Of course you have an entirely different set of problems to confront when you talk about defending Western Europe. The main one is that it is filled with Western Europeans, who are not in the least bit interested in defending themselves. They have discovered, over the past thousand years or so, that every time they get military, they wind up having a lengthy and extremely complicated war in which the various countries have tremendous trouble remembering whose side they’re on:

BRITISH SOLDIER: Taste my sword, French person!

FRENCH SOLDIER: No! Wait! We are allies! This is World War I!

BRITISH SOLDIER: I’m terribly sorry! I thought it was the Hundred Years War! Does this mean I can kill Italians?

FRENCH SOLDIER: (Consulting manual): No, I’m afraid not. Not until World War II.

So eventually the Western Europeans stopped forming armies altogether and decided to become third-rate powers, which means we have to defend them from the Russians. We’re available to defend foreign continents because we have no urgent need to defend our own. I mean, the Mexicans certainly aren’t going to attack us, seeing as how most of them already work here. I suppose the Canadians could attack us, but the entire population of Canada is maybe the size of the audience on “Donahue,” only quieter, so even if they did attack, nobody would know, especially if it was during rush hour.

So we’re over there defending Western Europe, which is very, very expensive. For one thing, we have to get up an army, which means we have to pay for all those commercials wherein we suggest to young people that the whole point of the army is to teach them valuable electronics skills, with no mention whatsoever of getting shot at or getting cretin haircuts and being ordered to do pushups by a person who has never read anything longer than a Dr Pepper bottle. For another thing, to defend Western Europe we have to let the Pentagon buy all these tanks and guns and things, and the Pentagon is unable to buy any object that costs less than a condominium in Vail. If the Pentagon needs, say, fruit, it will argue that it must have fruit that can withstand the rigors of combat conditions, and it will wind up purchasing the FX-700

Seedless Tactical Field Grape, which will cost $160,000 per bunch, and which will have an 83 percent failure rate.

So I have come up with this plan for defending Western Europe much more economically, which is to pull our armed forces out of there altogether. They could come home and fix our videocassette recorders. In their place we would send over all our state highway departments and tell them we want them to repair the roads between Western Europe to Russia. Think about it: First they’d have their Cone Placement Division strew millions of traffic cones randomly all over the roads, then they’d have their Sign Erection Department put up signs explaining that all the lanes would be really messed up for the next 17 years to Help Serve You Better, then the Traffic Direction Division would get all kinds of lowlife derelicts out there waving flags and directing motorists right into oncoming trucks, and within a few months it would be absolutely impossible for any vehicle, including Communist tanks, to get from Russia to Western Europe.

So that’s my plan. What do you think? I think those wimpy little pills are starting to kick in.

The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes. So I am going to be very sensitive, here, which is not easy, because the thing about religion is that everybody else’s always appears stupid.

For example, if you read about some religious sect in India that believes God wants people to drink their own urine, you don’t say to yourself, “Isn’t that amazing, the diversity of belief systems Man has developed in his neverending quest to understand and cope with the intricate moral dilemmas posed by a complex and uncertain world?” No, what you say to yourself ;s, “These people have the brains of trout.”

Meanwhile, over in India, the sect members are getting a major chuckle over the fact that some American basketball players cross themselves before they take foul shots. “As if God cares about foul shots,” the sect members howl, tears streaming down their faces. “Say, is this my urine or yours?”

That’s the basic problem, of course: figuring out what God wants us to do. I will admit right up front here that I don’t have the vaguest idea. All my religious training was in Sunday school maybe 25 years ago, and the main thing I remember was that God was always smiting the Pharisees. At least I think it was the Pharisees. It seemed that hardly a day went by when they didn’t get the tar smitten out of them, which is probably why you see so few of them around any more.

My wife, who has bales of religious training, tells me that this was the Old Testament God, who was very strict, whereas the New Testament God is a genuinely mellow deity, the kind of deity who would never smite anybody or order you to smear goat’s blood on your first-born son, which is the kind of thing the Old Testament God was always doing.

NOTE: The preceding paragraph is in no way intended to suggest that there is anything wrong with smearing goat’s blood on your first-born son. As far as I’m concerned, this is an excellent ritual, and I would do it myself if not for the fact that my son might tell the school authorities. Please put away your machetes. Thank you.

It used to be much worse. Back in ancient Greece and Rome they had gods all over the place, and it was no fun at all being a mortal, as you know if you ever read any myths:

“One day two young lovers, Vector and Prolix, were walking in a garden. This angered Bruno, the god of gardens, so he turned Vector into a toad. Saddened, Prolix picked up her lover and squeezed him to her bosom, which caused him to secrete a toad secretion upon her garment. This angered Vito, the god of fabric, who turned Prolix into an exceedingly unattractive insect. Saddened, Vector hopped to his lover, which angered Denise, who was the goddess of municipal water supply and just happened to be in the neighborhood, so she hit them both with a rock.”

And so on. So things are better now. Today most of us believe in just the one God, and He never turns people into toads or anything, unless you count Spiro Agnew. All He wants us to do is what He wants us to do, which is clearly revealed in the Bible.

(Sound of the machetes being unsheathed.)

And the Talmud and the Koran and the Book of Mormon and the works of L. Ron Hubbard. These holy writings tell us what God wants us to do, often in the form of revealing anecdotes:

“And Bezel saideth unto Sham: ‘Sham,’ he saideth, ‘Thou shalt goest unto the town of Begorrah, and there shalt thou fetcheth unto thine bosom 35

talents and also shalt thou fetcheth a like number of cubits, provideth that they are nice and fresh.”

The problem is that many of us don’t have the vaguest idea what these anecdotes reveal. This is why we have broadcast preachers, who can take a religious anecdote and explain it over the course of a half-hour in such a manner that if you listened all the way through you would have no questions at all:

BROADCAST PREACHER: And so we can see that it was BEZEL who told SHAM to go to Begorrah. It was not SHAM who told BEZEL: It was BEZEL who told SHAM. Now people ask me, they say, “Brother Ray Bob Tom, what do you mean, it was Bezel who told Sham?” And I say, “What I mean is that when we’re talking about who told who to go to Begorrah, we must understand that it was BEZEL who told ...”

And so on. It can take upwards of a week to get through an entire sentence, which is why you often have to send in a Love Offering to get cassettes so you’ll remember what it is that God wants you to do. This sometimes seems too complicated, so a lot of people have switched over to the more relaxed style of the Merv Griffin-type of broadcast preachers, who have bands and potted plants and sofas and everything. (“Our next guest is not only one of the top Christians in the business, but also a close personal friend of mine.”)