President Bush has declared today a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance.

Sigh . . . You know what I’m going to say next.

You can’t do that. This is America, and this is the First Amendment of our founding document, the Constitution.

This isn’t just about the First Amendment, either. It’s about our entire form of government. We’re (theoretically) a secular democracy, but when the President of the entire country announces that we’ll all be praying today, it tells every other country in the world that our nation has a state religion. (Looking at legislation over the past ten years, it would be easy to believe–and to be correct in doing so–that our government runs by a state religion.) If people want to pray, that’s their own business. When the President tells me and everyone else that we’re all going to be praying today, that’s religious leadership through the state. It’s theocracy, it’s un-American, and it’s what the founders of my country were running from when they boarded the Mayflower. Whether people plan to pray or not, every American should be outraged that Bush has the disregard for our rights and the outright audacity to take it upon himself to tell us when to commune with our respective higher powers.