on blind, backward, deist fucks.

so i'm sitting here reading this salon article about the religious right and all their fun stuff, and it's gotten me to thinking about one of my earliest 'favourite' web sites, operated by one libertarian nerdalike type called mr. lizard who is apparently categorized as a "Militant / Extremist" according to the filter on my internet here at work.

in any case, he holds some particularly radical views, one of my favourite being that the American constitutional right to bear arms exists so that the populace has the means for revolution in any situation where the government has stepped over the line. that little gem in itself was enough for my views on gun control to swing way the fuck to the right. and besides, i think that anyone lefty-minded who's against restrictions on drugs, abortion, or any of those "look what happens when it's illegal" type issues should think hard about gun control. personally, i'd rather have guns being sold in shops than in back alleys. america's problem with gun violence isn't because they have easy access to guns, and canada's lack of a problem isn't because we don't. it's because the entire american culture is bowed at the altar of the easy fix. and what fix is easier than a firearm? no more debate, no more discussion, no more pesky bleeding-heart fucker, cos he's dead on the pavement. whether it's assault weapons, xanax, diet pills, or fanaticism, american culture is constantly looking for the way out that requires the least effort, responsibility, or critical thought.

and reading the distinctly liberal slantings of salon.com's republican quotes got me to thinking about that defunct beast of a parchment scrap, the US constitution. basically the republicans are trying to rein in what they see as an 'out-of-control' judicial branch of the government. and, as salon's incisive commentators have noted, what they really mean is out of their control.

and that's why they object. they're pissed because they can't get the judicial wing to be blind and stupid like they are, and get its ass into gear legislating private morality. so in a classic example of a total non sequitur, they're painting this reluctance to play mommy as an 'assault on the constitution.'

but that's the point of a constitution. a constitutional democracy isn't better than a plain-jane democracy because it gives the masses more lawmaking power, it's better because it gives them less. democracy in its purest, sickest form, is nothing more than unrestrained mob rule. and it's reared its ugly head throughout the history of democracy. in canada and the us during world war two, the masses decided that it'd be a good idea to round up all those pesky asians and stick'em in camps, cos it meant that they'd be a bit safer. in argentina, the masses decided that peron was somehow desirable, and essentially chose for themselves an authoritarian regime. in islamic states, the masses think it's good for adulterous women to have big friggin rocks hucked at them.

do we want any of those things? would our countries be decent places to live if they were the rule rather than the exception? no!

thus, the founding fathers of the grand u.s. of a, and those involved in the creations of constitutions for all the various democratic states that have them, created those documents with the goal of limiting the power of the masses to make laws. because they understood human idiocy. they understood that for some people, regulating their own personal morality isn't enough, and they have to stick their bulbous, cocky little noses into everyone else's business as well. and they created a set of restrictions on what exactly people could make laws about. they couldn't make them restricting what people could say, they couldn't make them restricting peoples' rights to fair judicial process, they couldn't make them restricting a hell of a lot of things.

but dammit, this growing community of blind, backward, deist fucks has decided that those restrictions are getting in the way of the nation they want to build! it's like they want to invade Iran not because of any moral objection, but because they're damn well jealous. these people believe that homosexuality should be punishable by death, along with adultery, and the practice of abortion. (irony? no.) they honestly think that amurrica would be better off as a friggin caliphate and that the president should take his directives from jaysus himself, not any bleeding-heart fucks who believe in some heathen 'liberty.'

am i the only person who thinks it's kind of ironic that there's never been two enemies with more inflammatory rhetoric than fundamentalist christians and fundamentalist muslims, yet there's almost no perceptible difference between the ideology of the two groups? the only thing keeping those focus on the family types from blowing shit up is the fact that they basically run the current government. i swear, they get that power taken away, and it'll be focus on the christian holy war featuring jerry bin falwell and james al-dobson.