States petition for secession

But this is not true. No state has petitioned to secede. Crazy people have petitioned that those states should secede. Well, not only can crazy people living in those states start a petition to secede, so can crazy people living outside those states. If a nut living in Alabama wants Oregon out of the union, then he can start a petition saying so. So the Oregon petition is unsurprising not just because it can be started if there's one nut living in Oregon, but because it can be started if there's one nut not living in Oregon.

I think they're actually following the instructions of his lesser-known volume "Rules For Conservatives", in which he urges them to behave like whiny losers so that the left can mock them. As Alinsky put it in this seminal but much-neglected work:

In a way, it would be fun to watch Jesusland try to struggle on without the subsidies from the more economically successful blue states. And the blue states could do with those Republican parasites off our backs. But on the other hand, conservatives are people too.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Except that the liberal states are propping the conservative states up.Most Red States Take More Money From Washington Than They Put In – Mother JonesIncidentally, are my taxes still funding your welfare checks?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Let's see ... This is probably one reason why it's a net contributor to the federal budget, unlike, for example, Alabama.

You guys have scientists? Sure, we'll give 'em political asylum before you start stoning 'em.In return, you guys can have Fox News, if they're willing to go --- for some reason their ravings about "liberal elitists" presently come out of a skyscraper on New York's Sixth Avenue rather than from a shack in the backwoods of Kentucky.

Not noticeably, and they'd be richer still if they didn't have to prop up those red states full of Republican moochers. Fortunately for you, most conservatives share your views on religion. I'm sure if the reddest states did secede, there'd be no problem at all in reverting to the Dark Ages. Your new flag could be Jesus riding on a dinosaur and brandishing an assault rifle, and your new motto can either be "In White Protestant God We Trust" or "Yes, We're As Dumb As We Look".

Well, I wrote that before I read your post #71. I underestimated just how weird you are; it's surprising that I still do that. You'd sound marginally less ridiculous babbling about my "ignorance of history" if you yourself were vaguely aware even of current events; or if I had posted anything displaying ignorance of history. Well, I'd have suggested that the reds shouldn't divide themselves into sectarian splinter groups, but that would be up to you.

So which of the scientific advances made thus far would you like to abolish?

Will there be stonings? I can find exactly two uses of the word "Bible" in the whole of Blackstone's Commentaries. One is where he explains the archaic procedure for issuing a challenge to trial by single combat. The other is where Blackstone says that the King has "the exclusive right of printing the translation of the bible". He also uses the word "scriptures" six times, but without drawing any legal principles from them except that traitors should suffer the death penalty (and there he is merely adducing the opinion of Coke and not speaking for himself).Puritans he describes as "that deluge of sectaries in England, who murdered their sovereign, overturned the church and monarchy, shook every pillar of law, justice, and private property, and most devoutly established a kingdom of the saints in their stead."Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You've just named at least two who did.

So when you wrote "The Bible would be the law of the land" you didn't mean that the laws in the Bible would be the law of the land? Which I didn't mention. Please address yourself to me and not to the delusions in your head.

Cranmer and Latimer. (I don't know about Ridley.)Macaulay on Cranmer is most enjoyable if you like good prose: Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well that's because we don't follow "Old Testament standards" nowadays. But I gathered that it was your intention to put the clock back in that respect?

That was under Henry, so not exactly Catholic, no. Not Roman Catholic, anyway. But as Macaulay says: That is, abandoning doctrines that smacked of Catholicism, he went on merrily burning people (Catholics and the Wrong Sort Of Protestant) under Edward VI, who was definitely Protestant. Well, as Macaulay points out, he wouldn't have done that if his recantation had got him off the hook. It was only when he found that Mary was going to burn him whatever he said that he decided to play the martyr being burned for his faith rather than the Catholic not being burned at all. A man dying rather than recant his faith is a heroic martyr, a man dying and incidentally not recanting his faith, not so much.