Driving to work this morning and heard a new one.

Cheryl Crow, a huge acolyte for the Bhagwan Gore Rashneesh's Global Warming scare offensive, is telling us all that we should limit our toilet paper use to one square at a time. Maybe two or three if it's an emergency. She wants to save trees. Sport a skid mark for the rain forest, is her impassioned plea. It occurs to me that these folks who've drunk the cool-aid (in the popular analogy), have a lot in common with an earlier group of believers.

Back in the 1830s and 40s, there was a new religious fervor spreading in America. In the textbooks we call it the Second Great Awakening. They'd printed the new testament in English in the 1600s, and German and everything else. When it was made available to the public, and when they were given enough time to read it and parse out the sexy bits (all the fire and brimstone), the great unwashed out there (and a lot of well meaning people) decided that the end of the world was nigh. Lots of folks came up with their own way of preparing for the end. Some sat in quiet contemplation, while others danced with snakes.

One guy, a farmer from New York state named William Miller, looked at his Bible very carefully. He read the ages of the various figures and came up with a date on which he claimed the second coming of Christ would occur. He publicized his date, and followers began to prepare for the end. They sold all their possessions, gathered in open places and waited for the rapture.

Of course, nothing happened. Miller went back to his Bible and announced to the nervous followers that he had made an error in his calculations. He set another date, and the followers once again prepared themselves for the second coming. Guess what happened? Nothing. Nichivo. Nada... is what happened. They picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and went about their business, deciding after all that God's will was too mysterious for mere humans to discern. They went on to become famous as flagellants during the great depression of the 1840s (1839 to 43), going from town to town, beating themselves bloody to atone for the sins of the world. They continue to prepare today. Some of the modern day descendants of Millerites are the 7Th Day Adventists.

The Branch Davidians, who held out for so long and then immolated themselves and their babies in the dramatic end of the Waco standoff, were a modern fundamentalist branch of the Adventists. All these different chords rang in my head today when I heard a radio commentator refer to Al Gore as the David Koresh of the environmental movement. It occurs to me that in the movement, whatever movement it is, for people to follow all the way they have to put blinders on, shutting off common sense, and "drink the cool-aid", all the way back.

Maybe we should update the first amendment to add pseudo religions like Global Warming to the list of faiths separated from public policy makers and the government purse by the "high wall of separation"? What do you think?