SOME WANT TO MAKE A "CHRISTIAN" NATION LITERALLY IN SOUTH CAROLINA

This is an interesting story found in yesterday's paper. Apparantly, there is a group known as Christian Exodus, seeking to encourage 12,000 like minded people to relocate to South Carolina where they would begin to have a profound effect on the state's political structure and work with the "express purpose of reestablishing a Godly, constitutional government" in their view. The eventual idea, according to founder Cory Burnell, is to somehow succeed from the Union and establish "an independent, Christian-oriented country."

Burnell has done this before. As a regional chairman of the group League of the South, he wrote several articles advocating a "Southern Independence" movement with the plan of withdrawing one targeted state from the USA by 2014. That state now seems to be South Carolina, a small state already considered rather conservative and home to Bob Jones University, which made news several years ago on it's ban on interracial dating (since changed).

Only about 20 families have reportedly made the move to South Carolina, and Burnell still lives in Tyler, Texas, although he claims to be preparing his family for their own relocation.

Historian and political consultant Ned Barnett says that at least in some ways, Christian Exodus is serving the purest interpretation of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.

"This idea is a great publicity stunt and it sounds like a very dramatic action. But I'm a fairly strict interpreter of the Constitution and I can tell you there is no legal basis for any state withdrawing from the U.S. That issue was settled, once and for all, by the American Civil War.

"Beyond that, the so-called 'Separation Clause' of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would prohibit any state government from addressing a purely religious issue. They couldn't acknowledge the efforts to secede -- even if that were legal, which it is not -- on the basis of religion. It's kind of a catch-22. There's really no way around it, and it would keep a state in the U.S. even if that state could otherwise secede."

A theocracy of any type is dangerous; look at much of the Middle East. Personally, these folks don't have a great chance anyway, as this is the far, far right of the fundalmentalist Christian movement. Many of their brethren, while they may agree with some of their ideas, will simply write them off as nuts. But you always have to keep an eye on these types of folks.