Godless Yankees . . . .

[redcliffsw]

A Pew Research Center survey finds that the six "least religious" states are New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and Connecticut, in that order.  The six "most religious" states are Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and South Carolina.  It's interesting that the American ruling class elite comes primarily from the former group, and that the elites relentlessly smear and denigrate the latter — the epicenter of Hitlary's "deplorables."  I suspect that this phenomenon is related to what Clyde Wilson calls "the Yankee problem in American history" that has plagued us for almost two centuries.  Hillary Clinton, for example, is what Clyde calls "a museum-quality specimen of a Yankee."  (Not all Northerners or New Englanders are Yankees, thank God; a Yankee is a totalitarian who believes he has a "right" to order everyone else around, and to use the coercive powers of government to do it, the more the better).  New England just seems to have spawned the majority of this unique brand of American totalitarian.  (Hillary being from Illinois — land of Lincoln the quintessential Yankee — and educated in Boston fits the definition like a glove).

But then again, the Pew Research Center may be missing something here:  statism is the "religion" of the New England Yankee ruling class elite.  In that sense they are very "religious."
-Thomas DiLorenzo

[Wake-up!]

DiLorenzo at his best . . . . . taking a point and running to a meaningless tangent with it.

The Pew report says this;
Northeast - 75% religious, 25% unaffiliated
Midwest - 77% religious, 23% unaffiliated
South - 80% religious, 20% unaffiliated
West - 71% religious, 29% unaffiliated

So the Pew report says the regions, as it has outlined them, vary in religious conviction by only 9%. And of course unaffiliated does NOT mean godless, or atheist as DiLorenzo infers. It simply means no religious preference. Does that really speak to the rise of Socialism? I seriously doubt it. But by only considering the 'ultrareligious', i.e. those with religious fervor, DiLorenzo tries to create that argument.

I think he is full of it. Check out his first sentence, he cannot even count correctly. He's the libertarian's version of John McCain, a wacko-bird. Just my opinions.

[redcliffsw]

You're probably right except I think Dilorenzo is a good guy.  And I'm thinking that he's right about the matter regardless of the statistics.

By the way, what does 'religious' mean?  Not much.  There's many people who claim to be 'religious' these days but that doesn't mean they are Christian.  There's many in the northeast (& elsewhere) who claim to be moral and righteous - but they are probably not Christian.  And it's been like that for years going back to 1861 or much further.  In 1861, many claimed some sort of morality but so what? 

Just saying . . . . there's a lot of phony baloney religious stuff out there in the so-called religious world today. 

[Wake-up!]

There always has been a lot of phony baloney in the religious world . . . . and always will be.

Doesn't your second paragraph support my statement that trying to use religion as a construct of Socialism is erroneous?

I'm not buying your inference that a person is not moral unless he/she is Christian. I know you conditioned your statement with 'probably', but it is a big, big reach to me.