From Justice Scalia, a Chilling Vision of Religion’s Authority in America

Mr. Scalia is right about one thing. Modern democracy did upset the divine authority of the state. That has usually been considered by Americans to have been a step forward. The great 17th-century dissenter Roger Williams declared that government derived no authority whatsoever from God, but was "merely human and civil." Thomas Jefferson put matters bluntly in 1779: "[O]ur civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than on opinions in physics or geometry."

That view prevailed among the framers at Philadelphia in 1787. Throughout their debates, even when they prayed for divine guidance, they rejected the idea that political authority lay with anyone or anything other than the sovereign people. The only extended discussion of religion in the Federalist Papers has James Madison listing zeal in religious opinion as one of "the latent causes of faction" that cause men "to vex and oppress each other" and that need institutional checks.

11:21:34 PM  comment []    

San Jose Mercury News: Lindows makes Windows look good

There are hundreds of Linux applications floating around the Web, but they're often hard to find and harder to install.

So Lindows.com has created something called the ``Click-N-Run Warehouse,'' an online archive of Linux software organized by category. To get a program, LindowsOS users only need to stroll through the virtual warehouse aisles and click a single button after finding a program they want.

LindowsOS then downloads and installs the program without any further effort by the user, a genuine innovation in the process of distributing software.

One downside is that users must pay $99 a year for unlimited access to the warehouse, wiping out the roughly $100 savings from buying a PC without a Microsoft operating system.

A bigger downside is the inconsistent quality of open-source Linux applications.

via HiTechMods, via [H]ardOCP

The Click-N-Run Warehouse is a commercial version of Debian's wonderful apt-get technology. And note the venerable PowerBook 1XX in the ad. I loved my PowerBook 160 -- in 1993.   

3:16:18 PM  comment []    

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.: When Patriotism Wasn't Religious

T. R. expressed his "very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins . . . not only does no good but does positive harm." His objection to "In God We Trust" was not constitutional; it was aesthetic. He felt that the motto cheapened and trivialized the trust in God it was intended to promote. "In all my life I have never heard any human being speak reverently of this motto on the coins or show any sign of its having appealed to any high emotion in him," he wrote. Indeed, he added, "the existence of this motto on the coins was a constant source of jest and ridicule."

Congress, devoted then as now to religiosity, overruled T. R. and made the motto mandatory. A similar issue now arises from the decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the insertion of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional.

The original pledge...

I pledge allegiance to my flag
and to the republic for which it stands
one nation, indivisible
with liberty and justice for all.
              --Francis Bellamy

1:27:57 PM  comment []