An Important Source

Sometimes the short articles say the most, as with Pentagon can keep funding Scout event in today's paper. A federal appellate court has ruled that it isn't a violation of the separation of church and state for the military to help fund the annual Boy Scout Jamboree, held at a military base in Virginia.

Funding has been going on for 35 years now, and it is clearly a violation of church-state separation. But the important thing is the main issue for the military: the Boy Scouts are a "useful recruiting and training tool." The BSA has long been a bastion of blind patriotism and religion. You aren't technically allowed to be a member unless you are religious; atheists need not apply.

It would be nice to see a real separation of church and state, but that's only possible in a democracy. Cases like this, while sad in that they show how far we are from a more humane society, also bare wide open the real nature of this system in a straightforward way. It also shows how intimately connected religion and the state are.