Service to foreign gods

Reading today's Los Angeles Times, with its A-section stories of how fundamentalists are strong-arming companies into paying obeisance to "Christmas" and how the FCC chief is threatening to derail the merger of the top two cable companies unless the cable industry censors itself, I have come to a conclusion as to what this country needs. Much as it pains me to make use of another religion's ideas, this country needs the Rapture. By an act of God, the religious right would disappear from the earth. However, since this is my imagination, this would be followed not by Tribulations but by a new era of peace and comity.

It's the same problem that has bedeviled man since the foundation of democratic institutions: how do you preserve pluralism when the institution can be commandeered by people who are not pluralistic? The paradoxical answer: let God figure that one out.

Short Shameful Retraction

Of course, these things hit me after I post, but I do have Christian friends who believe that these are the End Times. OTOH, this would be a good time to retract what might be taken as an insult. I must. OTOH, what these friends most dearly want is to be bodily translated to Heaven. I thought it would be a win-win situation. I was, of course, wrong.