In regards to ARIZONA politics I'm not far off from the mainstream. You'll spent too much time in your little conservative enclave of friends and Maricopa Country. There are pockets of Arizona, my birthplace by the way, that keep us from turning into another Bible Belt.

Interesting that you turned this discussion into one about religion. It speaks volumes about where you get the absurd notions you come up with on here.

My kids, who are standout students in the public schools they attend, have told me of their teachers and the ones that seem to inspire them to learn and be good citizens are the least religious or if they are they keep it personal. It seems the ones that are the worst teachers, the most unfair, and the ones with the biggest hangups in regards to compassion, ethics, and bigotry are the ones that try to inject their religious beliefs and/or their conservative politics into their lessons.

These children and their wonderful friends haven't required a weekly regime of Sunday School or religious pageantry to figure out that drugs and alcohol are to be avoided. They're non-violent and have friends of all races and persuasions. They're marvelously creative and embrace science and philosophy.

That's not to say I don't see the benefit of some spiritualism in life as long as it's a self-exploration, a discussion of ethics, a search for our origins and our destiny. In my own discovery though I've learned more about those things from episodes of Star Trek than falling asleep during some Sunday sermon more concerned with filling the collection plate than opening minds.

This whole notion of conservative old-school values necessary for a good and functioning society is the biggest scam ever foisted upon a civilization. It's been used for decades as a tool of manipulation and power and historically has done more harm than good. The abuse of that same concept led to the Salem witch trials, the Inquisition, and the rise of Nazis.

There are many old-school values we are truly missing these days but it's not the ones your like are calling for. They're the ones that deal in compassion towards others, families taking care of their elderly, parents honoring the teachers in their schools, people not suing their doctors when something goes wrong, children honoring their parents because they respect them not because they're told they have to. Those are the values my wife and I try to bring to our children and I observe other families doing that don't require bloody crosses hanging in their living rooms to scare their children into submission.

Art