ThymineC wrote:Tom wrote:I'm really sure that religion and politics mixing isn't anywhere near as big a problem in the UK as it is in the US.
The American Christian Right is hardly unique in their belief that they have a monopoly on the one true faith. Their outsized political and media influence subsequently gives them the means to spread their bigotry far and wide.
So isn't your second statement kind of supporting what I'm saying - that it's a far bigger problem in America than it is in other countries like the UK? Like in Kentucky they were offering
$40 million in tax breaks so that they could build a stupidly big replica of Noah's ark.
It's just mental.
You mean the First Amendment (of the Bill of Rights) which is a broad guarantee of various freedoms (including freedom of religion). Only subsequent to a 1947 Supreme Court decision (Everson v. Board of Education) has it come to stand for "a wall of separation between church and State".
Interestingly, the Second Amendment is no less contentious as it is the crux of the government paralysis with regards to gun control in the United States.
I think that political and social dynamics in America tend to swing between progressive or reactionary poles in multi decade arcs. The system may be self-correcting, yet it is rarely in equilibrium.
With Europe literally having been through the wars with regards to religion there may well be less tolerance for the kind of nonsense that passes for acceptable in the States. Regardless, people are people no matter the veneer of civility they may hide their prejudices and bigotry behind. When push comes to shove, riots and nastiness surface everywhere humans live including the UK and the rest of Europe.
I know not what life is, nor death.
Year in year out-all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind;
I stand in the moonlit dawn,
Free from clouds of attachment.