No Laughing Matter from the Laughing Lawyer

The Commonhell of Massachusetts Puritans has unleashed their rabid horses once again. In Salem their predecessors burnt hysterical females as witches. But this virus knows no gender. Today, these Brunhildes swoop down in stealth to the strains of Wagner’s offish "Nighride of the Valkyries," With their "Magic Spears of Germanic Virtue" they slay men and even first grade schoolboys for the crime of political incorrectness

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. See Whitney v. California 294 U.S. 357 (1927). The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men (and now particularly feminists) of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. Olmstead.p. 479

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941)

Massachusetts Feminist Church Officials Revive Salem Witch Trials

Remember the two criminals who were crucified alongside Jesus? They just happened to be hanging around together. They are referred to as two criminals. No names. They had no past. They could have been sitting on Monday’s flight from Paris with a plastique bomb stuffed into the toe of their left sneaker. If they had been crucified it would have been no big deal. One even admitted to Jesus he was guilty.

Maybe Jesus was impulsive. Give the guy a break. If you were hanging from a cross without Advil to control the pain a kind word from a stranger might have induced you to be a little rash too. The criminal who admitted his deed told the Roman soldier who was taunting Jesus, "How do you know he isn’t God? And even if he isn’t, he didn’t do anything to deserve death."

Imagine Jesus as the Merv Griffin of Judea TV quiz shows. He opens the curtain. There’s nothing. The audience sighs. Then Merv says "I tell you the truth. Today you will be with Me in paradise." (Luke 23:32-43). If you can believe the Bible-and Christians presumably do-Jesus favored him with the greatest gift possible. It would be like a lifetime loser winning a $100 million multi-state lottery.

That’s no small promise, assuming Jesus could call on a line of credit of that size. It means only two people in all history were sure they had an afterlife with climate control.

We can drop Merv now because I doubt God paid him any more attention after death than I did while he was alive. In the Bible version, only Jesus and the convict hold confirmed reservations. I assume Jesus had a place reserved since his Dad must have told him so before he sent him down here to endure a catalog of people I know I wouldn’t miss.

Christmas Eve I attended services at an Episcopal cathedral. Why would I do anything so stuffy? Episcopalian beliefs are like multiple choice tests. Only on their tests, all the answers are right, even the wrong ones. But the sound of their boys choir and the celestial organ totally rebuilt only a few years ago reaches a height that takes art to the sublime. It is in a class by itself.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Episcopal Church is the ultimate in political correctness. If the bishop included the weather forecast it would rumple feathers and Episcopalians rate properly preened feathers very high. Usually the sermon is refined, dignified, stately and empty, like an audience with the Her Majesty the Queen. It is a wonderful backdrop for a short nap before the music, the psalms and the drama of Christ’s birth picks up again.

The bishop was absent from his post this year. We will not digress into why. There is enough material there to mine another whole column, probably far more titillating. Suffice it to say you don’t have to be a regular attendant to quickly grasp that that the Big Cheese was chosen based on affirmative action, color coordination and a misreading of "Blessed are the meek." The Bishop Suffragan spoke in his stead. The titles themselves suggest that if America voted itself an established church the Episcopalians would win in a stretch.

That gets us to the point. Once this elderly gentleman started preaching, I knew he had been passed over and we were going to hear something if not true at least interesting. We did.

"Look at this congregation on an ordinary Sunday," he said. "We could meet in the Ladies Room downstairs and save thousands in the heating bill." True, the Episcopal Church is the fastest disappearing mainline sect. When the non-churched hear the voice of God it is most likely with a Southern drawl. And Episcopalians themselves include Planned Parenthood in their Credo. They reproduce just a mite faster than the Shakers did.

I didn’t catch the name of the church publication. But the bishop went on: "Under the circumstances you won’t be surprised at my amazement in reading that the Diocese of Massachusetts formed a taskforce to study whether new members should be subjected to "a full background check to insure that congregations are protected from risky people." They obviously want an airtight assurance that criminals like the one Jesus didn’t even know and yet promised a place in Paradise wouldn’t smell up their church. Every applicant, they believe, is a potential pervert, especially males. Then the Bishop did what retiring politicians do. He didn’t dance around the subject. He actually said, "these people must be nuts. It’s not as if serial killers are breaking down our doors to get in."

The Bishop Suffragan apparently doesn’t know the Commonhell of Massachusetts like fathers do. It is predictable that one mind-blowing new theory will gush out of Massachusetts’ hothouse of establishment universities at least every month.

The sub-bishop then let his imagination go. "Since September 11th Christians have become as suspicious as their neighbors." The world used to regard Christians as gamblers. Their faith meant hope in the future, not fear. Those without faith hide behind secure walls.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger in the long run is no safer than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." --Helen Keller

Is the Massachusetts Diocese going to propose embedding computer chip IDs under the skin containing information on the member’s medical history, proven or unproven charges against him, his reputation in the community, his education level and his income?"

I was ready to applaud because from the stirring in the mostly female congregation and celebrants I’m not sure how much rope this fellow will get next year. They might just give him enough to hang himself and no slack.

The Bishop may not have known who’s behind this “Big Brother” idea. But I did. As soon as he launched his "tirade" I did. I just didn’t know that any Harvard feminists recognized any other gods.

Notes:

If you think science has discredited witchcraft as a superstition, you would be wrong. Again, the feminists in attacking science as masculine have duped too many into believing that intuition can be as scientific as cold facts. Intuition is priceless in science in that it stimulates thought. It sparks the process. I just hope you never have brain surgery performed by a feminist doctor using feminine intuition.

This is getting to serious for me. I have in the main left serious argument in writing behind because I don’t think anyone is convinced by reason or fact. The best you can do if you are very good at it(which I am not, but you can always strive) is to make the stubborn mulls take a break and laugh at themselves and surely to make them the butt of laughter generally. Ideas whither when people don’t quite know why they laugh at what they used to take seriously. If we had enough good comics who even mildly jabbed the feminists in the ribs, we’d get a lot farther. But if you wish to see how seriously witchcraft has influenced feminism, even among working scientists, here are two places to start:

Isn’t it ironic, given this story that Philip English, who was accused of witchcraft along with his wife, never forgave his persecutors for the loss of his property and reputation? He asked for a large settlement for his losses, but only received a small one. So in order to sever ties with Puritanism, he helped found the St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. www.nationalgeographic.com/features/97/salem/history.html

P.R.A.N.C.E. also participated in a special Universal Celebration of the Holiday with the Rev. Gail Seavey of the Salem Unitarian Universal Church. http://www.salemweb.com/guide/witches.htm Unitarian soccer moms in Cambridge, Massachusetts decided to go one step further than just standing behind their homosexual, sadomasochistic boy scout leader. The church decided to merge boy and girl scout troops. Now they’re having trouble finding enough cub scout leaders

The Witches’ League for Public Awareness invites you to visit their web site to learn about this group founded in 1986 by Laurie Cabot (who was given the complimentary title of "The Official Witch of Salem, Mass." Former Gov. Michael Dukakis) established it as a "non-profit educational network dedicated to correcting misinformation about witches". How can you correct misinformation about witches? That’s like Massachusetts politicians correcting misinformation about the Interstate highway boondoggle cutting through downtown Boston for which Teddy got about $3 billion in pork barrel. The costs are now up to $9 billion, the city looks like Berlin in 1945 and completion is years off. No wonder Dukakias only carried Massachusetts. http://www.salemweb.com/guide/witches.htm

Andrew E. Carlan
Farmingdale, New York

You can e-mail your comments to Andrew at acarlan@optonline.net.

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