Remember Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Puritan society in his novel, The Scarlet Letter? Poor Hester Prynne violated the laws of the church, which meant that she broke society’s laws, too. At the beginning of the novel, the reader joins Hester as she leaves the safety of the town prison and makes her way back into the society that jailed her. Reading the book for the first time in the 11th grade, I had a hard time understanding how, in a free society, the religion of one group could also form its judicial system. That makes the laws of God the same thing as the laws of man. Separation of church and state was also an 11th grade U.S. history lesson, so we students figured no more Hesters could be jailed for breaking the laws of her religion . Or so we thought. We fought a war 250 years ago to separate the colonies from a king who was not only ruler of the government but leader of the church. A quick walk through British history shows what a mess that ideal leads to: remember Henry VIII
Per the Washington Post article , in his next term, He Who Shall Not Be Named (Trump) wants to: Execute drug dealers Move homeless people to outlying ‘tent cities’ Deploy federal forces against crime, unrest and protests Strip job protections for federal workers Eliminate the Education Department Restrict voting to one day using paper ballots First, I had a bit of a chuckle then it occurred to me that he probably really believes this and the smile really fell right off of my face after realizing that most of his followers also believe it is a good idea. Not only are these points awful from a policy perspective but they are each an insidious part of his plan to not only rile up his base but to eliminate resistance and focus power in his hands. Let's look a little deeper at each point and dive into the subsequent effects of these "policies". Execute drug dealers - his thought (probably from a hero movie he watched) is that permanently removing drug dealers from the gen