This correlation probably has more to do with other qualities that are more likely to be found in conservative Christians than in their liberal counterparts or in secularists. A lot of secularists got that way because they asked questions, because they were not able to reconcile the inconsistencies in the doctrines they were taught, and because their discomfort at the hypocrisy in their churches overwhelmed any feelings of community and spiritual comfort they might have gotten from religion. Liberal Christians and their churches are engaged in wrestling with those moral dilemmas, believing the doctrines essentially morally worthwhile. They, too, ask difficult questions, and attempt difficult things (like trying to protect the human rights of Iraqis, or becoming conscientious objectors).

Among conservative and other traditional Christians, I suspect, based on my own experience with fundamentalist Christians, that there is much less of this critical inquiry and more willingness to gloss over those contradictory aspects of their faith and their national loyalties that might cause cognitive dissonance. It may be through fear, ignorance, reliance on blind faith, or intellectual laziness. When you talk to them and ask them difficult questions, they often explode or shut down.

You'll see much more of that among Southern Baptists than you will among Quakers or progressive Catholics.

And that's how you get evangelicals who have no problem with torture, and Roman Catholics in Poland who looked the other way as Jews were being rounded up and gassed in the 1940s. It's not so much the teachings of Jesus that are the problem. It's the human frailty of those who interpret or ignore them, especially those in powerful positions.

Can we spell "Captiluation?"

Evidently not. Loved the rant, though.

Oh, and Birkenhead, I'm sure you know this even if your compatriots on the coasts couldn't identify Lake Michigan on a map, but Chicago is a great city fully of wonderful people who really do mean what they say, with a fantastic theatre culture and a lot less glitter and artificiality than either LA or New York. I'll bet you'd be happy there.

As for me, I'm absolutely sure now that if I die without ever having been to Los Angeles, I won't have missed much.

Yeah, I guess the [Chicago] theater ain't all it cracks itself up to be, but it does crack itself up a lot, hurting those who could help it most with its own idiotic myopia, its clannishness, its insistence on being marginal and out of step with where the country should be going.

I think commenting on this sentence would merely be gilding the lily.

I am the half of our household that cooks. I enjoy it, and it's something of an avocation for me, and my husband is definitely very appreciative. (He does all the laundry, vacuums, changes the litterboxes, and mows the lawn. I call it a fair deal.)

So I'm kind of of two minds about these meal assembly centers. It's not that I'd ever begrudge another woman something that saved her time and energy. Not everyone likes to cook, or can cook well, and these places provide a way to prepare a foolproof, healthy meal. And even I don't prepare a five-course dinner every night. (Usually only on weekends, actually.) In my refrigerator I routinely keep lots of bags of veggies and meats that have been presliced and diced to save time, bags of prewashed salad, shredded cheeses, etc. And on weeknights I tend to do a lot of cooking a l'anglaise (which is French for: boil/steam vegetables until tender, then toss with butter and serve). I'm fine with shortcuts as long as quality and nutritional value are not compromised.

But it kind of bothers me to think that maybe some useful but simple skills might disappear, like preparing and roasting a chicken with giblet gravy, or cooking beans from scratch (remembering to soak first and not add salt until the very end) or poaching fish (the very best way, in my opinion, to eat salmon or sole. But with mercury scares and threatened supplies, maybe this last is moot). And it's expensive. I could easily see a family's weekly food budget adding up to $100-200, but it sounds like using meal assembly centers would cost that much just for dinners.

And, too, why is this targeted primarily at women? Where are the men? Why should women always be the ones responsible for cooking or procuring food? Why not teach one's spouse to prepare meals and expect his assistance two or three nights a week? Many guys already do this, and guess what? THEIR PENISES HAVEN'T SHRIVELED UP AND DISAPPEARED!

And what about teenaged children? Yeah, yeah, extracurricular activities and getting into The Hot College of the Year and all that, but that's one of those valuable skills that children--female and male--need to learn, along with doing laundry without turning all your underwear pink. I'm sure they could even get an application essay out of it: "All I Need To Know About Life I Learned By Making Chicken Soup," or something like that.

So if women want to do this to assuage their guilt about not being able to cook while holding down a necessary job and, hell, having the same kind of career that their husbands are expected to have, I'm not going to point any fingers. It sure beats fast food, pizza, and frozen burritos eaten standing at the counter because there's no one else around to sit down and have dinner. And in the end, the community a meal provides is just as important as the meal itself, and both are much more important than the meal's provenance.

I know there are all kinds of reasons people to do this, but I will never understand it. How can you possibly do such things to a four-year-old girl? Why? What motivates people to be monsters? I just don't understand.