Well that was said beautifully.  As I was getting to the end of the piece, I envisioned the republican political roster standing together dressed in outfits from the middle ages firmly concluding global warming science is witchcraft, plotting to resolve the debt crisis by turning lead to gold, and proposing various blood lettings to relieve their demoncratic opposites of the evil spirits with which they are clearly possessed.

Nobody would vote for anyone with ideas this anachronistic and silly.  Why do we continue to accept nonsense ideas as competitors to evolution?  The door has to be firmly closed to these types of backwards viewpoints.  While they are sad and pittiable in any adult member of society, they are absolute distructive and perverting in a public officer, and particularly one bidding to occupy the oval office.  The answer to the question of Perry and his ilk has to be no.

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Great comments Mike.  I concur as I’m sure many do.
What worries me ( and frankly, isn’t commented on much) is that we have created these political creatures in large part to the appalling and constantly diminishing level of reason, thought and basic intelligence of the American electorate.
  It’s as if about 30 years ago, the political /religious right finally achieved enough ‘critical mass’ to sustain and slowly increase and consolidate enough political and economic influence to begin a gradual, subtle (or not so subtle?) brainwash of large swaths of this nation.
  It’s terribly scary to many of us, and I think even with the counter-influence of writers/thinkers/scientists such as the ‘Four Horsemen’ and others, we have, at best, barely kept those of this ilk in check. I don’t mean to get too political here, but if Obama loses, it looks like it’s ‘back to square one’ again in terms of fighting for reason, science and rationality.

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Ben,

While you might be right that there seems to be a new beach head for ignorance in civil society and political discourse, it might only be a matter of perception.  It seems to me that politics have not been as rancorous as they are now in the recent past, it seems as though atheism has not really been a publicized mainstream viewpoint until more recently, and while we have always had biogotry in ample supply, the past decade’s bringing terrorism to our doorsteps has brought that latent religious-based bigotry boiling up to the surface.  Now it seems that a citizen of this nation is not sufficiently patriotic unless they are overtly (perversely) nationalistic and rabidly, spitefully (hipocritically) christian.  Unfortunately, blind aliegence is not a patriotic quality.  Automotons marching in line to the tune of the fife and beat of a drum have mistakenly been given brains, because to do what they want, they need only a brain stem.  Thankfully there are still plenty of us who are doing no such marching.  For example, it sounds like Al Gore will spend 24 hours straight talking about global warming.  I doubt that there will be any praying for rain involved.

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