There are such things as natural disasters, volcanoes, meteors, earthquakes, tsunamis, forest fires. Then there are the avoidable disasters. Bird flu, global warming, and peak oil are the first to come to my mind. This long list includes more localized avoidable disasters, such as the failure of the levees in NOLA. After avoidable disasters occur, citizens left holding the shit-end of the stick will often ask questions like:
"How did this happen?"
"Why didn't somebody DO something to prevent this?"
"Why weren't we warned?"
Often times we
are warned. We're warned by scientific articles written by nerds, NPR stories and boring documentaries which have no singing in them, obscure CSPAN speakers with funny glasses, and specials on lame channels like CNN and Discovery.
One such warning came today on NPR's On-Point, guest-hosted by Anthony Brooks. It was presented as a simple story about Patrick Henry College. Not only does this college have an award-winning debate team, it has decided to locate itself just outside of Washington DC, in order to create opportunities in government for its christian students, and therefore project them into influential positions in future governments.
I want to praise Anthony Brooks for his responsible journalism, covertly calling attention to an impending, yet avoidable disaster. If these adorably obedient christian truth-pukers ever come to control the US government, we are truly fucked. Brooks brought on three of the students and no professors. This allowed the students to sound like arrogant teenagers, reciting their pious talking points, and basically sticking their holy feet in their holy mouths, without any holy coaching.
One of the award-winning debate students was asked about the separation of church and state. His rambling reply was that the separation was intended to protect religious freedoms from the whims of kings and emperors. When Brooks pressed about prayer in schools, this award-winning debater, replied:
"...I...I...haven't really thought through that necessarily."
What?
Why hasn't he thought about it? Because he was home-schooled until he went away to 'college'. He doesn't understand anything about other kinds of people, except in the condescending, abstracted terminology of christian home-school. You haven't considered if there should be prayer in school? I suppose it's just another infallible truth, like the sun and the moon, and the factual perfection of the Bible. Well, what about the Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Atheists, etc? I guess they'll be just fine with it, especially after they realize that Jesus is the one true savior.
If your knowledge of the debate over the separation of church and state does not touch on prayer in school, then you haven't the right, the wisdom, nor the ability to govern a diverse population such as the United States of America.
If your knowledge of the debate over the separation of church and state does not touch on prayer in school, AND you attend a christian college, then someone needs to examine your school's accreditation.
And speaking of diversity, one student didn't understand what's so important about diversity, specifically homosexual diversity.
"...I'm just wondering why diversity is a more important principle than um, principles of truth that we find in natural law, which we find in religion. I'm not sure how diversity is more important."
Huh? Lemme see if I can boil down this nonsense into plain english.
Translation attempt 1:
I don't know why... diversity is more important... than the natural truth/law... found in religion.
Translation attempt 2:
Diversity... is less important than... what God says.
Oops! I almost forgot, we're talking about the 'diversity' that dare not speak its name. So I guess, under all the fancy words, there's still the same old christian whacko slogan:
God hates fags.
We've been warned. Thanks, Mr. Brooks.