>If people ask how it's going, you say, "It's coming along."

I am reminded of the speechwriter character Toby in the West Wing series, when asked how the speech was coming, said "It's in a larval stage. These things take time. It's not like putting a hammer to a nail. (long pause) I need pie."

Summer is pie for critics. It's hard to muster a head of vitriol when the blood is thin.

I grew up in the midwest. I did farm work. But I also did retail work, and some office work, and some factory work. Work is not all the same.

The truth, which Keillor is coy to divulge, is that "hard" work -- that is, physically exhausting labor -- is pretty easy duty. The more you do it, the easier it gets. But that's only half the story.

There are three categories of work, catalogued by Robert Reich; routine production (manufacturing, e.g.), in-person service (the gamut from hair grooming to brain surgery), and symbolic analysis. Keillor dines out on the notion that "desk work" is somehow inferior to digging dirt and shoveling shit, but symbolic analysis, from basic accounting to software integration, is what makes the world go around.

Two centuries ago is took 2/3 of the population working in the fields to feed everyone. This resulted in the institution of slavery, since working in the fields, for all the sound character it imbued in the laborer, sucked. Today, it takes roughly 3 percent of the population to feed the planet. Mechanization, for all the disruption it caused in the agricultural labor force, literally freed people to work at less arduous assignments.

You want hard work? Imagine the world as it ought to be, twenty years from now. Negotiate with your neighbors to discover what values you hold in common, and define a strategy for achieving a common purpose. These are symbolic analysis tasks, and the more people who are engaged in completing them, the less we will need to fret over whether or not the evaporation of hard labor opportunities has rendered us soft and lazy.

Marcus' charge to yet another cohort of pliant didacts rambles somewhat, but manages to at least rehearse some of the relics of our republic. It is a true fact that the inspiring notion that all are equal and endowed with rights is honored as much in the breach as in the practice, although his central point, that we continue to perfect the practice, remains true.

There was disagreement from the start, of course. Plenty of early settlers were entirely loyal to the crown, and found the adventure of independence appalling. Most of the signatories to the various founding documents were quite adamant about decoupling faith from the civil authority, but a great many early Americans were scandalized by that principle. The ink was not even dry on the new Constitution before the Alien and Sedition Act was passed. It's an ongoing dialog, and while the forces for regression have won some skirmishes here and there, mostly it's been a war of attrition.

Taking the long view of history, the trend in encouraging. We are having a national debate about gay rights, and while spirited and contentious, does anyone have any real doubts about the ultimate outcome? Marriage will, within a generation, become redefined as any intentional household, regardless of the gender or sexual preference or number of participants or even consanguinity. The state has no proper interest in the legitimacy of romantic pair-bonds, but has a very real interest in the formation of sustainable households that pool interests, save surpluses, and provide for the care of minor issue. It's only a matter of time before anyone willing to commit to a partnership contract enjoys the same privileges and responsibilities as marriage affords today.

And while religion may never fade from these shores, it will certainly continue to suffer marginalization from the civic deliberation. Faith -- belief in that for which there can be, by definition, no proof -- is a disorder. Because of the unique national character of the United States, the time will come when the Senator from the Great State of Bible Belt will attempt to justify his legislation with scripture and be censured and removed from the chamber, hopefully for observation and treatment. That day will not come in my lifetime, I'm sure, but I've no doubt that it will dawn.

My only quarrel with Harris is that he doesn't take the argument far enough. My hope is that the Diagnostic Statistical Manual will one day define Acquired Cultural Delusional Disorder, as well as specify protocols for diagnosis, intervention, and treatment.

To believe in that which cannot be demonstrated is, in many patients, mostly harmless, even arguably benignant. But this syndrome presents across a spectrum of severity, and persons manifesting symptoms should, at a minimum, he evaluated for destructive potential.

At the very least, when the Senator from the Bible Belt proposes to advocate legislation on the basis of scripture, he or she should be gavelled into silence, his or her remarks stricken from the record, and removed from the chamber by the sergeant-at-arms, to be held for observation.

I have no objection to Harris' recognition of mystical experience. Having provoked similar experiences myself through meditation, sensory deprivation, extreme physical exertion, and botanical and pharmacological experimention, I am satisfied that such experiences, while informative, are nevertheless the province of electrochemical neurological response.

The willingness to ascribe these universal experiences to external agency may well be natural, but it is not rational.