The Taliban Can-Can

We've come to associate the word 'Taliban' with the worst sort of religious extremist (usually Muslim), particularly with the zanies who ran Afghanistan flat into the ground after the mujahedin wore down the Soviet armies and their Afghan catspaws. Taliban, by the way, means 'students.'

So what other 'students' are there in the world?

There are Jewish Taliban, for starters - people who claim that the land they stand on is a definitive Gift from God, which gives them the right to act like complete assholes if they choose. All in the name of the Eretz Yisrael. There is no room for compromise in their religious perspective; these people want the 'others' (Muslims and Arab Christians) out of Israel - or, if one recalls Rabbi Meir Kahane, exterminated.

There are Christian Taliban, most often seen here in America. These people have left behind the 'love thy neighbor' diktat and have embraced a kind of Death Religion - people who do not conform to their way of believing must be driven out or exterminated. Women are to be reduced to domestic servants and brood mares, children are to be taught absurdities in place of facts, and sexual inverts are to be "cured" or killed. The courts will be cowed, the legislature reduced to little more than saying 'amen' and the 'unitary executive' will be granted the powers of the Puissant Vicar of God on Earth.

In America, it is the Christian Taliban who are most to be feared, because these people have allies. Senators and the like with a major hard-on for the Oval Office kiss and court the Christian Taliban, because, like all true believers, they are submissive to their leaders and more than willing to lose their individual identities within the comforting mass of similarly confused, alienated and frustrated people.

The Founding Fathers of this country knew what happens when you weld religion and government together - you get a monster that destroys with impunity. And it sometimes costs a great deal in terms of lives to set things right.