A WorldNetDaily columnist named Janet Folger has a rather peculiar view of history, and cites a rather peculiar source to back it up. Asserting that America is dedicated to God, she contrasts this country with Haiti, which, claims Folger, is "dedicated to Satan":

Why has God blessed us so richly? Get a glimpse into Western Hemisphere history from a 1789 snapshot:

* In 1789, our first president, George Washington, was sworn in. He immediately kissed his Bible and went to the Capitol for a two-hour worship service. While the ACLU has sandblasted for decades, they still can't erase the fact that our nation was dedicated to God, in whom our national motto declares, "we trust."

* In 1789, the single richest colony in the world was ... Haiti. The sugar-producing French colony was called "the jewel of the Caribbean." Import and export profits of Haiti exceeded those of the entire United States. Then, following a bloody riot, Haiti was dedicated to voodoo.

So America was dedicated to God, and Haiti was dedicated to Satan. Then, rag-tag America conquered the most powerful nation in the world and went on to become the richest nation in the world. Haiti went from the very richest to the very poorest nation in the world.

In the 18th century Haiti, then called Saint-Domingue and ruled by the French, was the most prosperous colony in the New World. Its enormously fertile soil produced a great abundance of crops and drew thousands of White French settlers. Unfortunately, Black slaves from Africa were imported to help with the work.

In the late 1700's the madness of the French Revolution, with its truly nutty doctrine of racial equality, infected many Frenchmen, and the Black plantation workers were encouraged to revolt. When they did they brutally murdered every White man, woman, and child in the colony and declared Haiti a republic. What had been the richest and most productive part of the New World promptly sank back to an African level of squalor, misery, and poverty. The roads and cities built by the French fell into ruin. A peculiarly African mixture of anarchy and despotism took the place of French law and order.

Saint-Domingue became known as the "Pearl of the Antilles" -- one of the richest colonies in the 18th century French empire. By the 1780s, Saint-Domingue produced about 40 percent of all the sugar and 60 percent of all the coffee consumed in Europe. This single colony, roughly the size of Maryland or Belgium, produced more sugar and coffee than all of Britain's West Indian colonies combined.

The labor for these plantations was provided by an estimated 790,000 African slaves (accounting in 1783-1791 for a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade). Between 1764 and 1771, the average importation of slaves varied between 10,000-15,000, by 1786 about 28,000 and, from 1787 onward, the colony received more than 40,000 slaves a year. However, the inability to maintain slave numbers without constant resupply from Africa meant the slave population, by 1789, totaled 500,000, ruled over by a white population that, by 1789, numbered only 32,000.

The site relied on by Ms. Folger discusses the anarchy and despotism, the years of United States intervention in Haiti culminating with Bill Clinton's 1994 assistance of Aristide:

Why can't we accept the plain and simple truth that it is as impossible to make democrats out of the Haitians as it is to teach them how to maintain their own roads? Why can't we understand that the Haitians are fundamentally different from us, that they are Africans, not Europeans like us: that they are Negroes, and that left to themselves they must do things in the way Negroes always have done them, with indolence, corruption, and Voodoo?

...one would be hard pressed to find a scholar from any university in America or Britain today who would have the courage to write honestly about Haiti, because he knows that if he did he would be condemned as a "racist" by a numerous and noisy faction of his colleagues and would be drummed out of the academy. And even if someone did write a book with observations and conclusions similar to Prichard's, no mainstream publisher would touch it. That's how far downhill our civilization has slid in a century.

The Haitians have their Voodoo, with all of its disgusting and bizarre beliefs and practices. And we have our cult of Political Correctness, our cult of egalitarianism. It is a cult based as much on superstition and as devoid of reason and logic as the Voodoo of the Haitians. And it exercises as strong a hold on its adherents. A Haitian would as soon offend a Voodoo witch doctor and risk having a curse put on himself as one of our modern scholars would risk being labeled a "racist!"

I think the above is an appallingly racist statement. If that makes me "politically correct," well, maybe I need to reexamine some of my assumptions about the phrase.

There's no denying that Haiti has had many problems in its long and turbulent history. And certainly, Haiti is known for the fact that voodoo is practiced by many of its citizens. But voodoo is also practiced in the Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Bermuda, and New Orleans, and doesn't seem to have caused the economic downfall of any of those places. Unless of course Hurricane Katrina is "God's punishment" for voodoo too!

(Maybe I shouldn't be posing such questions, but I'm trying to inject a little humor into a serious subject.)

Voodoo, by the way, is called Vodun, and its practitioners consider the word "voodoo" to be a misnomer, and a description of "an evil, imaginary religion" "created for Hollywood movies." I'm using it purely as a descriptor because the word is in common usage. What I cannot find anywhere is an explanation of how "Voodoo" or "Vodun" (or whatever people might call it) is "Satanic" or that it is any more responsible for economic failure in Haiti than the race of the people living there.

Might it be that this reflects the personal prejudice of the writer? Returning to Janet Folger, she is not only intolerant of Voodoo, but in the same piece she also seems quite convinced that the United States is threatened by Hinduism. Among the incidents Folger relies on to support her claim that Christians are being persecuted in the United States involves the fact that a Hindu from Reno Nevada offered a prayer in the Senate:

Rajan Zed, director of interfaith relations at a Hindu temple in Reno, Nev., preparing to pray when a clear, loud voice came from the Senate gallery.

"Lord Jesus, forgive us, Father, for allowing the prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight," said a male protester.

The Senate's sergeant at arms was instructed to restore order, but Zed was interrupted again.

"You shall have no other gods before you. ... "

Can anyone explain to me how this constitutes religious persecution? I can't. But this writer for WorldNetDaily relied on by Janet Folger says they were "arrested and jailed for praying Christian prayers aloud in the Senate gallery that same day."

What they were arrested for was disrupting the Senate, not praying. Apparently, the Senate has prayers led by Christians, as well as various Jews, and Muslims -- some of whom may love or hate various things. I do not doubt that if I went in there and yelled "Lord Jesus, forgive us, Father, for allowing the prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight," I'd be arrested too.

So, I hope, would an Islamist who yelled "BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT THE PROPHET!"

Does disruptive speech become protected speech simply because it is religiously motivated, or takes the form of prayer?

Ms. Folger thinks so, and she invokes the Haitians again. It's the voodoo:

"God is not fond of idolatry. Ask the people of Haiti."

Would it be too blasphemous to offer the Haitians some lessons in Hindu economics?

MORE: Here's a YouTube video of the Senate's "persecution of Christians."

MORE: Did Zed actually commit "the sin of idolatry, right there in public, violating the first of God's Ten Commandments with full government permission?" The text of his prayer is here, and the idolatry part just isn't staring at me.