In the beginning was America and it was a righteous place full of great happiness. For the Founding Fathers had decreed that this was a Christian Nation where teachers should offer daily prayers at schools and the people did rejoice at that word. Verily in those days all the people of the country were Baptists and even the Methodists and Anglicans and Dutch Reformed were Baptist and all was happy and gay (the happy kind).

Women were happy although they could not vote.  And the Native Peoples were happy between bouts of being scalped, infected with diseases, lied to, and marched off to reservations. And the slaves were happiest of all for they worked out in the bright sunshine and sang happy songs while they completed useful jobs.

And so it went for the next two centuries that the country was full of wonderful tidings of peace and goodwill, except for the outbreak of wars every few years and a Great Depression (during which people were still happy), great plagues of influenza, and the detonating of nuclear bombs.

But then, in 1963 the Supreme Court declared that corporate prayer was not allowed in public schools and the country has been in trouble ever since. All that happiness America had enjoyed was gone in one fell swoop and darkness descended. From that day suddenly people began to become gay (not the happy kind) and listen to jazz music, and vote Democrat. And the glory departed from off the land.

But if that day should come again when we may once again enforce a rule that agnostic teachers must say prayers to a deity in whom they do not believe to  classrooms full of students who are of all faiths and creeds and not paying attention anyway then happiness will again bloom on the shores of this nation and all will be well.

At least that’s the way I’ve heard it.

Thanks to Stan for the idea