Re: OT: Mormons (was Re: Survey)

Quoting Joe Fatula <fatula3@...>:

> From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@...>
> Subject: Re: Mormons (was Re: Survey)
>
>
> > Quoting Roger Mills <romilly@...>:
> > > You left out homophobic, though perhaps that's subsumed under
> > > "Republican"
> > > or "Taliban" (assuming there's a difference).
> >
> > I forgot that one. The main difference between the GOP and the Taliban
> is
> that
> > whereas the former are opposed, on religious grounds, to all and any
> protection
> > of the environment, the later have beards. There's also a difference
> in
> style;
> > Republicans repress women by forcing them to look sexy, the Tabliban
> repress
> > them by forbidding them to look sexy.
>
> I think I have to throw in my two cents here.  I'm not a Republican,
> nor
> will I ever be one.  But as much as I dislike the GOP, they aren't
> anywhere
> close to the Taliban.  The GOP doesn't go around shooting women in the
> streets for attempting to receive medical care, they don't cut off hands
> for
> stealing bread, and they don't torture people to death.  So while I
> can't
> stand some of the GOP's actions, I'd take them any day over the
> Taliban.
> The Taliban was one of the most cruel regimes around, and I'm glad to
> see
> that it's as dead as the Nazis whose work they continued.
I thought I'd made it clear that I wasn't reporting my own opinions, but
condensing, in extreme form, prejudices I've heard others express.

The similarlities between American Republicans and the Taliban have been pointed
out repeatedly in Swedish media the last year and a half, sometimes quite
seriously. I think it's a quite worthless comparison (other than for
entertainment value), but for the kind of Cultural Radicals to whom anyone who
is a religious believer and/or a social conservative* is an enemy, lumping the
GOP and the Taliban together with the Roman Catholic Church as enemies of
humanity makes a certain kind of logic. The former leader of Sweden's Left Party
said not too long ago that the difference between the repression of women in
Afghanistan under the Taliban and in Sweden was merely one of degree; I'm sure
she'd deny that there is any difference in kind in what goes on in America.

* It could, of course be argued that the Taliban were not conservatives but
reactionaries, but the point would be quite lost on the kind of people I'm
speaking about.

BTW, I'm sure both Nazis and the Taliban would take insult at the suggestion
that the later continued the former's work.

                                                   Andreas

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