Wow, board's been jumpin!!
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I wasn't aware that corporal punishment was permitted anywhere, TaP, so that's an eye-opener. I'll venture a guess and conjecture that most of the states permitting it are in the south and in the bible belt? That we still allow capital punishment in this country isn't exactly a mark of pride, either - yes, a true Christian nation.
Bingo.
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It is so much easier to be a slave, isn't it? Lines are clearly drawn, you know what is safe for you to say or do . . . when you are directed in your actions and speech, you don't have to worry about mis-steps. You don't have to make decisions for yourself, and you don't have to take responsibility. You don't have to think for yourself, and you're told what to believe. You're isolated from those who don't think the way they're supposed to so that, in theory, you won't be contaminated by their dangerous ideas. You learn who to trust, who, who is dangerous to your belief-system. It is a very safe place. If you're brought up that way, I can't even imagine how terrifying it is to let go of those ideas and open your mind to the real world; for those of us who signed up for it, it's still pretty darn scary because we haven't had to think for awhile. That someone honestly believes that you have to make a choice as to what you will be enslaved to - I can't even get my brain around that idea.
I think it's that people can't imagine anyone else having a different reality/worldview/set of assumptions. Like the unhappily married person who declares that there are no happy marriages at all. Like my late aunt who, according to my father (not necessarily the most reliable source *ahem*), believed that female orgasm was a myth. Like my former coworker who had red-green color blindness and said he was certain that all men had it to some degree.
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No back-of-the-mind "thank you" to the mystic law.
:D "Thank you, gohonzon!!!" LOL!!
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You are poor and need help with meals. You gotta take whatever you can get.
You are poor and unexpectedly pregnant. You go to a nearby "Pregnancy Resources" office hoping to get a referral to a low-cost abortion. Instead, you find yourself bombarded with anti-abortion materials and attitudes. You didn't realize that the fundamentalist Christian "pro-life" crusaders would be so underhanded and dishonest as to label their crap so blandly so that the unsuspecting might wander in and find themselves caught in their nefarious web of pressure and guilt trip.
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*You or an elderly person you love is in a nursing home. The local cult church has ties to the place and sends in people to proslytize you and you cannot just get out and leave. Rick Ross got into the cult education field because he discovered his grandmother, in her nursing home was being hit on by cult proslytizers.
Some years back, a man discovered that his elderly grandfather, a card-carrying Democrat, who was comatose in a nursing home, was being visited come election time by Republicans of the ultraconservative Religious Right. They would hold a pen in his hand, make his mark for the Republican candidates (which Grandpa would *NEVER* have done), and laughed about "getting out the vote." I believe there are now laws against that, but this is the reason the laws had to be set up in the first place. Anyone who would prey upon the vulnerable, especially the helpless, is a predator just as any cult is.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2013 08:14AM by TaitenAndProud.