Last Updated on 5/22/2013

Published on 12/13/2012

Mojo Confesses

The Editors,

Mojo confessed to me that indeed he did take an idea from the labs, Jeep and Tank, without giving them due credit. In the letter about School Board Prayer, he should have attributed the idea that members of the Board needed to consult with their spiritual advisors and/or pastors about how best to use the moment of silence before Board meetings. He offers his public apology.

Jeep and Tank have perked Mojo’s interest in the ramifications of South Carolina leaving the United States to form its own country. He has made a list of items for consideration.

1. The University of South Carolina and Clemson would be playing for a national football championship each year. Of course arrangements would have to be made for foreign students from places like North Carolina to have student visas.

2. A new currency would offer all sorts of opportunities to be creative. For example, whose face should be on the dollar bill? Nikki Haley? After all she would be the first President. How about Strom Thurmond on the five?

3. What about a national anthem? Mojo nominates a song from a native son. “I Feel Good” by James Brown.

4. Of course we would no longer celebrate the Fourth of July. How about the day in April when Ft. Sumter was first fired on?

5. We might have to struggle for awhile with services but I’m sure that the good folks of the new nation would pony up and create options to things like United States government contribution to road construction and upkeep. The nation of South Carolina could assume responsibility for interstates and major roads and residents could be responsible for the small roads in front of their homes.
There would be no FEMA so we would have to have SCEMA.

6 We could have our own social security system overseen by the SC Department of Revenue which could sell information to supplement the social security fund.

The possibilities are endless. Thank you Jeep and Tank.

Sincerely,

The Rev. Dr. Jim Watkins
and Mojo
Pawleys Island


DeMint’s resignation

After all his endless wailing and flailing about Washington insiders, pork barrel spending and sleazy lobbyists, US senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) abruptly resigns his Senate seat and-becomes a lobbyist.

Not only that, but this self-styled advocate of the workingman becomes an overnight millionaire, a genuine two percenter. In his new position as head of the Heritage Foundation (a conservative “think tank” with annual revenues of about $80 million), DeMint will rake in an annual salary of over $1 million (compared to the $174,000 he made as a senator), plus will be free to do whatever he wants with the several million dollars he has allegedly accumulated in his campaign war chest. This is no small consideration for a fellow who was the second poorest member of the senate.

The idea that DeMint is moving into a more powerful position to pursue his political agenda is farcical since the Heritage Foundation, as a 501(c)(3) charity non-profit under IRS regulations, is barred from endorsing specific candidates — a strategy DeMint used frequently in his self-styled role as the “Kingmaker” among tea party politicians.

DeMint is just another example of an ineffective Washington politician cashing in on connections made while he was there. He was nearing the day of reckoning when he would have to explain why his campaign pledge not to serve more than two terms in the senate didn't really mean what it sounded like it meant. When you're about to be tarred and feathered and run out of town, grab a flag and make it look like a parade in your honor? Just a guess, but I wonder if the most relieved guy in the Senate today isn't Lindsey Graham, the Senator from South Carolina who can actually get some things done because people respect him.

Brett Phillips
Georgetown



Are questions allowed?

Should people ask questions or keep their mouths shut? Most of us would ascribe progress to the tendency to try to find out how and why things work the way they do. “Inquiring minds want to know” is the motto of those who agree that curiosity is a virtue and the suppression of questions is a potentially deadly sin. Given the prevalence of this attitude, even its universality in the conduct of our personal lives, what aspects of our culture are exempt from inquiry and should they enjoy exemption?

In our society, only religion enjoys near immunity from inquiring minds. Yet many of religion’s postulates are, on the surface, so counter to reason that its survivability might be in question if it allowed close scrutiny. For example, the regular transformation of a commercially obtained wafer and of inexpensive wine/grape juice into the body and blood of a 2000 year-old Nazarene challenges credulity. Still, it stands at the center of widespread religious practices and beliefs. What makes this acceptance of irrationality so curious is the absolute certainty that many believers profess. Why should certainty fear questions?

The ape that became man at some point in his evolution (the evidence for evolution is so compelling that to reject it is to exclude oneself from reasonable discourse) developed a thirst for explanations for what took place in his environment. Lacking even a rudimentary understanding of the laws of nature, logic, cognition, and physics, and unable to live with those pressing questions unanswered, he invoked an early form of imagination to develop narratives unconnected to reason or science. Over time, these answers metastasized and became so familiar, so comfortable, and so widely accepted, that many began to mistake them for truth. Today we refer to subsets of these flights of imagination using the names of specific religions.

Now, people who retain a need to outsource their thinking, and who search outside themselves for wise authority figures, cling to those early stories. They contribute money and resist curiosity in order to help perpetuate beliefs they know are rife with contradictions. Some plead a need for everlasting life as their rationale for believing, despite lacking any depictions of eternal life that would seem in the least appealing to anyone who values the life we have.

The risk in accepting the specious thoughts incorporated into all religions is that doing so requires keeping one’s eyes so tightly closed that it runs the danger of missing life itself. Ask yourself this: Which of my religious beliefs would not be considered a form of madness if encountered outside of religion? Are terrorism and wars in any way an outgrowth of religion? Could I do more to make the world a better place if I concentrated on the here and now? This elementary form of curiosity will do more to enrich your thinking than all of the prayer meetings you have ever attended.

Terry Munson
Pawleys Island