For people interested in this topic, I would also recommend Paul Bloom's _Descartes' Baby_, a charming book showing how the basic facts of cognitive development would strongly predispose our species toward believing in things like God and souls. I think it is fair to say that Bloom ends up saying something like "and we need to get over it", but he's not strident.

Our brains are about three time larger than those of chimps and gorillas. That difference has only evolved in the last two million years, and it comes after we started making stone tools. Using sticks and rocks as tools is one thing; making tools is a new skill. Basically the cognitive requirement for tool making is to think of something that is not there. I think that was the big breakthough that gave rise to human intelligence: thinking about stuff that's not there.

Is God just one of those things we think about that's not there, or did God fix stuff so we'd come up with Him as an idea? Regardless of the answer, it is always nice to see another reminder of how similar we are to the other apes.

I'm old, but I grew up in Memphis in the 50s. I tell people I am the oldest white guy in America who grew up listening to black people's music. I've actually seen a bunch of the "roots" guys. My wife has a signed picture with Elvis taken before he moved to Graceland.

I provide this biographical material as background for my comments on Marchese's take on the Grammys: The people who ran the Grammys went retro, I suspect, because most of the new stuff is just crap. They wanted an audience, so they featured music that people would actually like to hear.

This is the first Grammys I have enjoyed in years, though it would have been improved if Justin Timberlake had not shown up at all.

Gun control as a political issue is like estate taxes. All kinds of people who don't have near enough wealth to worry about estates taxes are all upset about them. Republicans have played their ignorance like a fiddle. Same deal with gun control: nobody has even suggested taking guns away from law abiding citizens, but if you listen to Republicans, you'd think the gun police were going to start doing raids on people's homes. (Before the last election, fundamentalist religious people in Arkansas got literature suggesting that Democrats were going to try to ban the Bible. I thought the report was satire--it wasn't.)

The difference between the issues is that estate taxes actually work--not well enough, but they do some good. Gun control does not. There are so many guns in circulation that it is hard to imagine that a person set on doing harm could not find all the weaponery he needed.

Democrats are absolutely right to run away from the issue. It has the potential to cost maybe 10% of the vote in some states. They should not touch it with a stick. They need to educate people--though that is probably impossible--about estate taxes.

I have written on this topic before.

Mansfield's statement on the power of the presidency is simply the most honest and direct statement of a theory of government we have seen before. The model is not so much Machiavelli’s _The Prince_ as it is Thomas Hobbes' _Leviathan_, or Edmund _Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution_. This is not American conservatism, but old fashioned, European, pre French revolution, defense of aristocracy, conservatism. It can be called fascism, but the motivation for that was very different. The Germans called this theory of government Das Furherprinzip.

It is important to note that we have a bloc of four justices on the U. S. Supreme Court who clearly buy this theory of government.

Where does this come from? George Bush represents his social class. We finally have enough people in this country who have been rich enough, long enough, that they want a government that will protect their wealth and privileges from ordinary citizens and real democracy. (If you look back, the Federalists thought this way too.)

The only real puzzle is how ordinary Americans can be dumb enough to vote for people who only represent a tiny minority of the Country's citizens.

How long are people going to accept the notion that the Reagan years were some kind of golden age and Reagan a great president?

The Reagan years were a disaster for the great majority (90%+) of the American people.

The Reagan administration did not cut taxes; they shifted the tax burdun from wealthy to average and low income Americans by cutting income tax rates and raising FICA taxes. Only the richest 20% got a tax cut.

According to studies reported in the NY Times and other places in the early '90s, about 73% of all new income generated during the Reagan years went to the richest 1% of Americans. The lowest income groups saw a loss of real income during the Reagan years.

The election of Ronald Reagan was the beginning of the end of the American Century and the end to the American dream for most Americans. George W. Bush has just been completing the task.

The only defense of Reagan personally is that he was probably too stupid to be held morally culpable.

A couple of letters on this topic implied that the writer failed to understand a basic fact: George W. Bush is America's upper class. His family has been socially prominant and wealthy for at least six generations. They have been very wealthy and powerful for four. He is third generation Skull and Bones. (See _The Good Shepherd_ for some idea of his roots.)

George W. Bush's presidency cannot be understood if you do not appreciate his absolute sense of entitlement. His only real concern is with protecting the wealth and privilege of his social class.

I find the Queen an admirable realization of the ideals of British aristocracy. George W. Bush justifies taxing the American upper class out of existence.