"Put Your Hands to the Television And You Shall Be Healed!"

Jonathan Carson in The American Thinker:

According to the doctrine of Original American Sin, we are stained with the sins of our remote ancestors, whether or not they were actually our ancestors. The politically correct instill in us guilt and shame and then offer to cure us of them in exchange for our becoming politically correct ourselves.

We exterminated the Edenic Native Americans; the sin of slavery and segregation belongs to us alone. We are guilty of unconscious racism, forever injuring blacks without realizing it. We don’t know how, but we are starving poor people in the Third World.

But in the midst of Babylon a miracle. Some people do not have the stain! Their opinions have washed them clean. They live on land stolen from the Indians and owe no debts. They have no more intention than we do of giving the land back, but we are the problem, and they are the solution. If their ancestors held slaves, it is not their fault. They wear the same clothes we do, but their clothes cause no sweatshops. They wear the same shoes but do not exploit children. They can eat what we eat, drive as much as they’d like, spend a month in the hospital, and, lo, the soil is fertile, the ocean does not rise, and animals frolic in the sun. . .

They do not want their homes invaded by marauding armies, but will not sully their consciences defending them. Their protectors have dirty hands, guilty consciences, and danger; they have clean hands, clear consciences, and safety. They hate war and are shocked when people die in it.

To wash away our stain, we must do the impossible; all they have to do is to believe the unbelievable. We have to rid ourselves of evil; they have to think that we are uniquely evil. We have to sin no more; they have to act surprised that we continue to sin. We have to defeat the evil within; they have to defeat us. We have to have faith in God; they have to have faith in faithlessness. We have to believe that God is watching us and watching over us; they have to believe that God will look away. We have to beg God for forgiveness; they have to call us hypocrites.

(via Hatless in Hattiesburg)