One nation under God. The "bold conservative" GOP Congressman Paul Broun from Georgia is intent upon removing a vexing comma from that phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance, which was amended in 1954 when President Eisenhower was moved by a sermon by one Reverend George M. Docherty on the need to defend America from the "militantly atheistic communism that has already enslaved 800 million of the peoples of the earth, and now menaces the rest of the free world."
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

From organically-farming Zen centers to celebrity-cultivating Scientology centres^TM, California is a seedbed of the most earnest (and most frivolous or worse) branches of spiritual inquiry. What's in the water in the Golden State that has made it The Visionary State? In an interview with editor Geoff Manaugh of the excellent BLDGBLOG, author Erik Davis -- whose published passions have ranged from an analysis of Philip K. Dick's "divine invasions" to erudite musings on Led Zeppelin's fourth album to an ode to the joys of being a teenage bongeur -- talks about the formerly chic devil-worshipper Anton LaVey, Beat Zen, Aldous Huxley, the Watts Towers, and beyond, with great photos by Michael Rauner, who collaborated with Davis on the new book.
posted on Aug 10, 2006 - View this thread

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God... In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own... History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government." These heretical words, spoken by a government official now, would surely result in him being targeted for removal by the GOP in the next red-state "mandate." But they were written by Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the increasingly pious, "faith-based" United States of America. A timely reminder from Robin Morgan in Ms. Magazine [via the sublime wood s lot.]
posted on Nov 24, 2004 - View this thread