Late Night Opinions and Rants

For whatever it's worth:

• The new right wing war is against contraception. Don't be surprised if you see efforts made to outlaw it or severely restrict it. I'm going to state this as clearly as possible: safe, effective contraception is a fundamental human right for ALL sexually active people. The right's war against it is part and parcel of its ancient, insane, inhuman war against the erotic, which it views as deviant, sinful, disgusting, and degrading. All rational and decent people need to fight against the new Junior Anti-Sex League (to borrow from Orwell) and preserve the right of people to make intimate decisions for themselves.
• By the way, "abstinence only" sex education is for imbeciles. When you compare the low teen pregnancy rates of Germany and the Netherlands, where sane sex education occurs, to the appalling rates in the U.S., where the right has fought sex education tooth and nail, you need look no further for evidence.
• Kevin Phillips pointed out something that I found remarkably insightful in his book American Theocracy: fundamentalist Christianity in America is rooted in the belief that the wrong side won the American Civil War. The southern churches that are the source of fundamentalism are the ones that broke away from their northern counterparts during the war and worked overtime after it to uphold the "Southern Tradition" and the view that the North was in the wrong. Southern fundamentalism is rooted deeply and profoundly in Confederate nostalgia. Again, speaking as clearly as possible: The North was right and the South was wrong in the Civil War. A Southern victory would have had two major outcomes: the destruction of the United States and the perpetuation of human slavery. Abraham Lincoln is America's greatest hero, and the utter crushing of the Confederacy was a magnificent thing. Period. Moderate and Liberal Christianity has to take a firm stand against fundamentalism's terrible roots.
• And speaking of all this, every single Confederate flag lover should take his flag, fold it five times, and put it where the Moon don't shine. TO HELL with the Confederate flag, now and forever.
• Is there any form of crime or sin that Bush's right wing fanatic supporters have not aided and abetted, from screwing the poor to endorsing (if only by inaction) the use of torture to raping the environment to bankrupting our children's future? That these people consider themselves "morally better" than moderates, liberals, and others is a sick joke. They base their estimation of their own moral worth chiefly on the fact that they loathe all genuine human sexuality, including their own. And these perverts claim they have the right to run everyone else's lives?
• The Right's war on evolution, climatology, and all other areas of science will eventually force the world scientific community to gravitate to India and China. Thus in addition to wrecking the financial status of the U.S., embroiling America in an ill-advised and disastrous foreign war, stirring up a new social war in the U.S., and fostering an astonishingly vile culture of corruption in business and Congress, the Republicans are going to succeed in destroying America's scientific preeminence as well.
• Any Democrat, progressive, liberal, alarmed moderate, appalled Independent, and fed up Republican that doesn't vote, work, and contribute money toward a Democratic victory this year is betraying his or her country's future. Don't be one of them.