Two go(o)d points raised on the attempted Alabama Insurrection --

Christian Science Monitor points out some original reasoning that granting a particular religion the power of the state could just as easily be used against that religion in the future.

InstaPundit.com has a collection of pieces of wisdom on the willy old men from many many years ago.

For myself, I cannot help but feel a sense of horror at the prospect that one of those super-blind-yet-insistent EVANGELISTS, who tries to scare the hell out of folks with vicious threats of "you're going to hell," becoming a judge.

Imagine now that these Evangelists, against all reason, had a 60 percent majority in the legislature and the courts -- what would stop them from squashing all opposition using the power of the state? Now superimpose that mental picture upon Iraq where the Shiite's have a 60 percent majority. Now ponder what it is that is supposed to differentiate America from the rest of the world. It is NOT the particular religion that our frail homo sapien minds can conjure up to explain the unexplainable vision of what happens after we die but that we are each free to conjure up our own vision without someone holding a bat to our heads as though that would magically inject the batter's vision into the batee's brain. It IS the ABSENCE of the bat that frees the mind to think of things other than simple fear of the bat.

I cannot help but also think that U.S. lawyers, even though not professing any religious motivation, are nevertheless equally vulnerable to the frailties associated with merely being a homo sapian and thinking that they have THE answer to the exclusion of non-lawyers. The issue is not the status of a person as a lawyer or a person who speaks with a non-existent god but the ability to reason AND to always articulate that reasoning in words that others can understand.

It should come as no surprise that battee's, regardless of who is the batter (religious or otherwise), find it hard to see anything other than a bat. We cannot underestimate the importance of non-blinding education, for that is the best defense against the bat.