When reason triumphs

This is why we liberals are liberals:

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, “after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.”

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn’t know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true — one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index.

(Read the full editorial, a real eye-opener by Bill Moyers.)

Thanks to Khoi Vịnh for the scoop some time ago. (By the way, I still can’t figure out what his first name really is, using the Vietnamese alphabet. I figured out his last name easily.)