October 4, 2010 by lonbud

Meanwhile, Back in Tennessee

A couple of recent Tennessee stories illustrate the kind of world we can expect to live in should the Tea Party and its more religiously active component of ‘thinkers’ ever gain any real political purchase in this country.

Burning Down the House

Lord knows the whole concept of police, fire and emergency services is rooted in some kind of communistic utopian thinking, right?  Wasn’t it Marx and Engels who came up with the idea of a municipally-funded organization of hale and hearty folk who could respond to emergency conflagrations and help save lives and property from needless loss?  I mean, what’s more natural than private entrepreneurs turning that model into a profit-making enterprise?

In the future we’ll pity the fool who doesn’t keep his fire prevention subscription up to date.

UPDATE: None other than Glenn Beck, Conservative America’s It Girl, has weighed in on the subject and laments, “This is the kind of stuff that’s going to have to happen, we are going to have to have these kinds of things.”

You bet’cha.

Islam: Is it a religion? A cult? A political movement?

Best not bother the good, god-fearing Christians of Rutherford County, TN with the niceties of the First Amendment to the US Constitution when it comes to followers of Mohammed who might like to build a house of worship in their fair precinct.  

Where fear-based jawboning and threats of arson have fallen on deaf ears, resourceful opponents of a proposed mosque in Murfreesboro turned to the courts to ask for an injunction preventing construction of the mosque — on the theory that Islam (the world’s second-largest faith, with 1.6 billion adherents) is not a religion but is rather a seditious political movement bent on imposing “Sharia Law” on the United States.

Really.  Sometimes I feel maybe the people back in my home state would do well to stick with music and moonshine.