On Above The Law Tyler Broker makes a suggestion or two that I’d like to believe, but can’t quite:
Not only is this demonization [of non-believers] by cabinet members [of the Trump Administration] sickening (imagine if an attorney general nominee said, at their confirmation hearing no less, that they couldn’t say if Catholics or Protestants could discern “truth” because their faith was wrong), it is demonstrably false. As the decline of religion has occurred, over this same period violence and crime have dropped dramatically, and even on a topic many Christians claim is of their upmost concern there is great news: abortion rates are now at record lows. Yet, there is a disturbing insistence by powerful government officials who claim that nonreligion is a national security threat and a threat to the religious way of life.
In fact, I can’t take either, crime levels or abortion rate, seriously. Why?
Long time readers will recall the studies cited by Kevin Drum in which environmental lead levels correlate with levels of crime, adjusting for lifespans of criminals. I continue to find that more convincing than different policing strategies, societal changes, or, in Broker’s case, the level of religious observance in society.
His abortion argument also suffers from a better correlation, that with education of the populace, particularly when it comes to reproductive matters.
And it’s too bad, because the intolerance of the Trump Administration, emblematic of the evangelical movement and, in particular, its arrogance, as Broker notes, is something any ‘none’ should be aware, and wary, of. That the Trump Administration is gone doesn’t mean SCOTUS has been neutered, nor that the theocratic forces in America have been shamed. Far from it.
