Good morning, y’all. I called my attorney, Adam Dimwit, this morning between courses of my “Grand Slam” breakfast from Denny’s. Sometimes, Mulva will just up and do something like go get me take out and bring it back here to TackyToo so I don’t feel quite so isolated. She is truly a good woman. Dimwit relates that things are going slowly, but he is confident. He had the poor taste to bring up my bill and I attempted to shame him by recounting the depths of my despair. We both missed our desired objectives.
Speaking of missed objectives, I see that Mike Huckabee is trying to make religious fodder out of the misguided Kentucky clerk’s dilemma. It seems to me the situation has enough of a carnival atmosphere without dragging the “seldom right but never in doubt” Huckabee’s interpretation of the Constitution into the fray. In a televised rally, staged to coincide with the clerk’s release from jail, Huckabee delivered an altar call to the faithful gathered about. The call to the faithful is to ignore the laws of the United States and basically do whatever they interpret the Bible to say. Huckabee casually ignores history to relate how the Founding Fathers wanted to ensure that people of faith would not have to be oppressed by a government that wanted to enforce contrary views on the populace. Huckabee is calling on the faithful to live their conscience, not their citizenship.
Finally, a religion I can get behind. Let’s start with taxes, I don’t want to pay them. I don’t see the need for licensing or registering births, marriages or deaths. All of that information could be used by an oppressive government to seek out followers for prosecution. While we’re at it, let’s do away with everything in Washington, D.C. Why should federal standards be applied to anything? If I don’t want my children to think they’re smarter than me, we can just stop educating them. If I don’t want to vaccinate my kids from polio, why should I? There’s a good chance they won’t get it. If I’m ok with a coal burning power plant providing good jobs for the people in my area, why should North Carolina care if the smoke blows their way? What’s more, why I should I have to give up any of the Chattahoochee’s water to Alabama and Florida? Let them get their own water. If I want a peace treaty with Iran then Governor Nathan Deal can make it for me. There’s no reason to consider what the other forty nine states think, I believe in government close to home.
Just like that idjit clerk in Kentucky, if I don’t believe in a law, I’m not going to do it. I just don’t want to go to jail for my civil disobedience. I just want to wrap myself up in my religious cloak of invisibility and move through society unnoticed. Like the churches do at tax time.
All kidding aside, I think Brother Huckabee has a problem comprehending a document with more than ten rules to live by. The U.S. Constitution currently has twenty seven amendments, or rules, all voted and ratified by each state. Has anyone ever taken their religion to all fifty states and asked for a straight up and down vote to see what the majority of the residents feel? I don’t think so.
To simplify things, I’d like to direct Brother Huckabee to the words of his main guy, Jesus. Jesus laid down the relationship between citizens and their government in Matthew 22:15-22. The phrase “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s” pretty much covers the subject for me. Apparently, 2000 years ago Jesus recognized there would be conflicts between what the converted wanted to do and what their responsibility as citizens required. For you true believers out there, if your conscience won’t allow you to keep the law, do what I do, go to jail. But like that great American, Tony Baretta, used to say, “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”.
Take us home Johnny: