Right On

The time has come for the radical religious right to be referred to in these terms much more often. There has been a reluctance in the past to aggressively attack these people, but there is too much at stake now. In fact, I feel our crop of religious nut-jobs presents a far greater threat to this country than any group of Islamic fundamentalists ever could. Islamic fundamentalists, after all, do not hold high positions in our Federal government. Christian fundamentalists currently do. Countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have problems with home-grown fundamentalism. The U.S. is no different.

Our religious extremists are not dangerous because of what they say and/or believe -- I'd fight to the death to preserve their freedom to speak their minds. [Well, maybe not to the death -- perhaps a near fatal wounding]. But Kos is right -- the problem stems from what these whackos are willing to do to force their cult-like beliefs into our laws and into the lives of the American people:

"Is there any doubt that the American Taliban has more in common with our Islamic fundamentalist enemies? They're cut from the same cloth -- the belief that a system of secular rules and laws must be replaced with 'God's laws.'

"And while the religions may be different, the core of them is not -- opposition to rival faiths, hostility to science, interference in people's private lives, control over women's bodies, an irrational belief in the supremacy of the male over female, militancy, anti-intellectualism and a rejection of logic, an unassailable belief in their own righteousness, and the deifying of certain unelectable, unaccountable individuals as 'spokesmen for god,' be it Pat Robertson or the Ayatollahs."

Amen.