nonist comments

You’ve heard, I’m sure, about the horrible persecution and hideous intollerance gripping this fine nation? Indeed. It’s everywhere. In our courts. In our boardrooms and bedrooms. In our malls. In our highest offices of government. On our streets. You need only look out your window to see it. I’m talking obviously about the “Criminilization of Christianity.”

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Even for the disinterested, Godless, and “Wrong-Godded” there have been signposts in the road too well covered by the media to be completely ignored.

There was David Linbaugh’s 2003 book, Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity.

Last year whilst sugarplums were ostensibly dancing in our heads conservative radio hosts gnashed their teeth about the “War on Christmas.”

In 2004 this thread was continued with John Gibson’s book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.

In the meantime there have been countless Bill O’reilly sound bytes⊕ and and endless stream of repetitive Fox News talking points.

This past March it all reached a crescendo when radio commentator Rick Scarborough convened a two-day conference in Washington to address the “War on Christians.” It opened with “reports from the front-lines” on the “persecution” of Christians in the United States. Among its key speakers were the House majority leader, two U.S. senators, and two former republican presidential candidates. Sounds serious huh? It’s enough to make you think trembling little Christians are being rounded up en-mass, being tattooed, and having jumper-cables clamped to their private parts! Just a terrible, terrible thing this “war.”

I only bring this up because a couple of weeks ago I came across some county-level choropleth maps put out by the Glenmary Research Center which show the distribution of religious congregations across the United States. Looking at the 25 maps I couldn’t help but notice that a full 23 of the 25 represented the distribution of essentially Christ worshiping denominations. It struck me that perhaps a more truly representative map could be created by lumping all 23 of these denomination together.

So i did just that. Here is a map of the beleaguered and persecuted group which I’ll here call “Christies” as they are distributed across the United States.

Just to offer some perspective here are the other two Glenmary Research Center maps which plotting data on groups which actually qualify as discrete Religious bodies.

So what am I getting at? Let me sum it up in one sentence-

Overwhelming majorities do not get persecuted.

It’s as simple as that, really. Isn’t it high-time this line of rhetoric gets shit-canned? Christies who get worked into a lather by all the snarling of their own duplicitous leadership about the criminalization of Christianity need to understand that not being allowed 100% iron-fisted totalitarian control over every single aspect of society is not even close to the same thing as persecution.

If a group of people who have an 85% majority, with an allied two term president⊕ control of the senate, a supreme court stacked in their favor, and powerful lobbyists whose tendrils creep into every nook and cranny of society, have the gall to still feel persecuted… well then frankly about all I can do in response is invoke their God myself and say “Jesus Fucking Christ! You’ve got to be kidding?!”

Anyhow, enough of that.

An interesting tidbit revealed itself, when I combined the Cristies map with the others, which I wanted to draw your attention to. Have a look at the detail below, paying special attention to the area circled-

You see that little, lonesome, white county there? According to the Glenmary maps that happens to be the one and only county in the entirety of the United States, Alaska included, without a measurable number of religious adherents. It just so happens to be called Loving County. Is it possible that in all my grumbling about delusional Christians that I accidentally discovered… (gasp) Heaven?

Maybe it was just a census error, maybe the population was so miniscule that it just didn’t register on the map, or maybe it was the fact that Loving County itself boasts more ghost towns⊕ than living ones⊕. Then again who knows? Maybe the folks in that one Texas town are uniquely humanistic, secular, rational and without superstition… Spectacularly unlikely I know, but hey, “spectacularly unlikely” is practically the definition of Heaven.

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God to see you back. I mean, good to see you back. I didn’t know a freudian typo was possible. I am personally at war with all of them. I have had a revelation while you were away. I am born again. I am not ashamed to say it now. THERE IS NO GOD. I gave god the benefit of the doubt for far too long. Now the Goddies are causing far too much trouble and we’ve advanced our knowledge too far to go back into the dark again, which is where this god idea is going to put us if we don’t get over it completely. The Goddies were fine when they believed their myth on the weekends and got back to reality on Monday morning, but now they are affecting Monday morning. One God is no less ridiculous than a pantheon of three hundred and we gave that up 2000 years ago. It is time to give up God and start believing in Humanity before we destroy it.

It just so happens to be called Loving County. Is it possible that in all my grumbling about delusional Christians that I accidentally discovered… (gasp) Heaven?

Yep. So close to heaven in fact that the place attracts loons from all over the country.

The newly elected sheriff had barely pinned on his star in January 2005, he recalled, when his phone rang with an old-fashioned warning: “You don’t know it, but you’re in trouble.” A group was planning a takeover of the county, said the caller, a woman in Arizona who promised to send him some information by e-mail.

The material described the plans of a Libertarian faction in its own words “to win most of the elected offices in the county administration” and “restore to freedom” Loving County. The blueprint, called “Restoring Loving County,” said that land was hard to come by but that a ranch had been split up and members were in the process of buying sections.

“The people who are living there will be able to register to vote,” it said. “They must swear that they intend to make Loving their home.”

The goal, said an e-mail message attributed to a group member, was to move in enough Libertarians “to control the local government and remove oppressive regulations (such as planning and zoning, and building code requirements) and stop enforcement of laws prohibiting victimless acts among consenting adults such as dueling, gambling, incest, price-gouging, cannibalism and drug handling.”

“...stop enforcement of laws prohibiting victimless acts among consenting adults such as dueling, gambling, incest, price-gouging, cannibalism and drug handling.”

Ha! That’s hilarious. Victimless acts like dueling and cannibalism? If a few succulent human meatballs is the price for installing a Libertarian government then, well… break out the Ragu!

How’d you just happen to have this handy John? I never did think to ask you where Laputan logic was based out of… you don’t happen to use the phrase “Yee-Haw!” on a regular basis do you?

Nah, where I come from people say “g’day” on a fairly frequent basis but not in that Paul Hogan sort of way. Also “mate” also tends to have a bit of a edge to it (reserved mainly for people who definitely aren’t your mates).

What were the odds of me knowing something about Loving County? Well, I guess that considering that the place is the “xth y of the US” it was destined for some kind of media fame. I only half-remembered reading something about it a while back and Google filled in the blanks.

Persecuting the majority?