posted
My personal overreation-phobia is The Handmaid's Tale. (Of note is that this plot rests on a specific and marked acute decline in fertility as well as an increasingly militaristic and religiously fundamental State.)
I understand that this is paranoid fantasy. The concerns don't come for me in a suspicion that the exact same thing will happen; rather, it manifests itself as a pretty certain suspicion that were we to continue in the current vein, we would eventually require a military draft, and that would mean going through US Customs "just to protect the safety of Americans" before Canada Customs.
I think the border will be getting tighter soon - for leaving the country as well as (more understandably) for entering it. Overreaction? Yes. But I would have pooh-pooh'd The Patriot Act as a possibility myself, before it passed.
[ September 25, 2004, 10:18 AM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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quote: In many people's mindsets, athiests and agnostics are just 'confused', whereas those of "seeming-Christian" faiths who teach doctrines that aren't in agreement of their own are "Dangerous DECIEVERS!"
I've read a couple of those books, and they all make, for example Mormons, out to be mislead by their leaders. As in, the leaders all know what they really support but the members don't. We'd better educate them.
The point is that I don't think Christians would be burning Mormons or anything, but if some of the really zealous took over the country and got rid of the Bill of Rights, they might make Mormonism illegal to practice. That said:
quote: Going back to the original topic, I suspect that extremist Protestant Christianity is not organized enough to take over the country.
This is exactly right. I predict that there's never going to be enough of a central mindset within the zealots to get anything done. I had toyed with making a post that said that but I could never get it worded right. But I completely agree that Christians in America have completely lost any sense of "oneness" that they may have had and aren't going to be active in getting anything done in this country on a bigger scale than the occasional detonated abortion clinic. And I still hold that anyone blowing up an abortion clinic slips right out of the definition of Christian in my mind.
If you want to be worried about someone, be worried about the people with evil hearts that are wearing the faces of Christians. They behave in such a way as to make you afraid in exactly the way that you are, and also serve to completely destroy any trust that America may have had in it's Christians. These are the ones doing the personal hate crimes, and they make me ashamed.
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posted
Well, it's just another example of how it's not possible to go wrong pandering to a Christian electorate.
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quote: But I completely agree that Christians in America have completely lost any sense of "oneness" that they may have had
From my perspective, I don't see how there ever was any sense of "oneness", but that might be because me and my kind would never have been part of it anyway.
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That people in this country will find more and more legal obstacles to acting according to their conscience, or refraining from acting in violation of their conscience.
That, as government expands into more and more areas of life, religion will be excluded from those areas by Constitutional fiat.
That certain messages considered by many to be highly morally objectionable will be continue to be propagated with taxpayer money, while the response to those messages will not only remain impaired by the funding imbalance, but also face continued legal attempts to hinder their propagation.
That the expression of faith in public forums will become unacceptable.
I’d note that none of these fears are incompatible with Dan’s. We need to find a middle way.
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