Christian Nation

This is a response to a post that a dear friend made on Facebook about this article. His comment? "Good facts from Parker"

Wow. Where to begin. Whatever happened to separation of church and state? I guess Danny Elfman pretty well covers this issue for me, with the lyrics here.

If I had to guess, I think religion is on the rise and will continue.

People generally tend to turn to it in times of stress, to help explain things that are unexplainable (401K->201K, job loss, etc.). I get that. And I have no problem with that. The problem I have with it is their insecurity and intolerance of a world that doesn't agree with their view! Now, I realize that both the left and the right like to make strawpeople out of extremists. We have them on both sides. But how do these extremists play out on the world stage? They rally the troups to their point of view. Populist rage.

If you take a look at the big picture... we have a huge imbalance in the wealth of the world, and we're in the top slot. (Well, perhaps China is now... )

Nature seeks an equilibrium (Somalli Pirates, Taliban, Hammas - just to name a few equalizers), so that cannot spell good things for the top dog. China and India - traditionally very poor countries, are getting wealthier (this economic pause in your consuming pleasure notwithstanding). This will come at the expense of the richer countries. (seen any manufacturing jobs recently?) There's absolutely no way a worker here in the states can compete with the salary of a worker in developing nations. This is why we have such a huge trade deficit with China! All the WalMart Shoppers are sending their dollars to China.

But is this really a bad thing?

I claim no.

Firstly, there is no way we're ever going to go to war with China. (and I love that the hawks in congress are up in arms about repurposing our war machine to reflect that!) They want our dollars, and we want their output. Anybody want to stop that? Not going to happen with free trade.

Secondly, a world that can't afford to go to war with a country they trade with suddenly becomes at peace with them. This is why it's such a great idea to open relations with our "enemies". Cuba? The best thing we could do is let the Cubans see what they've been missing. THEY will throw out the Castros!

The same with Iran... what a tweet that Bush was for turning our back on Iran when they wanted to help us after 9/11. I mean... the tragi-comedy does NOT get any better.

So I see American wealth slowly trickling out to China, India, and points abroad. We will learn to consume less, and others will consume more. We will find an equilibrium, until all are at peace (unless we cook planet first.)

And more people will turn to religion to explain what they have lost. And that's perfectly fine with me, just keep it to yourself, please. I'm perfectly willing for you all to keep it in the Red States, and we'll keep the heathenry on the coasts. (with small islands in each: we have Orange County, you have to tolerate Chicago.)

Cheers!

p.s. this all changes if the price of oil makes it prohibitive to send Salinas lettuce to Japan and Chinese shoes to NYC. Then the living becomes local, the jobs come back, and we ramp up the military to protect our stuff!