Is Totalitarianism A Threat To Our Country? The Religious Kind?

Aside from the sheer majestic beauty of the place-- and the primitiveness of the life-- there weren't many "tourist attractions" in Afghanistan, one of the most fascinating countries I've ever visited. One was the Shrine of Hazrat Ali (the fabulous Blue Mosque of Mazar-i-Sharif) way up north, and the other was the giant 1,500-year-old carved buddhas in the Bamian Valley north of Kabul. Religious intolerance on a sociopathic scale has disposed of the latter, although so far the former hasn't been damaged by the same mentality. Just wait.

I've never had an actual religion. My dad was a dedicated atheist, the thing I admired most about him. I studied religions in college, and wound up fooling around with Buddhism for a good long time. When I came back to Europe from a two-year sojourn on the Indian subcontinent, I spent four years working in de Kosmos, Amsterdam's sprawling, nonsectarian meditation center. Of all the belief systems I came across there, the one that had the most appeal to me was a pantheistic, ascetic, mystical offshoot of Islam: Sufism. It's the closest I ever came to "having a religion." I was thrilled many years later when I went to the annual Sufi hoedown in Konya, Turkey, and experienced the real deal dervish dancing and then visited Rumi's tomb. It was moving, but not really a religious experience for me.

Nevertheless, last week when I read about the senseless bombing of a Sufi shrine-- where spiritually minded Sunnis and Shi'a both went to practice devotions-- in Karachi, I was mortified. Sufism is a beautiful, poetic, contemplative, open faith that is neither aggressive nor holier-than-thou. Fundamentalists and totalitarians just cannot countenance it. Nine worshippers were killed and over 70 injured, many very seriously. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing. They don't believe in shrines or saints; they believe they're a kind of blasphemy, in fact.

So what does this have to do with the congressional race in Orlando, Florida? I'm glad you asked, but let's not jump ahead of ourselves. Instead, let's turn to Markos Moulitsas' brilliant and provocative new book, American Taliban. As you know, conservatives never tire of puffing themselves up and yammering-- when not shrieking-- about "freedom" and "liberty." Alas, theirs is the "freedom" of the rich and powerful to degrade and exploit the poor and vulnerable and the "liberty" of sociopaths and narcissists to prey on society. Right in the beginning of his book, Markos establishes the clear lines that bind the Muslim Taliban to what can be called the religious fanatics and extremists in this country known as the American Taliban.

This "freedom" they all claim to seek is, to put it mildly, a limited one: freedom to worship their god and subscribe to their ideology, not freedom to live one's life as one sees fit. At its core is the idea that all laws of the land must flow from their holy book, and that all else is deviation that must be banned.

Holding such beliefs is fine, but foisting them on the rest of us is not. Filled with a moral certitude born of religious conviction, these fundamentalists want a society in which "freedom" means being free to submit to their god. "When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals," thundered Gary Potter, president of Catholics for Christian Political Action. "After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil, and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil."... Totalitarianism for Christ.

This level of intolerance is not the domain of loons and fringe characters but rather the very lifeblood coursing through the entire body of the modern conservative movement.

...The American Taliban's ideology-- with its rigid conformity and lack of tolerance for dissent-- extends far beyond biblical matters and spills over into areas of domestic and foreign policy... Their approach to life is angry and vengeful, and they cling desperately to scriptural certainty in a tumultuous world...

Such certainty, manifested merely as intolerance, would be problematic but not dangerous. However, the American Taliban, like their Islamic extremist brethren across the globe seek to force their rigid views on the rest of society. Such totalitarianism is incompatible with freedom and democracy... In essence, god's law supersedes man's law, and any institution designed to provide for secular governance is by nature illegitimate.

..."I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you," said Randall Terry, founder of the militant anti-abortion protest group Operation Rescue in 1993. "I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."

...The American Taliban seek a tyranny of the believers in which the popular will, the laws of the land, and all of secular society are surrendered to their clerics and ideologues.

And if this describes your world view, you probably shouldn't be reading DWT; you should be down in Orlando working for a politician running as the representative of the American Taliban, Daniel Webster, aka Taliban Dan.

Webster, a devotee and lockstep follower of millionaire extremist and religionist charlatan Bill Gothard, has sought, as a member of the Florida legislature, to institute his narrow and extreme ideology as the law of the land, not just for fellow devotees, but for everyone. Ask yourself, "When is it okay for a man to cheat on his wife?" and the answer is: in a law that Taliban Dan wrote and then tried, unsuccessfully, to pass in Florida. Alan Grayson's campaign brought another example of Webster's hypocrisy to light this week, pointing out that Webster tried to make it the law of Florida that a woman who cheats on her husband cannot receive alimony, but a husband who cheats can.

The “Men Can Cheat” caveat is part of Webster’s now-infamous “Covenant Marriage” bill. Not surprisingly, Webster wrote the bill in a way to allow the hypocritical idea to go virtually unnoticed. The short sentence appears near the end of the bill. It says, “No alimony shall be granted to an adulterous wife.”

The bill does not include any mention of penalties for a cheating husband. A review of state law shows that men were entitled to alimony in 1990. Therefore, one can only conclude that Daniel Webster worded his bill carefully to ensure that cheating women are penalized, and cheating husbands are not.

On the other hand, if all this religious bickering is something you don't want to deal with... here's a nice song about raising highway tolls you might enjoy which comes from the same mentality: