Don't ya love all these Republican moral values demonstrating themselves?

"We won the election because we stand for moral values! Why we're so moral we're going to let Mr. Delay keep delaying and cancelling the really good things in America while that no-moral-value Texas DA persecutes Tommy's righteous stealing of American integrity."

And don't ya just love those moral-value believers who think keeping us safe from gay weddings is more important than the morality of war-deaths, collateral war losses and the deaths of Iraqi civilians, men, women and children?

I can hear Falwell and Robertson - the new Pharisees - right now ...

"We're pro-life! We're anti-abortion! We don't think that killing a pregnant Iraqi mother is the same pro-life issue as anti-abortion in this country. Besides, she's not Christian and God only cares about the unborn babies of Christian women!"

And with a majority in both Houses, can't you just hear those born-again Republican Fundamentalist's?

"We aim to exercise DOMINION over this planet just like God told Adam and Eve in the Garden. 'Have dominion over the earth,' God said. That means that we are to exploit the earth all the way to its death. Where lillies grow in fields, God wants us to clear out the flowers and drill for oil. Where there are fish in the water, God means for us to poison the water in the name of Holy Unfettered Capitalism and the fish can fend for themselves."

"We believe in consuming all things. God didn't want us to learn to fish, he just provided the fish for our consumption. God didn't want us to learn to farm, he just wants us to take and eat without replenishing. Replenish means more people, it doesn't mean tending the garden of Earth."

"You know why, Brother? Because the End Times are near. The state of the earth doesn't matter at all. Jesus is going to come and take us righteous out of the mess we've made. You can do what you want after we're gone!"

To those elected and claiming a mandate and to those who voted for them I say ... Support your War President now! Put your money and resources right up there with your moral voices. Say no more to me until you have signed every one of your children up for the military. No excuses!!!

With peaceful people not wanting to quarrel with neighbors or co-workers about faith. Until the day comes when moderates, liberals, and non-Christians realize they are afraid to make their real views known in public. Because the consequences will be too unpleasant.

This - to some degree - is the reason for speaking out as we are able against false religious justifications..

Whining about replacing so-called biased judges with other judges with another bias, is an attempt by a party and a Christian minority to have it both ways - an attempt to replace consitutionally-biased judges with religiously-biased judges who, presumably, will facilitate a "reform" of what's wrong with this country.

Unpleasant consequences for now are left in the area of emotions, a sense of offendedness and victimization and indignation fueled by cynical politicians and outraged vocal Christians who are defending those things most important to them.

If the politicians succeed in their dreams and want to remain in office they will have to continue to deliver to a religious political base that is not shy about having put them there and being willing to remove them if not satisfied.

The concern I have as that as the line between church and state disappears, the imposition stuff starts. If, perish the thought, the imposition stuff starts, then "unpleasant" as a definition of the consequences won't suffice.

The range of ethics/non-ethics and morality/immorality in this country is far too vast for a peaceful transition into a Christian Theocratic State.

If we slide into a theocracy, we will have replicated what we've already seen abroad in Serbia, Bosnia, The Middle East, Rwanda, Darfur and Northern Ireland.

We cannot kids ourselves that such could not happen here.

The reason for that is the simple fact that with the attempted execution of new theocractic laws and policies, those who desire and legislate proscribed freedom of worship and proscriptions against civil rights formerly allowed will be in the social minority in this country.

If the consequences of radical Christian lawmaking goes too far - and who's to say it wouldn't - things could move to a place where Christians would of necessity have to band together and live in communities where they are the majoriy. And we've seen that abroad also.

Justice Scalia is a powerful and earnest voice declaring that the government is the will of God and that capital punishment by the government acting as God's agent is God's will. Scalia is in harmony with his co-religionists who want to reform our constitution or replace it based on Old Testament Law.

Legislation and radical judicial decisions authorizing capital or extreme punishment for violating laws passed by a theocratic government inevitably leads to resistance and civil war.

I don't know that we would ever come to civil war over abortion or gay marriage. But a theocratic state doesn't stop with single issue reform.

Dominionists mean to use political process to assume a Christian domination of the government and do not try to hide that goal. But it is not the possibility of their future success that scares me.

What scares me is the potentially violent consequences of a response from the real American majority that is currently ignorant or apathetic so long as nobody passes a law that interferes in their lives or results in a loss of something they do not want to lose.

No worries, people ...

I basically agree that there are no worries based on your scenario which presumes a theoretical "hammer it out" convention where a socially religious majority holds the equivalent of a "constitutional convention" to define what a future government would look like.

What would be hard to assume would be such a convention's attitude toward the esxisting constitution, it's amendments, "it's Marbury vs. Madison" consequences and separation of church and state - if included - would look like.

However, what seems to have happened historically is that as a society is moved albeit gradually by a vocal minority in the direction of a more prominent religious/moral approach to government, a small but influential minorities have moved - at a critical moment - to usurp the movement toward change. They have in fact accomplished a "coup," if you will, where the gradual movement transforms into a gigantic and rapid great leap.

The "great leap" or "coup" remains an attempt or an experiment temporarily "legitimized" only so long as the control group remains in control.

This seems to be what has happened in all the countries who slipped into some form of theocratic government. Displacing them has not been the inevitable outcome in every case.

And in retrospect, viewing the "coup" of 2000 where an influential minority kept their objectives mostly secret, displacing the philosophical and political power behind the Bush administration proved to be more difficult in 2004 than expected.

That minority had as an agenda

(1) Turning U.S. foreign policy into open imperialism using our military blood as the prime weapon in our arsenal.

(2) The culmination of 60+ years of conservative opposition and effort to repeal the national legislation that came out of FDR's victory, Hoover's defeat which formalized the end of the Gilded Age.

(3) The destruction or disempowerment of labor unions and escalated evolution of market capitalism that with the repeal of all things "New Deal" that came out of the Great Depression, leaves all of us trapped within a social and economic Darwinism.

Conservative activism post-Goldwater accelarated in the 1980's when Limbaugh-like propaganda explode publicly and relentlessly coupled with courtship between the Republican Party and an aroused and agressive Christian coalation began with gradual movement toward acceptance of another "New Deal" regarding American social and political form. Is the attempt succeeding?

That movement - now much more powerfully public and in our national social awareness - was the context of the election of 2000. Had that campaign management's inner circle publicly proclaimed and campaigned by openly advocating the three items listed above, they would have lost the election in 2000. Americans have been sleeping but were not THAT asleep.

Bushco people (political and religious components) in the preceding 4 years RUSHED to make their desired changes as rapidly as possible - all the while finding many ways to hide and obscure those same 3 objectives.

2004 revealed that they had done their work well. We who opposed Bush electorally find ourselves still as the loyal opposition. We remain obligated to stand up and speak out. Only in our most naive state can we just sit back and content ourselves with theological debates around religion as a lifestyle separated from social consciousness.

2004 also finds us facing a political, social and economic philosophy that has revealed itself as more interested in private good than public good.

My worries are not about your pre-Armageddon scenario of theocratice takeover. As a social worker who administers public welfare, works with homeless, aged, under-educated, broken families and individuals, my worries are about where the above 3 objectives are leaving and have left the rest of America.

My worries are about apathy and what it takes to wake up slumbering majorities.

In this regard Liberal Christianity in the 21st Century, which began as an attempt to speak theologically to Bishop Spong's and others' criticisms of contemporary Christianity has become my and others' forum of speaking out about religion, politics and society.

As we should be doing ...