The penchant for meddling in other people's business arrived on these shores with the calvinist Pilgrims, who came to America after having failed to overthrow not one but two governments and establish a theocracy in their own image in England and Holland.Despite the assertions of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, we are probably as far away from realizing those ideals in some ways as we were while the ink was drying on the signatures, thanks to the puritan mindset which has infected our country since its founding.The mentality that drives the right wing is FAR from silly. It is DANGEROUS and DESTRUCTIVE of our individual rights and freedoms. And people who espouse the view that they have both the RIGHT and the DUTY to tell the rest of us what to do are on the march.They will, if unchecked, dictate whom we may marry, whom we may love, whether or not we may have children, whether or not a woman has control of her own body, what we may read, what we may view on TV and at the movies, and, ultimately, what God we may worship, never mind the midnight knock on the door. That's already here. Just ask the scores of innocent Arab-Americans who were illegally detained after 9/11..Far-fetched? Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have declared publicly that most main-stream churches (including the Anglican) are not "Christian." And Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell sit on the right hand of Bush, in ignominy everlasting. The Texas Unitarians have already lost their state tax-exempt status because they aren't, quote, "a Christian church."The present fundamentalist-Roman Catholic-Mormon coalition will fly apart the MINUTE the fundamentalists believe they can do without the RCs and the Mormons. Likewise, the "Judeo" in "Judeo-Christian" will evaporate the MINUTE they feel they have the power. Remember the Southern Baptists' "The Year of the Jew?"Make no mistake about it ... the present regime is hell-bent on putting the Dominionist agenda into practice in the United States of America. Google "Dominionism" if you want to have REAL nightmares. Dominionism's agenda is virtually identical to the Texas State Republican Party platform, large chunks of which were lifted in toto and written into the National Republican Party platform.For the first time since Vietnam, there was a report on the national news last night about people seeking to emigrate to Canada because of the outcome of the US elections ... not just GLBT people ... ALL kinds of people. When interviewed, they unanimously asserted that the freedoms that American has always (ostensibly) stood for are under attack, and that they would feel SAFER in Canada.I hope the appalling significance of that isn't lost on people, but it probably will be.I would suggest that everyone scrape together the money for at least a basic ACLU membership. If you can give more, do so. It appears that they are the only thing that stands between us and a right-wing neo-fascist Dominionist dictatorship.

posted by Joshua P. Angell  @ 14.12.04

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