Angel D'Cuba/Latin Noir: Accomplished but Predictable

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ANGEL D’CUBA/VARIOUS ARTISTS

Heritage/Latin Noir” Everything Happens on the Beach

Angel d’Cuba (2012); Piraha 2648

 * * (both CDs)

If ever music is ripe for some innovation, it’s stuff being released from Latin America these days. Although there are superb performances on both of the above albums, there’s not much here that we’ve not heard before. I keep waiting for a Latino or Carib album to come at me infused with the sort of jazz, rock, world beat seasoning that adds zest to everything from Balkan and Celtic music to releases coming out of Africa and Asia, but what comes my way is simply a slicker version of what came before.

Angel D’Cuba is a case in point. He’s a Cuban transplant to Chicago and he could really use some Chicago-style blues to add some grit to his music. Once known as a salsa king, D’Cuba has added touches of samba, soca, son, cumbia, and funk to his repertoire, but despite his claim that James Brown is among his inspirations, his North American flavors tend more toward the pop end of the spectrum occupied by another inspiration: the Jackson 5. He tries a crossover piece with a remake of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Can’t Hide Love,” but manages only to make it into a generic-sounding power ballad with Spanish segues. His “Una Samba en Chicago” could be titled anything at all; there’s nothing Windy City about it. D’Cuba has a powerful voice, but thus far his attempts at creating a polyglot sound are akin to actors who try to hide their native accent by adopting a flat inflectionless tone.

Latin Noir opens strong with some edgy accordion from Argentina’s Chango Spasiuk (“Tierra Colorado”), but the energy is quickly lost and isn’t regained until track nine, when Piquete Tipico Las dusts off the raw sounds of a Cuban genre known as Danzón, which sounds a bit like a brass street band more interested in being raucous than polished. The music on this album comes from as far away as Colombia and Marseilles and as close as Central Park. The performances are impressive, but once again they fail to be memorable. Several, in fact, open with nearly identical guitar runs and percussion. By the time I reached the Watcha Clan bonus track (“La Petera”), I was happy to hear something that broke new ground, even though their composition is more odd than appealing. I can’t fault the musicianship on either album, but what does it say that after 24 tracks, only Spasuik’s accordion stands out?--Rob Weir

Boston Marathon Bombings Reopen Security Debate

Smile! You're on security camera! 

Do you want to be secure, or private? Do you want to reduce crime, or just fear it? Which is worse, a national security state, or a war of all against all? Who do you think defends liberty better, civil authorities, or the American Civil Liberties Union? Do you want a regulatory or a libertarian society? Who can best keep citizens secure, trained government law enforcement, or state and local officials? Do you want spend money to alleviate things decades of research have proven are linked to violence–poverty, poor education, and unemployment–or complain about your taxes? Do American military ventures cause more harm than good?

Don’t like the choices? Neither do I. But we better start thinking about our answers to these questions. As the April 15 tragedy at the Boston Marathon revealed once again, an open society is an intoxicant that sets free the good, the bad, and the ugly. Americans delude themselves if they think that the bad and the ugly are rare aberrations–nearly every day brings new tales of how the beacon of liberty has been used to ignite fireballs of horror. We must face the reality that we are a nation of 314,000,000 people occupying nearly 9.8 million square miles. We can thump our chests and spout threats against terrorist sand lawbreakers, but what former Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge told New England Cable News is true: it’s “impossible” to defend the United States against all attacks–the nation is simply too big and too open to defend 100% of the time.

This is the first time I have agreed with Ridge on anything. That said, there are some things we can do to reduce terror and violence. Alas, they come with strings attached. They include:  

            --Security cameras: Boston has twice failed the security test. (Two of the 9/11 planes left from Logan.) It–and the rest of urban America–needs to become more like London, where hundreds of cameras monitor crime and traffic. This won’t be popular with those paranoid of Big Brother government, and it is intrusive. But, if you’ve ever used the Internet, a cell phone, or mail order you already have less privacy than you think. Recording public life isn’t foolproof, but banks have been videotaping us for years and they capture 40% of all robbers. If that sounds low, compare it to murder, where more two three fail even to yield an arrest, or rape, which has a 3% conviction rate. Big public events such as the Boston Marathon should have cameras operational along the entire route 365 days a year.

            --Real transport security: Just friggin’ do this! Every person who flies or takes a train or bus undergoes a full body scan and every single bag gets x-rayed. If you can’t stand the idea of somebody seeing your body on a screen or receiving a pat down, stay home. No more random checks. No more false modesty. Everybody gets scanned. Now.

            --Mandate the monitoring of rightwing groups: We’ve spent lots of effort going after lefties and Muslims in the past decades, but we spend almost nothing on domestic surveillance of the ideological right, though it has a bloody track record. It’s time for the FBI to bird-dog dangerous characters lurking in the NRA, Operation Rescue, survivalist groups, the Tea Party, and fundamentalist churches.   

            --No more offense from the Department of Defense: Foreign adventurism, nation building, insurgency funding, and other forms of aggressive interventionism have yielded little but heartache and unbalanced budgets. Pull the plug on Iraq and Afghanistan, stop giving military aid to foreign governments, don’t arm anybody’s civil war, and eliminate foreign aid for nations on the U.N. human rights watch list. It’s one thing to respond when attacked, but the U.S. military should become a purely defensive force, except in the case of…

            --Setting up a U.S. Carbinieri. Let’s follow Italy’s example and place armed, uniformed military personnel on American streets. This makes more sense than allowing any paranoid fool who wants to play cop buy a gun. (Did someone say “George Zimmerman?”) Police unions don’t want a national military police force, but cash-strapped cities can’t afford more cops and the ones they have won’t go into the projects, ghettos, and high-crime areas. Let soldiers earn their combat stripes in Kansas City, not Kandahar.

            --Write and enforce a national hate crimes law. The First Amendment was never intended to give hate groups and provocateurs a get-out-of-court-free card. Fox News pundits are already fanning the flames of anti-Muslim sentiment, though no one knows who bombed the Boston Marathon. The Internet reeks of the stench of hate- group Websites. We must be careful not to lapse into mindless censorship, but we might consider that any group whose intent is clearly to deny the civil liberties of others has none of its own that must be protected. Don’t let groups like the ACLU defend the KKK; shut it down! (President Grant did in 1871 and the KKK was out of business until 1922.) And use the FCC to enforce truly “fair and balanced” media standards. Pull the plug on remarks intended only to polarize and incite.

            --A reregulated capitalist economy. Free trade is the biggest fraud Wall Street has ever perpetuated on American workers.  We’ve gutted the national wage structure to empower modern-day robber barons, union busters, lawless investors, and Walmart importers. Domestic economic consequences aside, pegging U.S. foreign policy to the demands of global capitalists has meant that our government cooperates with dictators, power brokers, and vulture capitalists around the globe that fleece and oppress their own citizenry while the U.S. takes the blame. I’m not an isolationist, but Jimmy Carter’s practice of linking trade to human rights was a noble one in need to revival. So too is the notion of reining in runaway capital, ending tax breaks for outsourcing, and investing in new regulated domestic ventures that cannot be moved at stockholder whims. These have the added advantage of reducing the perception abroad that Americans are swashbuckling pirates performing rapine with contracts instead of cutlasses.

Frank and Robot a Delightful DVD Rental

ROBOT AND FRANK (2012)

Directed by Jake Schrier

Dog Run Pictures

PG-13, 89 mins.

* * * *

Robot and Frank is a classic “small” picture the likes of which sneak in and out of the local mall so fast that they never generate the needed buzz to build an audience. Small pictures are often gems that enjoy a better fate on video and so should this tasty little hors d’oeuvre.

If forced to pick a genre I’d call this one an offbeat comedy, though a major subtheme, dementia, is no laughing matter. The film is set in suburban New York (Cold Spring Harbor, actually) in the not-so-distant future, where we meet Frank (veteran stage actor Frank Langella). Frank is equally parts charming, cantankerous, and exasperating; he’s also elderly and starting to “lose it.” His kids are grown, with daughter Madison (Liv Tyler) traveling the globe trying to rebuild her own messy life, and son Hunter (James Marsden) busy with business and family and weary of the long commute he makes every week to check in on his dad. One weekend Hunter arrives with Frank’s new companion—a personal assistant robot (voice by Peter Sarsgaard). It’s a state-of-the art model programmed to act as caregiver for dementia patients for whom routines are important. Thus begins one of the stranger “buddy” films in recent movie history.

We learn that Frank’s tidy home was probably purchased with ill-gotten funds and that he isn’t quite what we expect—he’s a paroled (semi-) retired cat burglar with a fondness for shoplifting and dreams of a final heist before he puts away his lock picks. He even has a target—an obnoxious Yuppie computer-geek couple that’s new to town and hell-bent on ridding the town library of its outmoded books and automating the system. (Instead of good cop/bad cop, we get good robot/bad computers!) This distressed Frank, as he likes hanging out in the old building and flirting with the librarian, Jennifer (Susan Sarandon). All Frank needs for his denouement caper is a partner, but how much help can you get from a robot programmed to resist Frank’s bad habits?

You can probably see where all of this is going, but it’s rollicking good fun to watch it unfold. Writer Christopher Ford’s script has just enough small twists—including one involving Sarandon--to compensate for the obvious plot, and he’s inserted enough poignancy and pathos to provide a bittersweet ending. Kudos also for humanizing dementia and showing us the humanity in those moments in which it begins to ebb away. And let’s give a shout out to Langella, a superb actor whose talent is woefully underappreciated.

Robot and Frank isn’t path-breaking cinema--just a very enjoyable small film that will leave you smiling at the same time your eyes moist over. Don’t be surprised if you feel as much for the robot as for Frank. Rent this and discover the soul of the new machine.—Rob Weir     

Older Tom Perrotta Novel Rings True for Reviewer

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The Abstinence Teacher (2007)

Tom Perrotta

St. Martin’s Books ISBN # 0312358334

* * *

I discovered Tom Perrotta after a delightful encounter with his 2012 publication, The Leftovers, which looked at a post-Rapture world in which those who thought themselves devout Christians were not spirited off the planet. An earlier work, The Abstinence Teacher, reveals that Perrotta was already honing a sword to swing at smug-certain evangelicals. (Perrotta claims that he was inspired to write The Abstinence Teacher after listening to self-described evangelical voters describe why they voted for George W. Bush in 2004.)

The Abstinence Teacher focuses on Ruth Ramsey, a 9^th grade sex education teacher in a white, upper middle-class suburban school that could be just about anywhere (which is the point). Ruth is a born teacher, one who knows how to cut through the giggles, awkwardness, and bullshit that pours out of the hormonally challenged pores of youngsters who aren’t children any more, but surely aren’t responsible adults either. They listen because Ruth is that rarest of birds, an adult that doesn’t moralize. She tells her charges that pleasure is a good thing and that shame is usually bad, but you need to know what sex is all about before you engage in it or judge what others do. She’s also a divorced mother with two daughters–sullen Eliza and soccer star Maggie–and a problematic relationship with her ex-husband and his new wife. Ruth has been around the block a few times, but finds herself a bit lonely and envious of the relationship of her gay friends Randall and Gregory. But she plods along, making it her crusade to give kids accurate information about sex; that is, until Pasto Dennis and the Tabernacle of the Gospel of Truth, a non-aligned evangelical church, decide she’s teaching filth and promiscuity.

Full disclosure: I’ve experienced what Perrotta describes; the high school sex ed teacher at the high school at which I taught in the 1980s underwent similar travails at the hands of evangelical critics. The same group tried to target me because I refused to teach that abortion was a sin. (I was an American history teacher and didn’t take a “correct” position on abortion of any sort!) When Perrotta details the havoc wrought by self-proclaimed guardians of public morality, a lot of those unpleasant memories came back to me–as did gratitude for my teachers’ union!

Unlike what happened in my district, Ruth is told that she must alter her curriculum and teach students that abstinence is the path they should follow. Her dilemma is simple: How does one teach something one neither believes nor feels is possible? Belief is also under the microscope in the form of Tim Mason, a former drug abusing Deadhead turned Tabernacle evangelical who is also Maggie’s soccer coach. Turnabout is fair play; when Tim leads the publicly supported and socially diverse team in an impromptu prayer after a thrilling victory, Ruth hits the separation-of-church-and-state roof!

Things get awfully complicated thereafter. Tim is more like Maggie than she imagines. He too is divorced and has similar issues with his semi-estranged daughter, Abby, and his snooty upwardly mobile ex-wife and her lawyer husband. Plus, Ruth has to admit, she’s oddly attracted to Tim. And Tim, as it happens, is still a rock-and-roller at heart who has doubts about what God wants of him, and is increasingly bored with his second wife, Carrie, the dutiful Christian whom Pastor Dennis handpicked for him. Soon, Ruth and Tim find themselves symbols of other people’s values, desires, and power games.  

Perrotta tries to be a bit like his character Ruth in that he seeks not to judge what others do–unless those things infringe personally. One does, however, get the sense that those who think that life can be reduced to nostrums and one-size-fits-all morality trouble Perrotta, and that’s he simply being coy with his seemingly neutral observations. This book often lacks the subtlety of The Leftovers. Several of the characters are more paste-ups than real, and many of the situations feel contrived. (It is, for example, nearly inconceivable that Ruth’s union would allow several of the scenarios to unfold. Perrotta uses these to advance the plot, but they are improbable.) But, having firsthand experience with the Pastor Dennis types and having seen the damage meddlesome prigs can do, I’ll also say that The Abstinence teacher sets the right tone, even when it plays the wrong notes.--Rob Weir

Margaret Thatcher's Death Nothing to Mourn

Thanks to Lloyd Cellus for this appropriate comment from filmmaker Ken Loach.

In 1997, Scotland voted in favor of “devolution,” a referendum that allowed Scots to transfer most of the powers of government away from Westminster and put sovereignty into the hands of a new Scottish Parliament. Next year the Scots will vote on leaving Great Britain altogether and setting up a fully independent nation. It’s too soon to tell how that vote will turn out, but if the Scots do leave, we can date for certain the beginning of a serious independence movement: 1979. That was year one for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) and it’s no accident that an independence scheme languishing since the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1707 can to full boil under her reign of error.

It is customary to speak well of famous/infamous people when they finally pass from this mortal coil. I’m sorry Mrs. Thatcher had dementia, a truly horrifying disease I’d not wish on my worst enemy. But given that she is high on my list of enemies, I have no further charity for Thatcher. My views of her are summed by the words from the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz: “Ding dong, the witch is dead!” Thatcher, like Ronald Reagan, was a fraud masquerading as a champion of the masses. And, like Reagan, she gets credit for all sorts of things she had little to do with and avoids the blame for lots of outrages for which she was.

Thatcher came to power at a time in which British unemployment and inflation were rising. Like Reagan, she would later claim that her policies reduced economic despair; in both cases, they took credit for reducing levels that their policies made worse. Thatcher’s monetarist polices drove inflation to 18% by 1980; when it came down to 8.6% in 1983, Thatcher crowed like a proud rooster, though one wonders why given that 8.6% is still a ruinous rate. Inflation did not really go down until 1990, her final year in office, and then it was due to the 90% tax she had slapped on North Sea oil—drilled off the coast of (you guessed it) Scotland. (In similar fashion, nearly all of the economic gain under Reagan in the 1980s was due to new technology: the computer revolution that didn’t exist when he ran for president, soared by the mid-1980s.)

Thatcher was a devotee of Milton Friedman’s monetarism, a tight fiscal policy that carefully regulates the amount of money in circulation and makes loans hard to secure. It is a banker’s and investor’s delight, but a nightmare if you want to buy a home or other high-ticket item. It is also achieved by reigning in government spending, a task Thatcher achieved by privatizing everything that wasn’t nailed down: British steel, most utilities, and parts of British Rail—a system once the envy of the world and now a creaky collection of independent lines whose poor service is rivaled only by its deplorable repair record. The point was to move workers off the government payroll and throw them to the mercies of the private—read lower-paid—sector. Nowhere was this done with such abject cruelty as in mining. Numerous pits were closed and around 15% of all miners lost their jobs. Want to hazard a guess as to where the worst hit regions were? Try Yorkshire, Wales, and (of course!) Scotland. Thatcher also achieved her goals by taking on labor unions because—well, there are so many high-paying jobs in the burgeoning service sector. (Not!)Unemployment stood at 6.2% when she took office; it quickly jumped to 8.2% and workers rioted across Great Britain.  Unemployment wouldn’t go back down to 6.2% until 1985. When Thatcher finally left office in 1990 and passed the baton to her toady, John Major, the rate was again 8.2%. Does one even need to discuss Bobby Sands and the Troubles in Northern Ireland, or Mrs. Thatcher’s support for the Kymer Rouge government of Cambodia? Does one even see these things amidst all the post-Falklands garlands with which she adorned herself?

Thatcher and Major ingratiated themselves with banks, financiers, aristocrats, and the “new money” Chablis-and-brie set. To put it in terms popular these days, she (and Major never did establish his own identity) was the prime minister of the 1%. A telling story: In 1997, Scots first voted on devolution.  The Tories packed up Maggie Thatcher for a trip north, where she implored the populace, “No, no—Scotland.” In a session in the Scots Parliament, Mrs. Thatcher was confronted by an angry nationalist who enquired in his thickest rogue, “Isn’t it trrrrue, Mrs. Thatcherrrr, that no one norrrth of the Tweed (the river separating the Scottish Borders from England) voted for yewwww?” After some waffling she admitted that Tories fared poorly in Scotland. To which she was told, “Rrrrright then. Since yewwww don’t rrrepresent inyone herrrrre, perhaps yewwww ought to buggerrrrr off back to London!”  As folks in that part of the world say, “Too right!”

I don’t know if it’s a good idea for Scotland to be independent or not, but I do know this much: if a politician is the friend of bankers, union-busters, and get-rich-quick speculators, they are no friend to the 99%. I know that we often confuse leaders who are strong-headed with those that are strong and that manicured press clippings and carefully crafted eulogies do not compensate for decades of disregard, disrespect, and callousness directed at society’s working stiffs. I know that you can’t rob Scots to reward Barclay bankers and expect Scots to sing your praises. And I know that, for all its travails, the world is a slightly better place because Margaret Thatcher isn’t part of it.

Balkan Reggae Works Pretty Well

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MAHALA RAI BANDA

Balkan Reggae

Asphalt Tango Records 3713

* * *

Occasionally things come across my desk that are just so conceptually odd that I know instantly they will be either a train wreck or a pleasure cruise. Such was my reaction to Balkan Reggae, which I’m happy to report is the latter type of journey. Here’s the set up: Mahala Rai Banda is a well-known Romanian band that is no stranger to mash-up sounds. Generally labeled a “gypsy” band, it is at least musically true to the travelers’ spirit in that it blends folk tunes, brassy jazz, pop, and rock. So why not take it another level and add ska, funk, conjunto, and reggae to the mix? That’s precisely what it has done, but in an unexpected manner. Mahala does it dub style–often stripping out the vocals, but sometimes retaining raps or the comments of dub masters. Dubbing allows the band to play “with” artists such as Carib bluesman Errol Linton, accordion wizard Koby Israelite, or Bosnia’s pop/funk band La Cherga.

The album purports to be in honor of the 50^th anniversary of Jamaican independence, but it’s far more diverse than that. Most of the mix masters–Mad Professor, Nick Manaseeh, JStar, G-Vibes–have been influenced by Caribbean music, but Mahala Rai Banda still stand in the musical center of most of the selections. Luckily, the band has the wisdom to stick to its strength–energetic tunes heavy on brass and fiery fiddle. And, thank heaven, Mahala does not attempt faux accents or do bad Bob Marley mashes. Most of the tunes end up being an unorthodox pastiche of reggae back beats set to 120 beats-per-minute dance tempos against a Balkan backdrop. Got that? It probably works best in an actual dance hall, but let’s give high marks for a bold effort.--Rob Weir

For a sample try this slower-paced track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jwgm6XmoA4

Freedom of Religion: Your Choice--All or None

Roger Williams: Listen to the Man! 

The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution opens with: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” It is far less ambiguous than the Second Amendment, which much of the American public treats as if it’s actually one of the Ten Commandments. Why, one wonders, do so many Americans support religious bodies seeking to dismantle the wall between church and state? The words of the Constitution point out danger–any group imposing its desires in the public realm would be a de facto establishment of a state religion that would jeopardize the free exercise of others’ beliefs.

Earlier in the week I spoke of my youthful interest in theology. Somewhere along the line I read about Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island colony and the spiritual father of the Northern Baptists. Williams is generally viewed as the first Colonial figure to advocate true freedom of religion, what he called “liberty of conscience.” Among the biggest myths in American history is that colonists came to the New World to practice freedom of religion. Rubbish! They came to specific places to practice their religion, but they respected no others. The Puritans–a dissenting group within the Church of England–came to Massachusetts Bay because they were persecuted in England, just as the Pilgrims­–officially known as Separatists because they had bolted the C of E–settled in Plymouth for the same reason. Once ensconced, neither tolerated those who followed another religious path. The New World was like Europe, where the established pattern was “religion follows the crown,” meaning that the only countenanced faith was that of the ruler–the very thing the First Amendment aimed to avoid.

Roger Williams (and later, William Penn) did not argue for religious tolerance because he was a wooly-headed liberal or a moral relativist. Williams was convinced that his own Anabaptist views were correct and that most of those who followed other religions were hell-bound. In truth, Williams was an astute political thinker. Williams held that all liberty, not just of conscience, was linked to tolerance and that unless broad forms of thought, doctrines, and practices were allowed, few things could be practiced without persecution, bloodshed, and chaos. In a nutshell, if any religious group whatsoever controlled public policy, repressive theocracy emerged in its wake. Few listened to Williams in the 1630s, but the Founders heeded his lesson 150 years later. These days, Roger Williams sounds like a prophet.

Think I’m an alarmist? You cannot name a religious group that has not been persecuted at some point in American history. In fact, many of today’s would-be oppressors are yesterday’s oppressed. Southern Baptists, for instance, were beaten and jailed in 17^th century Virginia, when the colony had a law requiring attendance at Anglican  (C of E) services. Maryland was originally founded as a haven for Roman Catholics, but the law was repealed in 1649, and only the C of E was legal. The colonies, with the exceptions of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, had regional theocracies: most of New England was for Puritans and Separatists, the Chesapeake region was for Anglicans, the backcountry South was for Presbyterians (especially Ulster Scots), the Delaware Valley was for Lutheran Swedes, Quakers went to Pennsylvania, and swaths of New York and New Jersey settled by the Dutch were dominated by Dutch Reformed Calvinists who quarreled with most other Calvinists. Stray outside of your region without converting/conforming and you were in trouble, like the four Quakers hanged in Boston between 1659 and 1661. Lest we forget, Williams founded Rhode Island after having been kicked out of Massachusetts by both Puritans and Separatists. Most of New England also outlawed Methodists, Presbyterians, and Unitarians until 1760. Had any Catholic been so foolish as to tread Boston’s cobblestones, the kindest fate at the hands of good Puritans would be corrective measures such as cutting off his ears and nose. As for pagan beliefs, three words: Salem witch trials.

The American Revolution did not end religious disputes. Methodists were periodically roughed up in the Northeast, Methodist women were beaten by mobs in the South, and those welcoming slaves into their ranks or taking up the abolitionist cause were sometimes lynched. Congregationalist (former Puritans) abolitionists were fair game for racist mobs in North and South alike. When Joseph Smith founded the Mormons in the 1830, his sect was chased from New York to Missouri to Illinois to Nebraska before making its way to Utah in 1847. A trail of death was left behind. Once in Utah, Mormons fought a war against the United States in 1857-58; they also murdered westbound non-Mormon emigrants that strayed into their territory. Only Roman Catholics and Jews rivaled Mormons on the victimization scale, and they had the good sense to avoid massacres of their own or they would be annihilated. The Ku Klux Klan targeted all three groups after the Civil War and well into the 20^th century. Anti-Semitism was the official norm until after World War II and remains a cancer in American society. As late as 1960, John Kennedy had to ward off suspicions of his Catholicism and he remains the only Catholic president. Mennonites have been jailed for their pacifism. More recently, American Muslims were the targets of post-9/11 wrath, as were Hindus and Buddhists at the hands of those too stupid to know they weren’t Muslims. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism was a prejudicial factor in the 2012 election, especially from evangelical conservatives who refused to support a faith they call a “cult.” And there’s the entire “Obama is a Muslim” nonsense!

In short, America can ill afford to be a religious nation! It’s one thing–and not a good one–for a homogenous land such as Saudi Arabia or Iran to be a theocracy, but such an attempt in the United States would result in a bloodbath that would make Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale look like a fairy tale by comparison. Many of the Founders were non-Christian Deists, but it wasn’t theology that led them to write the First Amendment; it was the ghost of Roger Williams. He is as right today as he was in the 1630s–all of us must have freedom of conscience, or none of us do. If you are religious, you should insist that your faith stay out of political debate. If you can’t do this for the sake of liberty, do it to keep your ears and the padlock off your house of worship.