Sigh...

(via Religion Clause) The Public Religion Research Institute has released a post-election survey which contains the following gem:

A majority (58%) of Americans believe God has granted America a special role in human history.

That's a depressingly-large percentage, and it's not just confined to the crazy wing of the Republican party:

Members of the Tea Party (76%) and Republicans (75%) are much more likely to believe that God has a granted the U.S. a special role in human history than independents (54%) or Democrats (49%).

The belief that your particular country is favored by some set of deities is the crassest tribalism. Hitchens is right... how do you run a country when people have batshit-insane baseline assumptions like that? It's enough to make me want to flee to the EU.