TURN OUT THE ENLIGHT; THE PARTY'S OVER:

Whose nation under God? (Robert Kuttner, April 27, 2005, Boston Globe)

WHEN John Kennedy was running for president and passions were running high about whether a Catholic could serve both the American citizenry and Rome, a joke made the rounds about a priest and a minister whose friendship nearly came to blows. Finally the priest phoned his old friend. ''What a pity," he said. ''Here we are, both men of the cloth, fighting over politics." ''It's true," said the minister. ''We're both Christians. We both worship the same God -- you in your way, and I in His."

America, which separated church and state precisely to protect the private right to worship, has long had its share of religious absolutists who have wanted to harness the power of the state to their own view of revealed truth. But never before in our history has the government deliberately and cynically intervened on the side of the zealots.

President Bush, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and company are playing with serious fire. As the joke suggests, there is no challenging revealed truth. That's why the state stays neutral.

What's under siege here is nothing less than the Enlightenment

Didn't he get the memo? The siege is over--we won.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 27, 2005 6:40 AM