Beware:
Ignorance
Protects itself
Ignorance
Promotes suspicion.
Suspicion
Engenders fear.
Fear quails,
Irrational and blind,
Or fear looms,
Defiant and closed.
Blind, closed,
Suspicious, afraid,
Ignorance
Protects itself,
And protected,
Ignorance grows.

(Above from Chapter 12 of “Parable of the Talents” by Octavia E. Butler)

This passage comes to mind as I see serious people asking important questions about our government in public forums, what our elected officials are doing right, and what they are doing wrong. It doesn’t take long for instructions/rules/objections credited to the Bible and quotes from particular scriptures to pop up leading to heated arguments between fools. In the United States. When asked about government. Because ‘Murica.

The argument goes to whatever fiction they’ve read that convinced them the Founding Fathers they so revere intended this to be a Christian nation. The truth is the founding fathers were just a bunch of rich, white dudes who were, for their time (18th century), reasonably enlightened. They had learned from England and from their own histories here in the colonies why it was crucially important to put up a wall to separate Church from State. They wanted exactly the opposite of what these loud and ignorant people think they wanted for this country. Some of the evidence of their strong desire to separate the two? to NOT make this a Christian nation? besides the letters of these “Founding Fathers” like Jefferson? The First Amendment to the Constitution. Separation of Church and State is the first thing they enshrined into law in the Bill of Rights,

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . .”

Much of it comes down to “I know the Bible better than you do,” as if that is something to be proud of especially in a serious conversation about governing an entire nation, composed of people, many of which have no interest in your stupid imaginary friends or what they “tell you” they want seeing as how. . :

Why do any other governments (other than the dictatorships and theocracies because, obviously, control) bother with us when our people and many of our elected officials are this stupid? How are we ever going to rise above our fear of everything we don’t understand, especially everything/everyone “other,” if we don’t try to look outside ourselves to the world, to reality. We need to try to understand rather than keeping our faces stuck in old books that have nothing to do with the world we live in how? How can we be proud to be this ignorant?

Link: Susan B. Anthony quote

#BewareIgnorance