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This particular rant has been modified to fit the space it exists in, Portions may not be suitable for viewing by Non consenting Adults..Parental Guidance is recommended, and encouraged...Faith Based Politics, Oxymoron? No The religious right has a crusade , and we all unknowingly have joined, and like sheep lead to the slaughter , have bitten in hook line and sinker..Or so The Republicans , and the religious sect have us all believing... "The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and blind obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason. The Renaissance was specifically the rebirth of reason, the liberation of man's mind, the triumph of rationality over mysticism a faltering, incomplete, but impassioned triumph that led to the birth of science, of individualism, of freedom." For years the separation of church and state has been under attack by the Religious Right, which has called for bans on pornography, oral sex between consenting adults, and abortions--in opposition to the right to free speech, the right to liberty, and a woman's right to her body. Such attempts to legislate religion have not had much success--until now. Witness the Bush-led crusade to destroy a crucial scientific field: human cloning--including "therapeutic cloning" research, which many scientists believe has the potential to save millions of lives. Therapeutic cloning does not violate anyone's rights--its only "victims" are 150-cell embryos--but Bush seeks to prohibit it because it violates his Christian beliefs in the moral sanctity of embryos and the moral evil of man "playing God." If Bush succeeds in banning cloning, he will not only have committed a massive violation of the rights of the creators and potential beneficiaries of this technology--he will have established that in the Land of the Free, science may function only by permission of religion, our President is mounting an unprecedented attack on secular government--at a time when America is under attack by religious terrorists supported by religious regimes--is morally obscene. Those of us who value liberty must righteously repudiate Bush's faith-based initiative, and rebuild the wall between church and state. The First Amendment established what Thomas Jefferson termed a "wall of separation" between Church and State--a deliberate break with the then-standard European practice of establishing an official church by governmental edict and supporting it by taxes. The purpose of Church & State separation was to protect the right to disagree in matters of religion: to ensure that the power of the government would never be used to force a person to profess or support a religious idea he does not agree with. Government officials may make whatever religious pronouncements they wish, on their own--but they may not use the power of the government to promote their ideas. On religion or any other topic, an individual's ideas are the matter of his own mind, decided by the application (or misapplication) of his own rational faculty. To force a man to adhere to a particular doctrine is to subvert the very faculty that makes real agreement possible and meaningful, and thereby to paralyze his mechanism for recognizing truth. Conservatives, who properly argue against public support for secular ideas, endorse the use of publicly funded institutions to promote religious ideas. Liberals, who properly object to religious displays on public property, advocate public funding for their pet ideas. It's politics without mirrors: each group feels free to attack its opponents for violating rights, as long as they don't have to notice that they are committing the exact same crime. This so-called "Culture War" truly is a war: a war against the individual mind. It is a particularly dirty kind of war, with both sides of the political spectrum vying for the right to enslave the minds of legally disarmed victims, and to do it by means of money expropriated from the victims themselves . The only way to end this war is to re-assert the First Amendment, with its guarantee of intellectual freedom--and the only way to do that, is to get the government out of the business of supporting ideas. President Bush needs to be re-elected, Republicans need to gain enough seats in the U.S. Senate to stop Democratic filibusters of Bush's extreme judicial nominations, and 2-4 justices need to retire from the U.S. Supreme Court. Then the president, with consent from a Republican-controlled Senate, could give the country a Scalia Supreme Court. At that point it's possible that the Religious Right could control all three branches of the United States government. As for the present, Senate Republicans are unable to rally the sixty votes required to end filibusters, many recent court decisions have upheld the principle of separation of church and state, and Democracy still has a fighting chance. Christianization of the Republican Party, an article from the The Christian Statesman, claims, "Once dismissed as a small regional movement, Christian conservatives have become a staple of politics nearly everywhere. Christian conservatives now hold a majority of seats in 36% of all Republican Party state committees (or 18 of 50 states), plus large minorities in 81% of the rest, double their strength from a decade before. "The Christian Statesman" is a publication of the National Reform Association. Who is the National Reform Association?

"The mission of the National Reform Association is to maintain and promote in our national life the Christian principles of civil government, which include, but are not limited to, the following:

"Jesus Christ is Lord in all aspects of life, including civil government.

"Jesus Christ is, therefore, the Ruler of Nations, and should be explicitly confessed as such in any constitutional documents. The civil ruler is to be a servant of God, he derives his authority from God and he is duty-bound to govern according to the expressed will of God.

"The civil government of our nation, its laws, institutions, and practices must therefore be conformed to the principles of Biblical law as revealed in the Old and New Testaments."

How did this happen? "With the apathy that exists today, a small, well-organized minority can influence the selection of candidates to an astonishing degree." "If just 10% of all Christians in America today woke up and realized how easy it is, got involved consistently for the long haul, it would not take long to reform America completely.""Believe it or not, it could be done within ten years. Every godly representative in the state legislatures and the Congress could ... Work with a godly president. New judicial appointments would begin radically changing ... The courts ... One thing of great importance is for you to fulfill your Biblical duty to choose a godly representative by getting involved in local party politics for the rest of your life." If this does not scare you it should , frankly it scares the hell out of me , rebirth of the dark ages in the age of technology and freedom we are submitting to be enslaved, and ruled by religion on a fanatical level not before possible , yet here we are! Decide for yourself.... And please Vote ...