There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that when Louis XVI was guillotined, somebody leaped onto the scaffold, grabbed the head to show to the crowd, and screamed "Jacques DeMolay, though art avenged." Of course, the 'feeling of a cold icicle running across the back of the neck' could hardly be compared to being roasted alive in front of Notre Dame but the 18th century was a kinder and gentler time.
And since a good part of the French (and American) revolutions was plotted in Masonic lodges, Jack's last words could be indeed seen a prophetic. ( well, okay, the 'swiftly' thing i guess has to be seen in geologic terms ... )
Actually, the whole flap about trying to purge all references to a deity the FFs certainly saw in deistic rather than theistic terms seems like a lot of wheel spinning and ranks right up there with flag-burning ammendments and "defense of marriage" as exercises in sputtering righteousness.
It is life as seen by lawyers rather than poets.
(c.f. T.S. Elliot, below )
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>>>The Founding Fathers went out of their way to keep religion out of government. God is not mentioned in the Constitution.
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>>>Tamar
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>>Yeah, but the Masonic symbol went on the money ;-)
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>>Jacques DeMolay, thou art avenged !>
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>DeMolay's last words (reportedly) were:
>"Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us - God will avenge us."
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>So in a way you are correct.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
