In the eternal battle between reason and regression there's never been a rallying cry as powerful as Voltaire's double-barreled phrase: Écrasez l'infâme. It has been translated variously as "crush the infamous," "crush the horror" or -- my preference -- "smash the rogues." Voltaire's targets, his recent biographer Ian Davidson writes, "included superstition, theological repression, Jesuits, monks, fanatical regicides, and the Inquisition in every shape and form; in short, all facets of the dark and regressive alliance between the Catholic Church and the French State." By the 19 th century, the phrase had done its job, and not just in France. In the West, Church and State would be kept separate, for good reason: Absent a thick and uncompromising wall, the two cannot help but corrupt each other while tyrannizing, in a "higher power"'s name, the people they're meant to serve.