Why Does the Future We Face Look Like the Past We Left?

A poll conducted July 7-17 by one of the most trusted -- fair, objective -- survey outfits in the nation, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, is in print this a.m. in the NYTimes. It found that:

1. 42 percent of respondents "held strict creationist views, agreeing that 'living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.' "

2. 64 percent said they were "open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution," while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism.

It's just too depressing to go on.

Just got off the phone talking to someone about the purge in Boone's First Baptist Church, a purge of long-time congregational leaders (well, at least one) over the heresy of evolution (among several other beliefs, some of them political and not sanctioned by the Southern Baptist Convention, the Wholly Owned Subsidiary of the Republican Party). Asked to sign some sort of Baptist loyalty pledge, the brave among those Baptists refused to sign. Stripped of leadership ... you know the rest if you've lived among Southern Baptists.

The leading inquisitor of this First Baptist purge is a sitting superior court judge. And naturally the local news media either doesn't know what's going on (which would make juicy copy for CNN ... Fox News, not so much) or it's chosen not to find out.

A sitting superior court judge becomes the local Thought Police. How would such a person get to be a judge? HE WAS ELECTED, which takes me in a great circle, back to where this post began.