Soapbox

Wake Up and Smell the Bhurka’s

Is this America?

Is this the land of the free and the home of the brave, a beacon of democracy to light the world?

Today in American a talk show host threatens callers with “a little visit from security” for merely mentioning the name of a competitor, claiming that they are being obscene and harassing. True to his word, several callers have been contacted by the head of Fox security and warned to stop the harassment for saying the magic words “Keith Olberman” to the mighty Bill O’Reilly. This would be funny, if it weren’t so frightening. Apparently “I disagree” is now equivelent to making a bomb threat in America, where we torture and spy because we love.

And this week in the land of liberty the Missouri legislature announced that they will be debating a bill to make Christianity the state’s official religion. That’s right. The resolution will recognize “a Christian God,” and it does not protect minority religions, but claims it is to “protect the majority’s right to express their religious beliefs.” Only christianity merits what the resolution calls “justified recognition”

Oh, those poor, picked-on Missouri Christians. Have the Unitarians been laughing at them again?

Of course anyone who passed 8th grade civis knows that the U.S. constitution prohibits “laws respecting the establishment of religion” and the Missouri Constitution itself declares:
” no preference shall be given to nor any discrimination made against any church, sect or creed of religion, or any form of religious faith or worship”
…but maybe that doesn’t matter in America any more.

Maybe sending the thought police to knock on the door of anyone who disagrees is just a natural next step in a country where the president believes he can listen in on whomever he wishes, as long as he starts a war first. Perhaps we all wanted to forsake the Constitution, ethics and true morality in pursuit of the much loftier goal of keeping gays from being able to marry and preventing people from saying “Happy Holidays”. And maybe you want to live in a world where a woman who conceives an ectopic pregnancy is sentenced to death for her “crime”, as the abortion laws Ken Blackwell wants to enact would do.

Maybe you do. But I do not.