Or so I’ve been told, at least.

In all fairness, I really didn’t know I was miserable until I read Mr. Wallace’s letter.

All these years I’ve lived in ignorance and happiness without the undue burden of accommodating the unknown whims of some invisible person in the clouds. I suppose I must now stop reading, writing, hiking, running, mountain climbing, photography, and discard my significant other, because all of those things have been making me happy, and thereby ruining my misery.

From the Rocky Mountain News’ Letters to the Editor, we get this parade of ignorance:

First, this letter to the editor is nothing more than a verbatim cut/paste job from an Internet message forum, and has been subsequently re-posted in numerous right-wing blogs.

Original posting here: http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/69719858/m/4970067791001

Rudimentary use of the Google (search terms: “Sarah Palin Security Clearance“).

Mr. Wooten’s points for originality = 0

The assertions, however, are completely unsubstantiated and the fail utterly under any degree of scrutiny.

Missile Interceptor Defense? Do you mean Star Wars? Or a Patriot missile battery? As it breaks down, the U.S. has three primary “front lines” of defense: one in Alaska, one in Europe, and one in Canada (for those missiles that would come across the North Pole/Arctic Circle). All of these “front lines” are legacy Cold War deployments for a threat that ceased to exist almost 20 years ago. Yes, Russia is still a threat, but they now pose a very different threat than what we knew back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

She’s “Commander in Chief” of the AK Nat’l Guard? Yes. But as others have noted, their primary (and most often performed) duties include search and rescue along the Alaskan coast, and cold-weather research and training for military units expected to operate in cold weather environments. The primary responsibilities of the missile battalion involve monitoring RADAR for airborne threats–they don’t even get to monitor movements of Russian missile batteries. The monitoring of Russian ground forces is the responsibility of the U.S. (federal, not state) intelligence agencies (the DoD, NSA, and CIA). Palin only gets that information which is relevant to Alaska.

Do you honestly think that Palin is the only governor briefed on national security issues? Yes, Alaska is sooooo critical. But New York, Florida, Texas, California? … Screw ‘em.

Palin has a higher security clearance? Please. Biden and Obama both serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. You’re asserting that the Gov. of AK has a higher security clearance than the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? Foreign relations don’t involve just champagne soirees and black-tie affairs, a la James Bond. From the committee’s website:

http://foreign.senate.gov/

So just what is the “terroristic threat” to which Alaska would be exposed that Sarah Palin would need briefing on counterterrorism efforts?

Of all the places where terroristic threats are of concern, Alaska has to rank in the bottom 1% of the list. Alaska has no national landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Sears Tower, or Golden Gate Bridge. Although it is home to Denali, the highest peak in North America.

The only viable target in Alaska is the Alaskan pipeline, and it is more likely to succumb to wear/tear/age/weather than to terrorist activity. Terrorists want to instill fear in the population and draw attention to their cause. In this respect, they would get more mileage from bombing a day care center or office building (i.e., Timothy McVeigh or 9/11) than the Alaskan pipeline. Besides, the Alaskan Pipeline has already been deliberately blown up once (Feb. 1978) and ruptured by a gunshot from a drunken hunter (Oct. 2001). Impact to our national energy infrastructure? Nil. In addition to the above referenced incidents, the pipeline has been shut down several times for maintenance and reconstruction with no visible impact.

What else would terrorists do? Scale Denali and blow its peak off? Kudos to them if they can accomplish it.

What the fuck?

Who on the Rocky’s editorial staff thinks this is valid “content”? This is nothing more than first-grade quality name-calling. What’s the point of publishing this?

John McCain is a do-do head. There. Top that, Mr. Schwartz!

Having said that, this morning I am presented with this bit of letter-to-the-editor insanity:

To start, I could easily illustrate the lack of reasoning behind the letter writer’s argument and ask if it is only within the last 30 years or the last 50 years that the idea of a purely secular state has been advanced. Either way, the idea of a purely secular state has been around for much longer than even 50 years. In fact, the idea of a secular state has been around since the Founding.

Next, one is left to wonder how the letter writer gets from “Creator” to “Creation” and the refutation of evolution. That is truly a stunning piece of mental gymnastics.

Is the statement of rights in the Declaration of Independence—the statement that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”—unique? No, not at all.

In his Second Treatise on Civil Government, published in 1690, John Locke engages in an extensive discussion on the concepts later reflected, verbatim, in the Declaration of Independence.

The philosophical intent of the use of “Creator” is not an affirmation of the Christian God, nor of any god for that matter. If we look back to Locke’s Treatise—for it was Locke’s reasoning that informed Jefferson and the other Founders—we find the idea of the Christian God as having any claim over the civil society to be completely refuted. Society and society’s laws are the product of our logic and reason in light of our self-directed interests. The intent of the usage of the term “Creator” is to state that the rights we possess are inherent and inalienable by virtue of our very existence, regardless of whether we are created by the Judeo-Christian God, some other god, or by cosmic happenstance.

Thus, the existence of a god is utterly irrelevant to the discussion and our rights exist regardless of how we came to be. If we are the creation of the Christian God, or if it is somehow proven that no god exists at all and we are the creations of little green men from another galaxy, or if we sprouted, sui generis, from the primordial ooze, the proposition equally stands that our rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” are, and remain, inalienable by our very existence.

In the end, the language of the Declaration is largely pointless. The Declaration of Independence does not provide any law or legally bind us as a society. What forms our laws, guarantees our rights, and serves as the basis from which our government may act is the U.S. Constitution and the laws enacted thereby.

Locke, J. (2005). Two treatises of government. Laslett, P., ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.