Guilty - but would someone do me a favor? What, or who, is the "Religious Right?" Who are the leaders? What is so "evil" about what they stand for? Why is it that "conservative" Chuck Baldwin thinks he needs to construct a "straw man" to oppose what he appears to be opposed to? His characterization of our regard for President Bush is phony and incorrect.
UpChuck is less a conservative, and more a Bush-hater.
I just joined this forum because it seems to me that this world, as it always has been, is continuing its trajectory to separate people, so that we will either have to yell at, hit or kill each other.
I agree that we should define our terms before using them with out any regard for the people that the term may represent.
But isn't the author of this post really asking about what kind of fascism is manifesting in our country today? I grew up in Houston, TX, but my parents were born in India. I've studied many religions, and I still cannot understand the anger and fascism among all people who call themselves religious or spiritual. In India the Hindus and Muslims fight amongst each others. Here, even though the light of God is in everyone, some people cannot get married because of there gender or sexuality. They may even be killed. What does the Bible have to say about people that are born with ambiguous genitalia? Where is room for transsexuals in the Adam and Eve story? In India the Muslism are minorities and are treated in a similar way as African Americans are in the US. Institutionalized racism does exist and it has profund effects on the type of people it allows to be produced. In India there is a great lack of education among Muslims, and therefore they do not have the same practices as more "civilized" middle-class Hindus. This is the same way even middle-class black people look at poorer black people in America. How does that kind of feeling get produced? That feeling is institutionalized racism. You should all read American Pastoral by Phillip Roth. He makes an interesting point about how some blacks stopped working as hard in the factories during the civil rights movement. Why did this happen? There are resistances against perceived oppression. People are not sheep all the time, but we must be very weary of when we act like a sheep, especially if the sheperd is leading us toward our own oblivion.
Do we, as citizens of the United States, want to create a world where people are treated equally and their beliefs and practices are treated with respect? The problem obviously comes when one groups beliefs and practices infringe on another group or individual. What do we do when that happens? How do we handle the situation? I have been reading the different responses and posts on this site and I do not see anyone really trying to think that problem through.
If you want a world with more anger, violence and infrigement of our ideals of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I firmly believe you/we are headed in the right direction. Do you want suicide bombings at the McDonalds down the street? Do you think what is happening in Isreal and started in Sri Lanka can't happen here? How do we change this sad trajectory towards increasing violence in our world? Does anybody have the real guts to say that they want to work towards peace and equality without acting like children who cannot understand the meaning of difference? Yes, we are all different and that means working together without killing or demoralizing people is hard work. Making a bomb and dropping it on someone is the easy answer. If we kill them all then we don't have to worry about it. But the really sad thing is that THIS IS NOT THE COLD WAR! THIS IS A NEW CULTURAL WAR that is being created by people like you. But unlike the cold war where so-called Communism fell, I don't see radical Islam falling. This is a war with just losers. It might be your mom, dad, brother, sister, cousin, best friend, son, daughter, wife, husband, anybody. This is the new war that we are creating together by participating in the nonsense of killing each other and putting each other down. I hope you think about what I'm talking about before you lose someone you love.