Originally posted by Ford Prefect
ngtm1r, I think you're working on the assumption that because something was founded on an ideal, it's immune to influence of an opposite nature. Yes, America is a democratic society, more or less, but there's a reason that democratic government is hard: It's not the natural state of human affairs. People naturally fall into line with a certain pattern of thought, and then exert effort to make their version of the truth the widely accepted one, and they will fight as hard as they can to make that happen. Democracy, on the other hand, only allows people's views to be expressed, not forced. Most people find that difficult to live with, myself included.
Thus, democracy is a constant, very precarious balancing act between allowing people to express themselves and preventing them from forcing their belief system on the rest of the population. Kazan's anger may be obnoxious, but it is not unfounded, because authoritarian regimes will not always be heralded by fanfares and goose-stepping in the streets; Control of thought is an ever-present danger that stares us in the face from all sides, and if we pretend that it can't happen to us because our constitution says so, then we risk having things slipped under the door, bit by bit.
Or is that really true? I've had this discussion before, I assure you. You begin with an assumption of the normal of human society, one that is demonstrably flawed. So far as America is concerned, democracy IS the norm. Expression IS the norm. It has been this way longer then anyone alive today can remember. Further, one will note an interesting trend: the world, for the most part, wants to be democratic. Any reasonably developed country in exsistance today has either made an attempt to be or is in fact a democratic country. This implies something interesting: that democracy is the end-state of government, the final act. All government has been evolving to this point, the point at which the norms may finally and fully be expressed.
Democracies since the birth of Christ have either lasted only two decades at most, or effectively forever. Democracy faces much greater hurdles in its infancy then any other form of government, but should it survive that infancy it has considerably better longetivity. It takes an outside force, an invasion, to upset a long-standing democracy. And once the occupation is lifted, it will return. Look around. The world is littered with examples which prove my point. France. Britain. America. The countries of Eastern Europe, now that Soviet Union has collapsed.
Few internal forces have managed to shatter a long-standing democracy, and none have done so since the birth of Christ. It takes an exceptional person to do so, a Casear. Do you see such a person here? Surely you will not compare George W. Bush to Casear favorably. Such a person can no longer exsist. A monolithic figure of that sort attracts media attention the way a dump attracts flies, and they will have their life torn to shreds, their every action analyzed and criticised.
Hitler Christian? Amusing. Hitler included Catholicism among his list of unacceptable beliefs. Catholics were shipped off to Auschwitz too. The effort was not as determined, not as organized, as that against the Jews, but it was made. Ultimately it was only curtailed because even Hitler could not project enough force of will to keep the Catholics of Germany from turning on him, including many promenient officers in the military. Hitler himself was an athesist, regardless of his upbringing. More properly, he believed in himself the way others believed in God.
Priests suffered heavily in Nazi Germany. Many went to concentration camps. Their denomination was immaterial. Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox, it did not matter. Religious faith, ultimately, threatened what Hitler tried to create, for religious faith was faith to something other then him. Faith to something that advocated a considerably less harsh approach.
Believe not the words of the man, Tiara, for as history shows he was a liar, a master manipulator who knew that cloaking oneself in religon could work very effectively, and quite probably delusional.
The CSA is what you seem to believe Republicans want this country to become, Kazan: a heavily Protestant society discriminating equally heavily against all who are not of Caucasian descent and Protestant religon. You merely show your lack of historical knowledge with your assertions otherwise.
Am I naive, Kazan? Or are you? You apply to them the label of christofacists because they claim to be Christian. Yet you KNOW, just as I do, that they are
not. Why do you call them what they wish to be called, not what they truly are? Or do you believe them?
