Remember, when in court, be civil...

Or there could be consequences.

A Halloween Poem: the Mewlips by J.R.R. Tolkien

I posted this last year on Halloween. It's one of my favorite poems for the season:

The shadows where the Mewlips dwell Are dark and wet as ink, And slow and softly rings their bell, As in the slime you sink. You sink into the slime, who dare To know upon their door, While down the grinning gargoyles state And noisome waters pour. Beside the rotting river-strand The drooping willows weep, And gloomily the gorcrows stand Croaking in their sleep. Over the Merlock Mountains a long and weary way, In a mouldy valley where the trees are grey, By a dark pool's borders without wind or tide, Moonless and sunless, the Mewlips hide. The cellars where the Mewlips sit Are deep and dank and cold With single sickly candle lit; And there they count their gold. Their walls are wet, their ceilings drip; Their feet upon the floor Go softly with a squish-flap-flip, As they sidle to the door. They peep out slyly; through a crack Their feeling fingers creep, And when they've finished, in a sack Your bones they take to keep. Beyond the Merlock Mountains, a long and lonely road, Through the spider-shadows and the marsh of Tode, and through the wood of hanging tees and the gallows-weed, You go to find the Mewlips--and the Mewlips feed.

Less religion = more government?

It sure looks that way. This reminds me of a quote from the father of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke: "Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without." Without the internal constraints upon human behavior provided by religious belief, a rise in the role and scope of government is inevitable. The internal constraints of conscience must give way to the external constraints of the government's coercive power.