Wouldn’t it be fantastically refreshing if 7 or 8 of the GOP candidates woke up tomorrow morning after losing badly in the Iowa caucus and admitted that, since they are tanking in the polls and have no real chance to succeed, it probably wasn’t “God” that they heard “calling” them to run for President? And if they accepted with some degree of humility that perhaps, since they don’t have the kind of special revelation, access and/or insight they assumed, they are not the right people to interpret “god’s will” for the whole country??

This is one of the main reasons Jefferson wanted separation of Church and State: it’s not that anyone wanted to completely remove options for people to participate in their religions, it’s that the framers of the Constitution knew that it wasn’t a good thing for people who claimed special knowledge of “God’s will” to develop secular law that applied to everyone… including those who didn’t believe in their version of god. Because, you see, that would actually end up limiting freedom of religion, which was exactly the opposite of what they wanted.

“I guess it wasn’t ‘god’ telling me what to do,” the candidates would say in this fantastic utopia, “and therefore I have to conclude that I don’t really know what god wants. I will henceforth stop trying to pass laws that restrict other people’s rights based on what is very possibly a misinterpretation, and most probably just a projection of my pre-existing personal assumptions and beliefs. Sorry folks: my bad.”

A guy can dream.