Does God Help Those Who Help Themselves?

I'm struck by twin ironies:  a) those who most vehemently deny biological evolution (i.e., biblical literalists and fundamentalists) are usually also those who most fervently embrace "survival of the fittest" social darwinism in economics and politics (God Helps Those Who Help Themselves); b) those who most earnestly accept the truth of biological evolution (scientists, agnostics, atheists, intellectuals) are generally those who fight against the social darwinist practice of applying principles of natural selection to non-biological domains.

In other words, despite Christ's admonitions to help the poor, many Christians believe that government should keep "hands off" and allow the rich and powerful to dominate and exploit, since the rich are, presumably, not only the "fittest" but also "God's chosen ones."

Whereas, many non-Christians--myself included--believe that government should adopt Christ-like policies toward those who are economically (but not necessarily biologically) disadvantaged--thereby enabling truly superior people, regardless of their social circumstances, to take their place among the "elect" (and thus increase the survivability of our species).

Though I struggled for years to cling to God and Christianity, I ultimately had to admit that there's very little evidence that God exists, and even less evidence (if that's possible) that such a dubious divinity is able to "help" anyone at all.  No, the notion that the exploiters (those who help themselves...to everything) are God's chosen is a self-serving fiction invented and perpetuated by the exploiters themselves. Yes, of course I acknowledge the obvious truth of evolution--of natural selection.  But the societies men have created are not "natural."  Humans, unlike other species, have evolved to a point at which we are capable of influencing our own evolution.  WE can, to some extent, shape the future of our species--in rational ways that actually "go beyond" the nature that has hitherto determined us.

And so--for our own good as a race, shouldn't the forces of civilization--and most especially the power of government--be used to ensure that all people, regardless of their birth status, receive an equal chance to rise to the top?  Do I believe that government should artificially place or maintain undeserving people of "disadvantaged" birth in superior positions?  Absolutely not.  But neither do I believe that superior positions should be occupied by "wellborn" but undeserving scions of wealthy families or by unscrupulous thugs who use violence and lawbreaking to acquire this status.

Some people assert, Ayn Rand-like, that it is "unnatural" for a human being to have fellow-feeling for anyone other than his/her genetic family.  In this view, selfishness becomes a virtue because it is, well, a basic animal impulse.

But once again, evolution, in gradually according sentience to human beings, has likewise accorded us that very "supernaturalness" that we sometimes (curiously) call "divine".  Ask yourself what we most admire as an ideal:  "natural" self-serving behavior typical of other species or "supernatural" behavior that rejects greed and embraces altruism?  For some reason (I do not know what, but it must be a good one), evolution has given us a conscience, a super-ego, a sensibility which actually goads us to transcend our purely selfish interests.  Perhaps that's why the fundamentalists find it necessary to use GOD to justify their more primitive inclinations to hate, exploit and destroy outsiders. They themselves don't want to take responsibility for this selfishness; rather they must plead that they are only doing "God's will."  And, deep down, they feel guilty--guilty because their evolutionary conscience (which they also attribute to God)--keeps telling them that such purely "natural" conduct is, well, WRONG.  Somehow, our natural evolution has instilled in us a strong feeling that human survival is best served by defying nature.

Can we say, then, that the truest human "nature" is the rejection of "nature"?  How odd.  And yet, perhaps not so odd.  Natural selection has indeed provided human beings with a way of dominating the world and perpetuating our species:  the self-awareness to manipulate our own evolution.  Isn't that what we mean by civilization? It is by CONTROLLING nature--and our primitive natural instincts--that we have achieved our dominion on this little planet.

So I reject categorically all the right-wing claptrap about the "evils" of social-engineering and the merits of laissez-faire "market" forces.  Civilization itself is social engineering--and government has always been and will continue to be a vital force in engineering the forms of our civilization.  It is both asinine and delusional to advocate some sort of return to a Rousseauian (at best) or Hobbesian (at worst) state of nature--where individuals take care of themselves and neither require nor deserve any outside support.  Even laissez-faire-ists don't truly believe in laissez-faire:  they just mean laissez-MOI faire.

I appreciate, of course, that government can do evil (anti-human action) as well as good (pro-human action).  But, in democracies at least, individual humans have, mas o menos, a small bit of power to influence their government.  On the other hand, individuals have almost NO (or vastly unequal) power to influence the wealthy exploiters who, according to their own lights, have God's authorization to help themselves to dominion. So I conclude that government (of the democratic variety) is the more human and more humanizing of these two great "engineering forces" currently struggling for dominance in American life.

I will therefore continue to support government in any effort it makes to help those whom the God of the laissez-faire bible-thumping robber barons does NOT (and obviously CANNOT) help.  In so doing--even though I have contributed no "genetic" material to human evolution--I may yet have helped passed on "memetic" material that will render our species somewhat more sapiens and, hence, more fit to survive.

L'empire de la mort

I have recently returned from a six-week stay in Paris--during which I fully intended to write several witty and thought-provoking blogs.  In the end, I never seemed to have either the inclination or the time to undertake any writing longer than an occasional hasty post on Facebook.

Paris kept me busy, kept me entertained, kept me happy.

But now, I certainly have time. And even inclination, since I'm back in damp and dreary Minnesota, land of loons--where everyone is "nice" and, apparently, brain dead.  Back in the U.S.A., graveyard of dead ideas from sea to shining (and rising) sea.

L'empire de la mort.

In Paris, because my companion Carole loves death and dismemberment shit, I agreed to make my very first visit to the Catacombes--those former quarries which, late in the 18th century, became a kind of dumping ground for the remains of anyone previously interred in overflowing and unsanitary common graves throughout Paris.  

The skulls and skeletons were hauled to the disaffected quarries in wagons, hastily chanted and prayed over and then stacked up, sometimes in higgledy-piggledy mounds, sometimes in whimsically-designed and oddly elegant walls or benches of bones.

The work was finished in 1788.  The Revolution began in 1789.  Coincidence?

Well, of course, I personally cannot be sure that the grave-desecrating creators of the Catacombs actually CAUSED the Revolution, but post-hoc ultramontane reasoners have undoubtedly made that claim.

Might I not, therefore--employing another slight leap of logic--assert that herein lies a lesson for brain-dead American politicians?  Remembering the Catacombs and the Revolution, might I not encourage American politicians to abandon their obsession with dead and dying ideas--lest they provoke a 21st-century revolution right here in the Land Where Our Fathers Died.

The sign in the picture above reads:  "Stop!  This is the empire of the dead."

Good advice for brain-dead politicos.

--"Reducing spending creates jobs."  Stop!  Empire of the dead!
--"Tax cuts for the rich create prosperity for all."  Stop!  Empire of the dead!
--"Free market enterprise advances equality."  Stop!  Empire of the dead!
--"Social Security is bankrupt."  Stop!  Empire of the dead!
--"Gay marriage will destroy the family."  Stop!  Empire of the dead!
--"Sharia law is coming to America."  Stop! Empire of the dead!
--"Illegal immigrants are bankrupting America."  Stop!  Empire of the dead!
--"We're broke."  Stop, Stop, Stop, Stop, Stop....

If you enter this domain--and, devout Michele Bachmann, dedicated Sarah Palin, staunch Mitt Romney, lachrymose John Boehner,  I can see that you are well on your way--you will encounter only death.  Nothing fresh, warm, loving, caring, human--just dry bones.  LOTS of them, of course.  Quantity, but no quality. Almost, you could dive around in this copious death, like Uncle Scrooge in his money.  (Oh, I know you understand MONEY.)

But, whether you dive, swim or merely trek, after miles and miles of death, you wind up back at Place Denfert-Rochereau, formerly known as Place d'Enfer (Square of Hell).  From there, it's just a short metro ride to Place de la Bastille, where, incidentally (for those of you who don't remember much history) the French Revolution began.

Wouldn't it be better if you just didn't go there?

Planting Potatoes

Today is Good Friday, and I'm sad. Yes, the agnostic that I have become dearly misses the solemn mystery of Holy Week and Easter. It's quite unlike my experience of Christmas, which this year, for the first time in two decades, I celebrated without Christ--indeed, without any church at all--and scarcely noticed the absence.  That's undoubtedly because the traditions of Christmas are so profoundly UN-religious that I managed, with no fuss, to tuck Jesus away in a veritable manger of oblivion, even as I decked the halls.

Not so Holy Week.  Easter Bunny and colored eggs aside, there's very little for the secular person to delight in at Eastertide.  No diverting pagan traditions to compensate for the sorrowing with Tenebraes or the rejoicing with Easter Vigil Allelulias.

Just lilies and lamb and reruns of The Sound of Music on TV.

Well, it will have to do.  As much as I love the liturgies of the Triduum, I seem to have reached some kind of milestone in my spiritual journey. Alas, I no longer find it possible to believe (as the White Queen recommends) in "six impossible things before breakfast."  And, unlike Alice, I've had a great deal of practice, thank you.

For instance, I've worked very hard, over the years, to believe in the central assertion of Christianity:  that a loving God cares so much about human beings that he, himself, became one of us--and, like us, died in agony in order, somehow, to make it possible for us to NOT DIE.  Cut through all the metaphor, and Christianity's message is quite simple:  God loves us and will not let us perish.

What a wonderful notion!

And yet, it just does not scan.  It just does not compute.  Here's why:

1)  If God loves us so much, why didn't he simply give us eternal life when he created things way back when?

2)  OK, maybe God wasn't really responsible for the creation.  In other words, some other Being--an evil monster, obviously--actually brought the universe (and mankind) into being.  This would explain the manifest imperfections of humanity and the world (and keep God off the hook).

3)  So, in this view (basically some sort of Manicheism, I guess), God is a secondary force, himself subject to the Evil Monster who created the mess we call "reality."

4)  But God, in his pity for the creatures that the Demon created, figured out a way to save us:  he became a man himself and sacrificed himself to the Demon.  This, apparently, mollified the Demon--and allowed God to make a deal of sorts:  human beings could have eternal life, but only after they die--not on earth, as would otherwise be logical.

5)  But what's all the nonsense about saving ONLY those who "believe" in God?  Doesn't that makes God sound almost as petty and nasty as the Demon himself?

6)  And how could a "loving" God be so cruel, punishing the "victim" for his/her innate weaknesses (willed by the Demon, and not really the victim's fault)?  Surely, God's redemption must be for ALL humans, not just right-believers.

7)  Moreover, there's the question of evidence:  why doesn't God make himself known and visible to everyone?  Where IS heaven?  How COULD a God become man?  What is the relationship between God and the Demon?  Why should we put any trust in a God who deals with the Demon?

8)  Worst of all:  orthodox Christianity asserts that the Demon and God are one and the same--that GOD himself created this horribly defective universe, that God himself gave humans the power to defy him and destroy themselves, that God himself demanded a blood sacrifice before he would agree to forgive humans for the imperfections he himself created in them, that God himself is so incredibly petty that he refuses salvation to all humans who either ignore or are merely ignorant of his expectations.

No, it does not compute.  And it is, as the State Department says about human rights abuses in China, "unacceptable."  At least to me.

So, as I listen to Bach's sublime St Matthew Passion, I mourn.  I mourn that I cannot believe in the metaphor that inspired this beautiful music.  I mourn for humanity--which, despite these glorious chorales, has NOT been saved by any Sacred Head Now Wounded.  Oh, yes. Good Friday is, indeed, a very GOOD idea.  But it is also a lie. God (!) how I wish it were otherwise...

But there is nothing to be done except, as Candide finally concluded, "cultiver notre jardin."  Or as my grandpa always reminded us when Holy Week approached, "You have to plant your potatoes on Good Friday."

Off With Her Head

We all believe in equality, of course--especially for ourselves, whenever we're feeling oppressed and exploited by people who think they're better than we are.  Yet once we achieve the desired cookie-cutter parity with others, we very quickly develop a  taste for liberty--i.e., the freedom to think of ourselves not as equal, but as better than our fellows and, furthermore, as possessing a god-given right to exploit them.

In short, our allegiance to equality is, well, lukewarm and intermittent at best. Instead, our fierce animal cravings to dominate almost always trump our occasional pious yearnings for peace and justice.  And though we will cooperate with others in order to advance a personal goal, even then we secretly strive to be the "best" or the "boss." Heck, we just plain LIKE competition, conflict and confrontation.  Doesn't everybody want to be top dog, king of the mountain?  Or, if not "top" dog, at least superior to somebody, at least some of the time.

This is an important point.  At some moment in our evolution as a sentient species, we seem to have realized that EVERYONE cannot actually dominate EVERYONE,  ALL OF THE TIME.  Such "equitable superiority" would be the equivalent of the communistic heaven imagined by certain wimpy religious thinkers but found so totally unpalatable by actual holier-than-thou believers that both the Catholics' Paradiso and the Muslims' Jannah have been tricked out with a number of progressively higher circles of ever more perfect bliss (never mind the illogic of some saved people being more saved than others).

Anyway, in order to avoid the unpleasantness of both inferiority and equality, we humans invented  multitudinous and frequently overlapping hierarchies--ingeniously complicated social orders which, when they function properly, allow almost EVERYBODY to feel superior to at least SOMEBODY at least SOME of the time.

Now these hierarchies vary greatly in nature.  Some are institutionalized and thoroughly systematized, with clear delineations of each rank and status within the overall structure, e.g., military, ecclesiastical, professional, corporate, educational hierarchies.  Others have no "official" character, but are generally acknowledged within a given culture, e.g. status derived from wealth, ancestry, occupation, etc.  Still others are both unofficial and, in the minds of many, untenable--a condemnation that does not, however, prevent many devotees from thinking in these terms--e.g. hierarchies determined by race, gender, marital status, sexual preference, religion.  It should be noted, though, that rank derived from any of these third-category conditions, in Western countries anyway, tends to have weight and consequence only within groups of like-minded people (e.g., Mormons, white-supremacists).  And those who do not belong to the in-group often regard third-category "rankings" as fantasies at best, prejudices at worst.


The essential thing, though, is that we have created hierarchies in almost every domain of human experience and based upon almost every conceivable human condition.  Such variety is desirable, of course, since it affords almost everyone the opportunity to feel superior to others in some category or other of social or genetic reality.

Of course, we must also remember that not all hierarchies are equal, but that certain systems of ranking are seen as superior to others. For instance, there can be little doubt that much greater prestige accrues to a higher-up in the U.S. Army than to a higher-up in the custodial staff at Winona State University.  In other words, we have hierarchies of hierarchies.

And according to what criteria do we rank our hierarchies?  I'm not entirely certain, but I'm going to hazard a guess anyway.  I'm inclined to believe that we value most those hierarchies that are the least "user-friendly," the most demanding to enter, and within which upward mobility (not to mention absolute supremacy) is the most difficult to realize.

Consequently, I think we generally accord more status to hereditary monarchs than to elected heads of state or dictators of any sort, tinpot or terrifying.  Because, obviously, it's just awfully damned difficult to break into or move in any direction at all within, say, the House of Windsor.  Don't misunderstand.  I realize that Queen Elizabeth has considerably less real power than President Obama or even Kim Jong Il.  But the "slot" she occupies--because it is available ONLY to her--is regarded as superior, even if her actual responsibilities are inferior.  Unsurprisingly, then, she is accorded almost universal, objectively verifiable respect--because she is The Queen. Inversely, the status derived from being a born-again Christian--a slot available to anyone at all and superior primarily in the eyes of the born-again individual himself--is easily dismissed as subjective and therefore of very little real world significance.

All of which brings me around to subject which originally prompted me to write this blog:  the upcoming wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

For several weeks now, I have been growing increasingly annoyed that every media outlet, every day, devotes a seemingly inordinate amount of mawkish, mushy prattle to even the most insipid details of The Great Big Windsor-Wales Wedding.  Why? I kept asking myself.  Why do seemingly intelligent human beings allow themselves to be mesmerized by two decidedly unexceptional individuals who will never do much of anything other than cut ribbons, ride in carriages, and read ghost-written speeches to people who aren't listening.

And then, finally, I was obliged to acknowledge what my friend, Carole, has been suggesting:  that what people really care about is the SLOTS these two mediocrities occupy within the most prestigious of Britain's hierarchies--the hereditary monarchy.  Their actual merit as human beings is almost entirely beside the point--they could be Beavis and Butthead and the world would still be enthralled.  Because Beavis (or is it Butthead) will one day be King of England and the other one, whichever that is, will be the Queen consort.

So I guess I'm going to have to put up with "news" about the train on Kate's dress or the nail-polish she has chosen or the groom's cake made of cookies (biscuits?) or the ring that William refuses to wear.

I do wish, however, that these tedious top dogs would provide a bit more entertainment.  Seriously, haven't things grown excessively dull now that Diana The People's Princess is no longer titillating the plebes with revelations about bulimia, boyfriends and break-ups?  Ah, how I yearn for another Henry VIII.  Now there was a real alpha top dog--someone who could be counted on to "pay for" his status with plenty of crowd-pleasing death and dismemberment--such as, for example, impalings, hangings, disembowelments, poisonings, and, of course, almost daily beheadings.

Now I have nothing against Kate Middleton, though she does appear to be something of an airhead fashionista (her similarity to Diana in this regard may be part of her appeal to William, who, for his part, is beginning to acquire the horsy features so characteristic of his line).  Still, I was rather hoping that, once Wills becomes William V, he might see his way to do to her what Henry VIII did to Anne Boleyn:  yes, chop off her head! OK, it's a bit mean, I suppose, and a bit less exciting than mad and lethal car chases in Paris tunnels.  Still a nice little hatchet job on the Tower Green might be a real morale-builder for the British royals--just the thing to keep the lackluster House of Windsor from slipping in hierarchical status to the level of that Other Defender of Still Another Faith--(elected, gasp, and Catholic) Pope Benny the Rat.

Kate actually looks a bit like Anne, don't you think?

April Fool's Day

April.  Much has been written and sung about this month.  Mostly treacly happy-talk about showers and flowers and Paris and springtime, etc.  Since Easter usually occurs in April and since Buddha's birthday ALWAYS does, the fourth month also enjoys considerable religious prestige among those who believe in spiritual as well as agricultural rebirth.

Let us not, however, forget T.S. Eliot's sober and bitter judgment that "April is the cruellest month..."

Yes, April IS cruel--and not just because I always get older on April 13, or because Abraham Lincoln stopped getting older on April 15.

But rather, because in Minnesota at least, this supposedly happy month almost always disappoints--on each and every one of its 30 dishonest days, bringing blizzards instead of bunnies, floods instead of flowers. And just when we are SO ready for Whitman's field-sprouts and lilacs, BAM:  April snows on our Easter parade.

Haha.  April Fool. Poisson d'Avril.  I hate April.

No News Good News

Having pretty much abandoned any hope of landing another job in teaching, and finding myself still too compos mentis to devote my non-napping hours to cribbage at the Senior Center, I figure I ought to strive, at least when the weather is crappy, to PRODUCE something that would, you know, "help others" and at the same time funnel additional revenue into my personal coffers. So I'm thinking seriously about founding a new religion.

While there may be no actual NEED for such a product, I don't see why that tiresome little detail should stand in my way.  After all, needs can be manufactured (think about stainless steel wipes and feminine hygiene sprays).  America is still the land of opportunity, isn't it?  And of P.T. Barnum.

Yet needless to say, before I start marketing pre-orders and/or digging for golden plates in my back yard, I suppose I'll have to do a little planning (at least as much as Joseph Smith and Saul of Tarsus did).  I mean, I want to be sure that I can properly translate anything that the Angel Moroni (who presumably speaks only Moronic *sorry*) reveals to me, right?  Then, too, I don't want to waste my time founding a religion that no one will want to join and support with exceedingly generous contributions and egregiously rabid fanaticism.

So, let's begin by analyzing the "successful" existing religions--those which, in Tom Lehrer's words, are best at "selling their product."  Surely if I can distill the essential ingredients that all these lucrative movements share, I will eventually obtain a rich concentrate of tenets that I can recycle as the basis for my "nouvelle fusion" spiritual stew. Not that these commonalities will suffice in and of themselves. After all, if that were the case, then no NEW NEED could be created for MY personal version of Good News Gumbo.

Nonetheless, it's undoubtedly a good idea to include in my Credo at least some of the tried and true ingredients--before I attempt to tart them up with minty-fresh additives that the credulous good folks "out there" will find so desirable that they will simply be unable to resist sending me a sizable free-will offering in return for a laminated membership/recipe card (or a magic pair of polyester underpants--I haven't yet decided which).

What, then, are the common denominators of the current best-selling religions?  Hmmm.  Suppose we start by making a (non-exhaustive) list of "stuff people like to believe":

people who suffer are being punished by God
people who suffer will surely go to heaven
people who suffer should get over it
people who exploit others are serving God
people who exploit others are evil
money is bad
money is good
sex is bad
sex is good
bad sex is good
good sex is bad
good food is bad
pork is bad
beef is bad
eating is bad
eating is good only after sundown
God hates gays
God loves everyone
God hates sluts
fetuses are people
infidels aren't people
mosques should not have pictures
churches should not have statues
churches should have statues
statues should have no dicks

the best dicks are circumcised

the best dicks are not circumcised

women should keep covered so as not to tempt men, whether the latter are circumcised or uncircumcised
women should not drive, even if they're covered up
heck, we shouldn't even have cars
coffee is bad
wine is bad until you get to heaven
wine is the blood of Christ
the end of the world is coming
it's the Jews' fault

Oh, mercy!  the list is endless, isn't it?  Whatever CAN we make of it all?  Clearly, it behooves us to categorize a bit, if only to make this blog more coherent than Revelation, less mind-numbing than Leviticus.

Category 1:  suffering and exploitation.  Successful religions seem to manage, somehow, to make both sufferers and exploiters feel happy and holy.  The promise of "rewards in heaven" allows sufferers to accept their miserable earthly lot AND feel superior to their exploiters who, the sufferers assume, will ultimately be punished in some fiery bye and bye.  Meanwhile, those who exploit are reassured by Comforting Calvinism and "fat little pastors" that God rewards in THIS life those whom he has chosen as his eternal "elect."  These Chosen People--invariably rich and usually Republican--are thumpingly confident that their exploitation of inferiors is the predestined working out of God's will.

Category 2:  sex.  God cares a lot about sex.  We humans are, in fact, God's pornography.  Evidently, he watches us constantly and, like all pornography addicts, he sometimes has bouts of remorse.  Hence, in his manic phase, he tends to encourage our sexual appetites (Hindu Shiva-lingams, Wicca fertility rites, Japanese penis festivals) but, alas, in his depressive moods, he gives over to ranting about depraved queers and slutty women and blasphemous pole-dancers in the Sinai desert.

Category 3:  food.  God does not approve of most food, especially GOOD food--at least for human beings.  His tendency to forbid us mortals any pleasant form of nourishment is undoubtedly a sort of power trip.  He wants to make it perfectly clear that  he alone is in control and that he alone has the right to pig out on lobster à l'amoricaine.

Category 4:  infidels.  Truly successful faith groups (unlike flaccid Mainline Protestant denominations and mystical one-hand clapping Eastern sects) seem unanimous in denouncing all dissenters as inhuman and condemned to death, either in this life or in the hereafter.  It is therefore OK, to use CIA terminology, to "terminate with extreme prejudice" any such infidels.  Heck, God is going to kill them eventually anyway, after which he will cast their sorry-assed  souls into hell for all eternity.  So bloodletting in the service of religious causes is no big deal.

Well, that seems a sufficient distillation of the Essence of Ecumenism.  Now I can start planning my new and improved Gospel. To hell with digging around for buried tablets in the flower beds full of deer shit.  I'm just going to let the Angelic Messenger speak to me directly, in whatever language he chooses.  I am, after all, a linguist.  Hence, I should be able to "get it" at least as well as Moses or St. Paul or Mohammed or Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy. Surely if I follow their edifying example, emptying my mind of any vestige of rational thought, I should have no difficulty whatsoever finding Divine Inspiration for a sort of  latter day Sermon on the Mount--a snappy spin on some of the old time favorites (see above) followed by a compelling and thoroughly irresistible new twist as a conclusion.

(Here a bolt of lightning flashes across my computer screen.  Is it Moroni?  Gabriel?  or merely Pythia, the Screen Saver Oracle? Well, no matter:  mysterious chiaroscuro stuff always happens when religions are being hatched.)

And then, much as Breaking News Bulletins gush forth from Cable TV, my über Beatitudes spring unbidden and fully formed and infallible from the depths of my internal hard drive.  Verily, verily I say unto you, "Give heed now and listen up to the breaking No News Good News of which I am the prophet":

Tenet One:  (Exploiters).  Blessed are the overpaid CEOs, for they shall create jobs by trickling down on their workers.

Tenet Two:  (Sufferers).  Blessed are the workers and the persecuted and the poor.  They shall inherit nothing (probably not even trickle-down), but neither shall they live long enough to die of Alzheimer's Disease.

Tenet Three:  (Sex).  Blessed are those whose only sexual act is masturbating in the shower, for they shall be able to keep their abomination secret (unless hair starts to grow on their palms).

Tenet Four: (Food).  Blessed are the vegans, for they shall be neither sated nor constipated.

Tenet Five:  (Infidels).  Blessed are the warmongers, the bullies and the jihadists, for the Lord loveth a good bloodbath.


And now, the NEW stuff that should absolutely clinch the deal.

Tenet Six:  (Common Sense).  Blessed are those who use their reason to disprove or discredit any or all of the preceding tenets, for theirs is the Kingdom of Man.

And they, alone, shall truly be free.

Dang, I just botched everything, didn't I?  Well, I guess I didn't really want to be a prophet anyway.  I'll miss the money, though.

Shanghaied!

Kathleen Parker and others of her journalistic tribe are simply furious that President Obama hasn't had the, er, "audacity" to join the hallelujah chorus of red-blooded patriots who regularly and reverently recite their Credo that the United States is qualitatively "exceptional" among nations.

You know:  the notion that we're just better.  Our institutions are better; our traditions are better; our values are better and, moreover, our shit don't stink.

So the rules that apply to other nations don't apply to US.

Other nations may do evil things.  But not US.

Other nations may be surpassed.  But not US.

Other nations may decline and fall.  But not US.  

We are special--having, after all, been founded by GOD Himself.  We are number ONE and we always WILL BE NUMBER ONE.  In everything.  So get used to it.

And Mr. President, you had better start memorizing this Credo and reciting it regularly.  Or else, you go bye bye in 2012, and you'll have to live out your retirement in one of those nasty socialist, communist, fascist, atheistic countries that ARE subject to the forces of history.  So what if they have fast trains.

Shoot, Barry, just take a look around.  Anyone can see how exceptional we are.  The evidence is everywhere.

Number 1:  we are the only developed country (if we exclude South Africa) to persevere nobly in guaranteeing its citizens the priceless freedom of having no universal medical insurance.

Number 2:  we own more guns and firearms than any other people anywhere--so we are certainly exceptionally well-protected.  And we can reload mighty fast.  

Number 3:  among all the developed countries, we have the greatest number of God-fearing, church-going, born-again Christians who stand up, stand up for Jesus in defiance of scientists, evolutionists, humanists, common sense and documentary evidence.

Number 4:  we may not be very good at math or history, but by golly, we know the Bible, especially Leviticus.

Number 5:  we have the greatest disparity between the rich and the poor of any developed country (and the Census Bureau says the gap is growing impressively) .  Our very rich are just really, really, really rich.  Heck, Donald Trump could probably BUY some piddly little socialist country like Denmark.

Number 6:  we are the only developed country that continues to use the time-hallowed English system of admittedly irrational but oh-so-comfy weights and measures.  (Didn't the French invent the metric system, for Chrissakes? Let's have none of that!)

Number 7:  we have more miles (or even kilometers, if you insist) of decaying roads than any other country on the face of the earth. That's a lot of crumbling concrete, dudes. Think about it.  More ruins than even ancient Rome.

Number 8:  we are fatter/more obese than the people of any other country. According to the CDC, fully 34% of us are overweight.  In other words, we're SuperSized and you don't want to mess with us.

Number 9:  per capita, we consume more of the earth's resources than the citizens of any other country.   Also more Big Macs. 

Number 10:  our armed forces have the weaponry to kill more people more efficiently than any other army on the planet.  And we have an aircraft carrier called the USS Ronald Reagan which was built for this express purpose. 

Number 11:  we have Fox News for "fair and balanced" truth-telling.

Number 12:  we have Rush Limbaugh for culture and fine art.

Clearly, then, American exceptionalism is an indisputable truth.  There is just no way that we can be compared, as Barry Obama did in a press conference, to the effete British or the pederastic Greeks. Listen to his fatuous drivel:

"I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

C'mon!  What in hell did the British or the Greeks ever do for anybody? What "exceptional" institutions or values or ideas originated in those pissy little countries?  Obama's waffling on this issue is simply unacceptable in an American president.  Next thing, he'll be telling us that the Chinese are going to become NUMBER ONE in 2019!

The Chinese!  How about that for audacity! I'm beginning to think that our president has been shanghaied--perhaps by the "pinhead conspiracy"--you know, those guys who keep wasting their breath trying to convince Americans that the earth is round.