Of Bed
To RALPH:
Dr. Phage's article "Out On Our Assets" neglected to address the religious dimension of the current financial crisis.
Faithful believers of The Tabernacle of the Divine Free Market have been dumbfounded by the discovery that real estate values and the stock market index can actually go down as well as up. As if this were not shock enough, congregants were horrified when their own Republican administration essentially nationalized several financial institutions. They had been taught that God commanded the rigorous isolation of government from the slightest intrusion into business activity, just the way that orthodox Jews are commanded to isolate the Passover plates from the slightest crumb of leavened bread.
Some of the faithful believe that God is punishing America for allowingthe government to operate the Post Office and the Weather Bureau, but others are undergoing a true crisis of faith. A few of them have taken upspeaking in tongues, like the Governor of Alaska, while others can be found kneeling before their icons of Milton Friedman while sobbing aloud and eating shredded copies of the Investors Business Daily.
The economic crisis has caused a different stir amongst communicants ofthe Church of Leftier Than Thou. Devout believers here are all atwitter in expectation of the End Times of capitalism, as foretold in their holy scriptures and announced in sermons every few months for the last 150 years. Little groups of the faithful are already gathering on mountain tops, looking forward to the End of Days, which will of course be followedby The Rapture, which they also call Socialism. When that time comes, they believe that the angel Che, the archangels Uncle Ho and Paul Robeson,and the holy innocents Julius and Ethel, will all descend from the sky and carry The Righteous up to Socialist Heaven; there, they will be seated at the left hand of Lenin to spend eternity chanting hosannas to Righteousness, above all their own, just as they did on earth.
Faithfully yours,