I just got done watching the YouTube video of the bikers pushing back the anti-Christian Westboro Baptist group. It was an example of the worst of two worlds: a religious state and a police state.
The religious state is obvious. Zealots who often head the religious factions are irrational and power-hungry. They feed upon the undereducated and the fearful. Unfortunately, for this country, the majority of people are undereducated and fearful. How else can one explain how people constantly vote against their best interests in favor of extremely wealthy people who mean this country harm? When religious zealots have undue influence on politics, the results are almost exclusively irrational, irresponsible, brutal, and nondemocratic. The Westboro crowd is an example of the wild irrationality that religious zealots demonstrate. I do not know these people, but I have been raised in a religious home that stressed rationality. These people are working from a basis that is not religious based. There is something else going on here. I fear that this is the case with the evangelicals in this country. There is something else going on. I suspect that the hugh amounts of money is the motivating force for their actions. This, of course, is anti-Christian. If the evangelicals, like the Westboro crowd, like the Spanish Inquisition, like the Crusades, like the innumerable other examples, take power over a society, the results are tragic.
I fear the police state as much as the religious state. What the bikers did was admirable to many people because the residents of Joplin are hurting, fearful, anxious, and depressed. The Westboro crowd, having no sense of humanity and have proved this time and time again, was in the process of performing a repugnant act. They were on a par with the actions of the NRA in Denver right after the Columbine shooting. The police protected the one guy who got through so that he was not attacked by the Patriot Guard Riders and got him out of town safely. Evidently, truckers outside of town blocked a bunch of the Westboro crowd.
So, what happens if actions are taken against protests of, say, the war in Afghanistan? Suppose people are upset with these views and attack the protestors. That certainly has happened in the past with the Vietnam war and the Iraq war. Suppose a protest against the G8 in Spain erupted in violence against the protestors by the police because the views are considered too radical. It happened. Suppose a protest against the WTO in Seattle erupts into violence against the protestors by the police or by bystanders. What is the difference between these and the Westboro group?
I don't see any, outside of my difference with the views of the Westboro group and my support for the protestors in the previous paragraph. We just celebrated Memorial Day, a day in which our soldiers died for the ideals that define this country. It is striking that this happened on Memorial Day. The bikers exercised their First Amendment rights, but if harm had come to that protestor, a crime against the ideals of this country would have been committed. When Bush was in power, the ideals of this country were under attack. People wearing tee-shirts expressing opposite views of the President were arrested. Reporters covering stories of protestors who were arrested at the St. Paul republican Convention were also arrested. A police state existed in Minnesota during this time.
If we are to truly honor the soldiers who fought and died for us, then we stop the rising tide of a religious state and of a police state.