Web Posted June 9, 1997

"My friends, we've got Trouble,
right here in River City,
With a capital T, and that rhymes with G,
and G stands for God."

--Professor Newt Gingrich

When Professor Harold Hill, the flim-flam "Music Man," sings a song like that accompanied by 76 trombones, we enjoy it as great American theatre.

But when the Speaker of the House talks about turning America into a "Faith-based society," it's Trouble with a capital T, and that stands for Threat.

Professor Hill used a vague fear of pool tables to sell band equipment, and it was funny. Professor Newt Gingrich, the Flim-Flam Speaker, is using other vague fears to sell people on a "Faith-based society," or Faith-BS, and it's scary.

He is as vague as the Music Man about details, because he knows that Faith-BS can't stand up to the reality of American history and law.

For instance, just which "faith" is Newt actually proposing? He won't say, because he knows that people won't really like choosing an official faith. If Newt suggests Lutheran, the Methodist will object. If he says "Catholic," the Baptists will be mad. If he says "vanilla Christian," the Mormons and Moslems will rant and rave. Only a small portion of America goes to church regularly, and those people are split among a hundred different faiths. So no faith could even qualify for Newt's Faith-BS.

Professor Newt claims that America's founders really meant to form a Faith-BS. But he's got that completely backwards, too.

The Founding Fathers meant exactly the opposite. They could have written a Constitution to set up an official church like England and France, but they didn't. They disliked the churches of Europe and the world, so they purposely wrote them out of America. They could have written laws to establish religion, but they didn't. The only law they wrote about religion is that government must not be mixed up with it! You can't be more specific than that. What part of NO don't you understand, Newt?

"Professor Hill used a vague fear of pool tables to sell band equipment... Professor Newt Gingrich, the Flim-Flam Speaker, is using other vague fears to sell people on a 'Faith-based society,' or Faith-BS, and it's scary."

Faith-based societies have already oppressed their people and then destroyed themselves. From the murderous Aztecs to the terrifying Catholic Spanish Inquisition, from ignorant Middle Ages Europe to violent modern Iran, whenever people have allowed faiths to gain power, they inevitably lose their freedoms.

America is a secular "Freedom-based society." It was designed and built that way, and the whole world admires America because of it. Why is Newt afraid of it? Why doesn't he want people to be free? Why does he want to trade over 2 centuries of clearly defined freedom of law for some vague "faith-BS?"

It's the twisted logic of the flim-flam man, who tried to get us worked up about one thing while he really peddles something else. Newt's Faith-BS deserve our suspicions. This guy's not entertaining; he's dangerous and devious. He flim-flammed the U.S. Congress about his ethics, and flim-blammed them against about his massive ethics fine.

Now Flim-Flam Newt is selling Faith-BS, but I'm not buying. I prefer my real American freedom.

"Gentleman Jim Heldberg" writes from his favorite City by The Bay, and welcomes mail at jheldberg@atheists.org.

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