I’m not a fan of fanatics of any persuasion. Rather by definition a fanatic can no longer thing for themselves but is only fully driven by their abject and blind faith in their world-view (most notably in instances of religion).

I got another of Fred’s spam email’s, and this one was a diatribe of Obama’s comments that America was a nation of many religions and not just one (talking about Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc). This email actually took exception to the statement. How bloody ignorant does one have to be to not at least see the comment as one of fact. You might not like the idea, but I’d really not realized how much the counter-reformation was still alive and well in the xenophobic kneejerks that happens when people realize that there’s not just followers of the Jesus Cult making up the citizens of the USA. Rather by definition Christians are all just lapsed Jews anyway, but that’s a theological joke, so let’s move on.

Now don’t think that I’m not annoyed by the fact that all the religions can have their festivals and events, but have a large Christian event and people will get all bent out of shape. Christians should entirely be able to celebrate their holidays (enough with this getting twitchy whenever there’s a christmas pagaent or carols). I sword to never associate with any ACLU after their roughshod attacks on my hometown’s christmas program. Nothing like seeing a 50 year old tradition vanish on a whim. But while I support those, I would also say that if the community wanted a kwanzaa event, or beltane, or whichever, they had an equal right. And the size and attendance to each will be proportional to it’s pervasiveness in the community. But they should all be able to have their time. It only serves to enrich the community as a whole.

Militant Muslims, like militant Christians are equally types of terrorists. Each speaks about wiping the other off the map before the other guy can do it to them. They interpret the Bible and Koran each as giving them full leave to kill the infidels. While most plain thinkers reading either book will walk away with messages of “be nice to each other”.

Someone like Palin is one of those who scares me with the idea that people can still honestly believe that the world is a few thousand years old, that the bible is absolute literal and infallible truth. That in a thousand years we are still a few lines of rhetoric away from another Crusade in the Holy Land.