Along with the recent declarations of
- Richard John "Rick" Santorum on abortion, birth control and how to love each other,
- Santorum backer Foster Friess' advice about applying aspirin to womens' knees,
- Minority Leader McConnell of "The-issue-isn't-contraception, it's-religious-liberty" fame,
- the panel of expert male clerics at Darrell Issa's so-called "hearing" on contraception, and
- the legislature of Virginia who passed a mandate requiring doctors to violate pregnant women with a medically unnecessary transvaginal probe if they mention the word "abortion," a lawful medical procedure in the Commonwealth ...
... it's well we also seek advice from another crotchety firebrand politician.
Oh! Lord! Do you think that a Protestant Popedom is annihilated in America? Do you recollect, or have you ever attended to the ecclesiastical Strifes in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and every part of New England? What a mercy it is that these People cannot whip and crop, and pillory and roast, as yet in the U.S.! If they could they would.
There is a germ of religion in human nature so strong that whenever an order of men can persuade the people by flattery or terror that they have salvation at their disposal, there can be no end to fraud, violence, or usurpation.
The multitude and diversity of them, You will say, is our Security against them all. God grant it.
That was no lesser voice than Founding Father and the Second President of the United States, John Adams, in agreeable correspondence with another Founding Father and former political foe, Mr. Thomas Jefferson, gentleman of Virginia.
For these two as well as Washington, Paine, Franklin, Madison and many others across the political spectrum, part of the protection American citizens had against despotic rule by religion was the reassuring variety of religions which were unlikely to unite and become so strong they could engage in usurpations.
These days, religious fervents are showing signs of banding behind the Republican Party. Or at least, the GOP is becoming the flag bearer of a war on women - and men! - in the name of family values and religious liberty.
God save us all, even themselves, from the zealots.