Wasn’t the best sentence – part of the problem when you write like you talk.

Thanks, Jill, but I hope that doesn’t mean that you don’t feel like you’ve accomplished something when I don’t take the time to comment.

“…mostly because you offer as different perspectives as everyone else.”

That looks like a tactful way of saying that nobody brings the crazy quite as I do. (:

But thanks. I hear you between the lines. Just something to keep in check, all I’m saying – thanks.

I appreciate your point of view and your concern about fear being abused. This of course will be an issue that will be debated and reevaluated for years to come, which it should be.

Best, Joe

Thanks everyone here – really good debate.

That’s how I see it.

I understand what you say about 9/11 – that changed things in this regard, perhaps.

But did it have to?

Fear is powerful – we need it to survive. But are we abusing it?

It’s not just rhetoric. It’s force. The religious right* uses the force of government to oppress Americans. Here in Ohio, it’s now possible to go to jail for a month merely for shaking hands with an exotic dancer. In Clermont County, where I grew up, the folks who ran the Video Barn were hauled into court on charges of obscenity, a 5th degree felony, every few years.

“It is one thing to say that ‘God will punish you for your wicked ways’…”

“I would argue that Right Wing Evangelicals are not as dangerous to us as much as the Extremist branch of Islam because of the stakes (life and death).”

Mr. Amschlinger, you have a valid point here. However, it’s important to remember that life and death are also at stake when it comes to enforcing the silly, puritanical, and often religiously motivated laws that create consensual crimes. When the state criminalizes a consensual act, it threatens deadly force against those who engage in that act. For an example, see what the Commonwealth of Virginia did to Sal Culosi. Mr. Culosi is just one example of hundreds of victims of the force that government exerts to persecute consensual criminals. For more examples, see this map from the Cato Institute.

*Yes, I know, not all evangelical Christians seek to use government to force the rest of us to follow their rules, and not all proponents of laws against consensual crimes are motivated by religion. And yes, the secular busybodies who would tell the rest of us how to live are just as bad as the religious ones.