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Grown-ups who Believe in the Tooth Fairy

In the book of Genesis, God is said to have created human beings in his own image, male and female.  Then God told them to mess around, and multiply, and subdue everything on earth, including the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and even creepy things.

Rick Santorum likes that story.  He is big into subjugation of the earth.  And home schooling.

Rick is not so happy about the notion that human beings should protect the earth.  He says that is all backwards.  The authors of Genesis and Rick Santorum agree:  earth is to be subjugated by human life.  Fish are made to be eaten.  Cows are to give milk.  Quail hunting season is a good thing.  Eat the meat.  Make baseballs from horsehides.  Don't swallow the lead shot.

Actually, there are two creation stories in Genesis.  In one of them, human beings were the last to be created, and in the other, they were the first.  Picky, picky!  Neither of them has anything to do with what we know of the evolution of life on earth, much less anywhere else.  But Rick Santorum apparently isn't concerned much about how life really came to be.  He is happy to be fruitful, and to multiply, and to subdue the earth.

He scolds the President because of our environmental policies.  The point, Rick says, is not to preserve the earth, but to use it.  I think that means, "Drill, Sarah, drill!  God bless British Petroleum, and meat loaf!"

What does this mean?  It means that Rick Santorum, who wants to become the President of the United State, right now in the 21st century, is figuring out how to do things by reading stories from Mesopotamia, or somewhere, when people believed that the earth was a few hundred or a few thousand years old, and everything had been created in less than a week's time by an old guy in the sky.  Do we really want someone whose head is that primitive to decide what to do about the nuclear capabilities of Iran?  That would be like putting Newt Gingrich in charge of sex education, or making Mitt Romney poet laureate!  People who believe in tooth fairies should not be allowed to pull teeth!  How does Rick know that subduing the earth is a good thing, but that stoning women is a bad thing?  Are we going to be allowed to wear clothing made of two kinds of material?  Is eating pork OK?  Do we have to go back to Saturday as the Sabbath?  Which creation story gets it right?  Why do neither of them agree with what we know, scientifically?

Abraham had two wives.  David had a thousand concubines.  And Rick Santorum wants Biblical stories to determine our environmental laws and educational policies!

Ronald Reagan was right.  We should all dig a hole in the back yard, crawl in, and pull an old closet door over our heads, because Rick has been reading the Bible, and thinking about Iran.







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