Tisquantum (or Squanto, as he’s better known today) was a Patuxet Indian with an incredible, complex life story that  very few people have an inkling of today; and when you look at the story of early seventeenth-century New England from his perspective, it’s a very different tale than what you get from standard American mythology.

Join CJ as he discusses:

• Squanto’s early life as a Wampanoag in Dawnland, and his abduction & transportation (possibly more than once) to England as a young man
• How he finally made it home after years of absence only to find his community had been wiped out by European diseases while he was gone
• His uneasy relationship with the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit
• How Squanto used his knowledge of the English language & culture to make himself indispensable to the Pilgrims who began settling on the former site of his village, and tried to leverage that for his own ambition, but ultimately died before any of his ambitions came to pass.

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Ever get the sense that the government and politics in the United States is kinda cult-y? If so, CJ thinks your spidey sense is justifiably tingling, and what you’re picking up on is the phenomenon known as the civil religion.

Join CJ as he discusses:

• The concept of civil religion
• The origins of the American civil religion, and a brief word on the scholarship on the concept
• Some of the overtly religious elements that can be found in American government and politics, including: dogmas, rituals, sacred texts, holy places, sermons, sacrifices, sacred days, spells/mantras/incantations/prayers, music, sacred histories/narratives, temples, symbols/totems, priests, and saints
• The ways in which people of different cultural and ideological predilections can — just like with conventional religion — interpret the civil religion in order to make it fit their preferences
• How voting fits into this civil religion, and why CJ thinks a reasonable person should reject the civil religion — whether they are theists or not

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External Links

• Full text of “Civil Religion in America” by Robert Bellah, first published in the journal Daedalus in 1967
• Classic George Carlin bit on why he doesn’t vote
• George Carlin on “Stupid Hat Shit” (Hilarious — talks about the fixation of both conventional religion & civil religion with headgear)
• Bob Dylan, “With God on Our Side” (An excellent, haunting, live recording of one of CJ’s favorite antiwar songs of all time; this song brutally exposes the American Civil Religion)
• “Election Outcomes Affect Testosterone Levels in Men” according to Scientific American
• Wikipedia’s summary of the United States Flag Code