Reply #9: I think one thing that protects us [View All]

is that politicians aren't necessarily fundamentalists themselves. It just makes sense for them to narcotize the masses by using religion. It's why some of these fundies think Bush is the second coming of Christ, yet he hasn't done anything that would make us a theocracy. He talks a lot and helps fund certain initiatives for faith-reasons, but, by and large, his God is the almighty dollar. We are in more danger of being over come by greed than God, or becoming genuflected by a Corporatist structure than a theocracy. But, it is something that does have correlations to the situation in Iran, you are spot on there. I think we have enough mechanisms to survive that. Plus, we haven't had to sit through someone like the Shah for a few decades. We are lucky enough to get to change stuff up every four years or at least every 8. The big scare is that we are only those few laws away from being in some trouble. Privatizing certain institutions and giving them off to churches can be a slippery slope. But getting out of that fever of the moment is crucial, more so than watching it go by incrementally. Increments aren't as big a deal as long as we keep them in a certain frame. But, say we have another catastrophic event that is utilized to change the governance of church and state's relationships to each other the way 9/11 was used to radically change our foreign policy in one fell swoop. Then we are right in that danger zone that you eluded to. That's when a Falwell can do more damage than a Khomeini could ever dream of doing. The power is relative in some ways because given the chance either a Khomeini or a Falwell is bad news to what our national myth believes in. We just have to fight to make sure that never comes to pass.