I've been working on a letter to the editor of our local newspaper. It's going to be thanking a local high school student for mentioning Ishmael in the paper. I'm going to try and work this quote into it.

"The subject of Ishmael is the unrecognized and unacknowledged mythology of our culture, which Ishmael formulates as a story that spells out the relationships among Man, the world, and the gods. In this context the gods are mythological, which is not to say that they're unreal but rather that their reality is irrelevant. The world was made for man to conquer and rule, and Man was made to conquer and rule it--according to our mythology. It goes without saying that this is a divinely appointed mission. The Europeans who drove the indians off their land and put that land to the plow sincerely believed they were doing God's work."[Daniel Quinn, Pg. 49, If They Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways]