters,” he said.

There is good reason to worry. American kids are competing for last place in world math skills and science understanding, and a visit to the Creation Museum must inevitably worsen their misapprehensions about science and how it goes about acquiring knowledge.

And it doesn’t appear that the Creation Museum is much benefiting the children of Boone County, either. Open up the local high schools’ report card and take a look. In 2008:

• Only 43% of 11^th-graders were ranked proficient in mathematics.
• Only 50% were ranked proficient in science.
• Only 24% could write effectively.

The bright spot? Seventy-five percent met proficiency in arts and humanities. I’m all for the arts and humanities; history and literature are indispensable to understanding the world, and the arts will perhaps console the new graduates destined to sweep the floors of the Indian or Chinese-owned laboratories and factories on the midnight shift.

I’ve been reading an advance copy of Unscientific America by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. Though they do a credible job of documenting America’s declining scientific literacy, they bring to the work a good many untested and, in my estimation, wrong-headed assumptions and, excepting major revisions between the advance and the final published version, I’m disinclined to recommend it.

At a time of dramatic economic disruption, when scientific research has been a core driver of the nation’s growth over the past century, U.S. government funding of research and development stunningly failed to keep pace with inflation for five years running between 2004 and 2008.

I agree that science is indispensable to economic growth, and I’m willing to accept the economic claim, but not the over-dramatic adjectives (”Stunningly?” To which obscure subset of the population does that apply?) or implicit assumption that funding scientific research is a licit public sector obligation.

We can all agree, I imagine, that military defense-related research is proper, and we can probably agree that matters related to public health, e.g., H1N1, ought to be the subject of public sector investigation. And we can probably agree that the benefits of that publicly-funded research should be enjoyed by all.

But as the public sector ventures into managing aspects of life never contemplated by our constitutional design, so too has grown the research it funds. In spite of the unfortunate complaint by McCain/Palin about fruit fly research, there is indeed a good deal of government research that ought not to be funded with public money and which saps our resources. Before a broad-brush whine that government doesn’t spend enough, we need to have a serious-minded conversation about what the proper business of government actually is.

Second, while correctly noting that fundamentalist ignorance and activism have contributed mightily to damaging America’s one-time scientific preeminence, Mooney/Kirshenbaum propose a Can’t-we-all-just-get-along? accomodationism which reflects a serious misapprehension about the nature of religion itself.

After all, the faithful strove to understand the world in their particular way for several millennia before modern science got into the game. Although we no longer turn to them for explanations of workings of nature — and shouldn’t — they have a vast store of knowledge about what it takes to motivate people, create community, and bring about social change.

If this were actually true, The Da Vinci Code would not be the second best selling book of all time.

Though the earliest religious thought began, certainly, with speculations about who was “up there” making things happen in the sky, combined with introspective meditations about life and man’s place in the world, those having “insider” knowledge — some caveman who had the good fortune to shake his fist at the sky just as the last thunder-clap rolled away, perhaps, thus rising in an instant from working schlep to priest — wasted no time turning it into an instrument of governance.

Atrahasis is a multi-leveled tale of rebellion by working have-nots against the haves, followed by a smack-down. Genesis, which begins with an adaptation of the tale recast for monotheism, is the same story; the impudent, disobedient workers are sent into exile. In both tales, the workers are created specifically to serve their betters. Jesus’ innovation was to tell men to submit cheerfully to being smacked around, on the promise of later reward. (Heaven is scarcely remarked in the Old Testament, except as the place where God lives, and there is no promise of getting there.)

Religion is about control. Always. Nietzsche got it just about right; some people are smart, he said, and most people aren’t. Christianity he judged no worse than any other system for living, and in some respects more humane than most, for keeping the masses fed, and watered — and corralled. He considered it absolutely fatal, though, to the smart and ambitious.

Christianity should never be forgiven for having ruined such men as Pascal. [ ... ] What is it we combat in Christianity? That it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness and debility, at converting their proud assurance into anxiety and conscience-trouble; that it knows how to poison the noblest instincts and to infect them with disease, until their strength, their will to power, turns inwards, against themselves — until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt and self-immolation: that gruesome way of perishing, of which Pascal is the most famous example.

Will to Power, § 252

There cannot be, and never will be, a happy accommodation between the worldview that men exist to serve the agents of celestial phantasms, their “betters,” and the restless intelligence of humankind.

All of Christendom knows by now that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was so besotted with an Argentinian cutie that he left his office, his wife, and his 4-children, and vanished without a word to anyone for 5-days.

There is precedent for this sort of thing. In 1922, following years spent driving around the south in her “gospel car” and preaching wherever she could find a pulpit, an itinerant Pentecostal preacher named Aimée Semple McPherson arrived in Los Angeles and decided it was her kind of place. She drew a crowd by combining new media techniques with her fundamentalist message, and by 1923 she had a radio show and was building a church with a seating capacity of 2500; she was the forerunner of modern televangelists, the first to exploit the new broadcasting techniques.

By early 1926, McPherson had risen to become one of the most charismatic and influential persons of her time. According to Carey McWilliams, a journalist of the era at the time of her trip to the Holy Land, she had become “more than just a household word: she was a folk hero and a civic institution; an honorary member of the fire and police departments; a patron saint of the service clubs; an official spokesman for the community on problems grave and frivolous”. She had transformed her power of spreading the gospel of her religion into being influential in many social, educational and political areas. McPherson made personal crusades in the name of the Lord against anything that she felt threatened her Christian ideals, including alcohol and the teaching of evolution in the schools.

She had discovered, too, that piety makes a good living — but is not the same thing as living good. On the morning of May 18, 1926, she went swimming and never came back to shore. She was thought to have drowned, and a memorial service was held in her church.

Five weeks later she resurfaced in Mexico, claiming to have been kidnapped. The subsequent investigation revealed that, rather more prosaically, she had been sequestered with one Kenneth Ormiston, an engineer who worked for her broadcast station.

She was prosecuted for perjury, and the story was so big that it attracted the attention of H.L. Mencken:

One day, inspired by God, she decided to try her fortune in Los Angeles. Instantly she was a roaring success. And why? For the plain reason that there are more morons collected in Los Angeles than in any other place on earth — because it was a pasture foreordained for evangelists, and she was the first comer to give it anything low enough for its taste and comprehension.

The jury returned an acquittal.

This, remember, was in the days before Jimmy Swaggart was caught with a hooker by another evangelist whom Swaggart had exposed for infidelities, before Jim Bakker made Jessica Hahn a celebrity pinup, before Oral Roberts raised the bar with his famous plea for money else God would kill him, before Benny Hinn never cured anybody, and … well, we all know how long is the list of holy charlatans. McPherson was contrite, forgiven by her fans, and business boomed along. She died in 1944, of an overdose of Seconal. A procession of more than 60,000 passed by her funeral bier, and thousands more waited outside and were denied the opportunity. She rests today beneath a gaudy memorial guarded by angels.

What Sanford should do is obvious: He should resign the South Carolina governorship and become a televangelist; the money is way better, the expectations are way lower, and nobody will think it’s just theater when he bellows that he was once lost, confused, a screw-up, and a big-time sinner.

Some of his remarks suggest that he is laying the groundwork for a career change right now:

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Tuesday that he saw his Argentine mistress more times than previously disclosed, including what was to be a farewell meeting in New York chaperoned by a spiritual adviser soon after his wife found out about the affair.

And this:

“There are moral absolutes, and God’s law is indeed there to protect you from yourself, and there are consequences if you breach that.”

And this:

“David failed, literally, and yet he reconstructed his life, put it back together and became a guy who was after God’s spirit. So I would say I’m on the larger voyage.”

It worked for Sister Aimée, it worked for Chuck Colson, and it will work for Sanford, too. Shoot … he may even get a coveted guest spot on Huckabee.

In the beginning, says a Mesopotamian tale that pre-dates Genesis by almost 1200-years, there were two ranks of gods. There were old important gods who made all the decisions, and lesser gods who did all the work. In time, as happens still amongst we humans, the worker gods decided the system was rigged against them and went out on strike.

Every single one of us gods declared war!
We have put a stop to the digging.
The load is excessive, it is killing us!
Our work is too hard, the trouble too much!

A compromise was reached. The worker gods would be permitted to have helpers: Men.

Then one god should be slaughtered
And the gods can be purified by immersion.
Nintu shall mix clay
With his flesh and his blood.
Then a god and a man
Will be mixed together in clay.
Let us hear the drumbeat forever after,
Let a ghost come into existence from the god’s flesh
Let her proclaim it as his living sign,
And let the ghost exist so as not to forget the slain god.

Later, the gods grew tired of mens’ noise and attitude, and drowned them all in a great flood, excepting the man Atrahasis and his family.

The likeness to Genesis cannot be denied or overlooked. And notice in Genesis, an inexpertly updated and edited pastiche of the older tales to reflect the new monotheism, the alarm provoked amongst the gods by man’s impudence, and the punishment.

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

Genesis 3:22-23

Unquestionably, the Genesis tale of the Fall is adapted from the older pagan story. Consider, now, the story muttered in workingmen’s bars all around Detroit this very day:

The big guys are getting a free ride on our backs! Worse, we can’t even complain. If we don’t suck it up and do as we’re told, they’ll just wipe out the whole bunch of us and ship our jobs off to Mexico or someplace. Our families will starve.

The details change from one age to the next — but it’s the same human story in all ages.

• The little guys do as they’re told, and most of the work, and
• If they don’t do as they’re told,
• They perish.

From pre-Biblical Mesopotamia, through the dawn of the Christian era, to the Battle of the Overpass, to the mutterings in dying industrial towns all across the country today … the same story.

Now think back to the last sermon you sat through:

• Obey. Obey. Obey.
• Or perish.

If you think of preachers as Personnel Department weasels, well, hell — you pretty much know everything that’s actually worth knowing about religion.

Well.

Could it really be as simple as that? All the bloodshed; all the lives gone gray and stooped studying the ancient texts; all the great clerical fortunes gathered and squandered; all the ruined loves; all the cathedrals gone to heaps of stone and rotting wood — all because of no more than crude variations on a labor-relations tale?

Sure. Why not? It is the human story: Some people have, and most people don’t, and the people who don’t press against those who do and, usually, get kicked around for their trouble. And of course, just as modern men recast the story in terms of their relationship with ‘the bosses,’ the first men would have understood that story in terms of their relationship with the gods; they knew that effects had causes, and what else could explain storms, good seasons, bad seasons, catastrophes, but gods that were pleased or displeased, wise or stupid? And who could doubt that men would be punished, then or now, swiftly and terribly, if they challenged the gods?

At the end of the first century, exiled from the Temple, the progressive Jews cum Christians were faced with re-creating their ancient story in terms of the Messiah. The story of Moses set upon the Nile in a reed basket re-appears as the into Egypt to escape Herod. Moses saw but ultimately failed to reach the promised land — but in the updated version Christians can reach the promised land, Heaven, by accepting Jesus as the Messiah.

And just like always, those impudent SOBs who won’t join the club and do as they’re told, by golly, are going to get the godawfullest smack-down anybody ever saw; bigger than Atrahasis’ flood, bigger than Noah’s flood, bigger than Sodom and Gomorrah, bigger than anything anybody ever saw: Armageddon.

It is no coincidence that workers in Michigan’s staggering automobile plants are said to be facing Armageddon, or the Apocalypse: It’s the same story, and anybody hoping to escape the conflagration had better just shut up and do as he is told.

Finale! is the story of … The Story, and the ways it has shaped events through time. We will soon turn to Revelation, the cataclysmic closing scene that, to this day, makes widows and millionaires.

It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

… boldly comes out in favor of morality.

OKLAHOMA CITIZEN’S PROCLAMATION FOR MORALITY

We the People of Oklahoma, Invoking the guidance of Almighty God, in order to secure and perpetuate the blessing of Liberty; to secure just and rightful Government; to promote our mutual Welfare and Happiness, do establish this proclamation and call upon the people of the great State of Oklahoma, and our fellow Patriots in these United States of America who look to the Lord for guidance, to acknowledge the need for a national awakening of righteousness in our land.

WHEREAS, “It is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand” (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by Religion and Morality” (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, “Our Constitution was made only for a Moral and Religious people” (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government…but upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God” (James Madison); and

WHEREAS, “Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God (Benjamin Franklin); and

WHEREAS, “God who gave us life gave us liberty and can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God” (Thomas Jefferson); and

WHEREAS, “Whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of Religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state” (Joseph Story); and

WHEREAS, “We hold sacred the rights of conscience, and promise to the people…the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion” (Roger Sherman); and

WHEREAS, “This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians” (Patrick Henry); and

WHEREAS, “When you…exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed upon your mind that God commands you to choose just men who will rule in the fear of God” (Noah Webster); and

WHEREAS, “The principles of genuine Liberty and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible” (Noah Webster); and

WHEREAS, the people of Oklahoma have a strong tradition of reliance upon the Creator of the Universe; and

WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis; and

WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery; and

WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built; and

WHEREAS, grieved that the Office of the president of these United States has refused to uphold the long held tradition of past presidents in giving recognition to our National Day of Prayer; and

WHEREAS, deeply disturbed that the Office of the president of these United States disregards the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to an immoral behavior;

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we the undersigned elected officials of the people of Oklahoma, religious leaders and citizens of the State of Oklahoma, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, solemnly declare that the HOPE of the great State of Oklahoma and of these United States, rests upon the Principles of Religion and Morality as put forth in the HOLY BIBLE; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, believers in the One True God and His only Son, call upon all to join with us in recognizing that “Blessed is the Nation whose God is the Lord,” and humbly implore all who love Truth and Virtue to live above reproach in the sight of God and man with a firm reliance on the leadership and protection of Almighty God; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, humbly call upon Holy God, our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment, and grant a national awakening of righteousness and Christian renewal as we repent of our great sin.

Signed on the second day of July in the year of our Lord Christ Two Thousand and Nine.

The punchline, of course, is that family pathologies are most acute where religion is strongest. It isn’t a statistical accident: You’re going to get messed-up, dysfunctional or barely-functioning people when they hear from infancy that they were born no damn good and there is no hope for them but craven obedience to some fire-breathing Bible-thumper.

Take a close look at this sign at an athletic field used by a homeschooling group in Georgia.

‘God first’ is a staple of Christian teaching. In practice it means submit passively to whatever degradation the preacher’s screwed-up id demands of you — but fine; everybody with sense figures that out eventually.

But just what, pray, are ‘acedemics?’ And ‘atheletics?’

Civil Commotion is no longer able to earn commissions on the traffic it refers to Amazon.Com.

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date.

Please be assured that all qualifying referral fees earned prior to June 26, 2009 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with our regular referral fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of June 26, 2009, any final payments will be paid by September 1, 2009.

In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at (*****).

We have enjoyed working with you and other North Carolina-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

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I am certain Amazon is correct, that the contemplated tax is unconstitutional. But when have legislators ever permitted concerns like that to inhibit their rapaciousness?