Fascism: The Roberts Supreme Court

In light of a few of the most recent Supreme Court decisions, namely the upholding of a ban on late-term abortions and the now only few days old ruling against affirmative action, it is clear that the highest court in the United States both cares nothing for precedent – an illusion many abortion rights advocates held on to for dear life – and cares nothing for either women’s or minority’s rights in general.

Many attempted to placate those worried by the appointment of radical conservatives to the Supreme Court – social conservative, Catholic extremists – with sweet talk about the respect Roberts and Alito allegedly had for precedent, a nefarious lie now laying exposed after only a few rulings.
Affirmative action has been a cornerstone of American judicial law for forty five years, and rightly so; there is a reason why Colin Powell, by no means a liberal, and the military wrote an amicas curia in support of affirmative action, without affirmative action we wouldn’t even know Colin Powell’s name.
The affirmative action ruling has served as daunting testament to the irrelevance of precedent in the views of the radical Catholic Judges. There is now no rational reason whatsoever to believe that the Judges will care anything for precedent when they review Roe v. Wade.

The latest vicious attacks on minority’s rights are but a prelude of what is to come in the later decades of the now, on balance, fascist court.

Secular Tribalism

The startling tendency of the unsophisticated atheist to conjure up illusory amalgam groups, totally homogenized and undifferentiated, in order to entirely separate the faithful from the skeptics and unbelievers - the latter being, by definition, good and the former being, by definition and regardless of the content of belief, evil – is fanatic secular tribalism, pure and simple.
The atheist who closes ones eyes in the face of the staggering diversity of religious groups and sects and instead simply pounds ones fists and shrieks aloud that all adherents of religion are raving lunatics and savage terrorists is practicing a from of infantile and narrow-minded thinking that most closely resembles religious extremism. Rather than putting forth the minor effort required to adequately discern the various distinctions which are to be found among immense groups, especially religious, the unsophisticated atheist instead conjures up and believes in a viciously dichotomized world.
In such a worldview there simply is no room for the modern and liberal Muslim who prays five times a day yet defends as strongly as any atheist the principle of free expression. It must be denied that there exist Christians who regularly attend Church services, may contemplate the possibility of an afterlife, yet who view the bible as the fallible product of human endeavor and even question the very divinity of Jesus. It is taken as a matter of course that there is no such thing as the observant Jew who questions even the very existence of a supernatural entity. Instead, every Muslim is understood to be violently hostile to modernity, free expression, women’s rights and so forth; never mind reality. Every Christian is understood to be a bible pounding, anti-gay, anti-science demagogue and every Jew is seen as a torah waving, devout and viciously tribal religious maniac.
There is a startling, even hateful, Stalinist character to this sort of puerile, demagogic tendency. In fact, it is also strikingly biblical, either you are in “our” tribe or you are in the “evil” tribe and “our” tribe – by virtue of being the “chosen” tribe in possession of the infallible “truth” – may do as it so pleases to the so deemed “evil” tribes.
This tendency of secular tribalism must be exposed and combated wherever it is to be found, it is an actual danger.

Reaction to Rushdie's knighthood is beneath contempt

That Salman Rushdie’s “knighthood” should evoke from Islamic extremists violent reaction and “offense” is itself offensive. Free-speech is a principle upon which I shall not waver. If Islamic extremists, religious lunatics and fanatics, feel that the mere writing of a book – which the most extreme and reactionary Islamists have not read and most likely could not – justifies calls for murder and suicide bombing, I have to say that their violent opinion is beneath contempt. Their extreme, bigoted and violent views simply serve no practical role in either the judging of the literary worth of works of fiction or the rewarding of those who produce exemplary literature, such as Salman Rushdie.
It is the decision of the British who they knight - for reasons which they so choose, in this case, very good reasons indeed - and the reaction of crazed Mullahs in Tehran and in Pakistan are simply irrelevant and beneath contempt. Freedom of speech simply cannot be denigrated on account of violent religious hysteria.
As for the so-called “moderates” and “liberals” who advocate the taking of said violent views as justly put and further, worst of all, sympathize with the small factions of Islamic extremists who claim “offense” and who advocate murder, suicide bombing and violence in general, I wonder if they realize that by so doing they are legitimizing as the true voice of Muslims world over the violent extremist fringe which, in reality, a majority of Muslims reject as blasphemers and apostate lunatics. They are, in effect, legitimizing as representative of all Muslims the very extremists who put to death moderate and liberal Muslims, shame on them.