So, teach kids to never question authority and to stand in awe of anyone in uniform or who claims he/she wears a uniform; train employees to follow the rules and always obey their managers or be fired; encourage girls not to be assertive or trust their own judgement but to follow what their elders tell them.
And then this is what you get, as reported on ABC’s Primetime. —

BAH!
And still the supposed shepherds feed their sheep this shit.
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they “voted God out of your city” by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design.
All eight Dover, Pa., school board members up for re-election were defeated Tuesday after trying to introduce “intelligent design” – the belief that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power – as an alternative to the theory of evolution.
“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God. You just rejected him from your city,”
Welcome to Bush country.

ADDENDUM (also via myrln)
Rest assured Pat Robertson’s favorite book is the Old Testament, all that smiting, smoting, firing, drowning right up his god’s alley.
You know, if the god that Pat and his ilk worship were human, he’d have been long ago jailed and executed for homicide, infanticide, genocide, and other sociopathic behavior.

That’s a quote from my non-blogger friend myrln.
Then there’s:
“All we are is dust in the wind.”
– Kansas
“Gravity isn’t real and dinosaurs are dragons from Hell.”
– The Other Kansas
The above are from Randi Rhodes of Air America.
So, the Kansas Board of Education is revising their Science education standards and improperly injecting religion into biology classrooms. But supporters of the new standards said they were simply trying to open the curriculum, and students’ minds, to alternative viewpoints.
To quote Rhodes, again:
“Kansas, preparing young minds for the high tech jobs of 1652.”
What is going on in this country?
And then there’s the IRS harassing a church for the sin of insinuating that Jesus was a man of peace. According to an article in the L.A. Times,
In his sermon, Regas, who from the pulpit opposed both the Vietnam War and 1991’s Gulf War, imagined Jesus participating in a political debate with then-candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry. Regas said that “good people of profound faith” could vote for either man, and did not tell parishioners whom to support.
But he criticized the war in Iraq, saying that Jesus would have told Bush, “Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster.”
On June 9, the church received a letter from the IRS stating that “a reasonable belief exists that you may not be tax-exempt as a church … ” The federal tax code prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from intervening in political campaigns and elections.
And just to get a little more Bush-bashing in, according to The Nation:
President Bush and the current administration have borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than the previous 42 presidents combined, a group of conservative to moderate Democrats said Friday….. According to the Treasury Department, from 1776-2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions, but in the past four years alone, the Bush administration borrowed $1.05 trillion.
I still maintain (I’ve blogged about it before) that Bush, with his evil minions, is the Anti-Christ, misleading his followers to believe that his is doing good, while he is actually leading the world into a disaster of major proportions.
Among those who understand that the Antichrists of whom John was writing are instead a single individual and expect this one to arise in the future, there is a general consensus that sometime prior to the expected return of Jesus, there will be a period of “trials and tribulations” during which the Antichrist, inspired by Satan, will attempt to win supporters, and will silence anyone or make enemies of any country that refuses to approve of him. This metaphor is written as “receive his mark”.
[snip]
The most common interpretations continue to be that the Antichrist will be some sort of high-ranking political leader, who will initially do very good, popular things, which will win him many followers. In the end, however he is supposed to get increasingly totalitarian and elicit more and more sacrifices from his followers until eventually his evil ways become known, and the era of “trials and tribulations” begins.
OK. I don’t really believe in the Bible-belchers literal interpretations of either the creation or the anti-christ. But I do think that those concepts are powerful metaphors, and as often as not, metaphors are where the truth lies.
I live in the middle of a forest of trees that turn golden in autumn. Until yesterday, when a hard wind and rain ripped the last of the leaves from the old trees, the very air shimmered in the sun. Now, with all of that yellow gone, I can notice a few small struggling maples that have somehow managed to put down roots. And even some scraggly pines that keep trying to compete with those determined oaks.
How often it happens we can’t see the forest for the trees. Sometimes it takes a harsh and brutal wind to clear the air.