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Social Conservatism As a Coercive Tool Of The State

Bruce Wilson : Fundamentalism, Stalinism, and Fascism Have Much In Common
April 29, 2007  |  
 
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James Veverka's writing transcends categories and typologies, and he runs his analysis back over a thousand years:

"Uncomfortable as it makes people to compare religion with dictatorships, the most dangerous dictatorships of the 20th century were also radically socially conservative in regards to family values and sexuality. Whether it was the Motherland, the Fatherland or the Christian Nation, the same rigid moral message of intolerance runs through them.

Like religious conservatives throughout history and indeed, in the present, they used the state as a coercive tool to force their version of a conscience upon the rest of people. While only one-third of people generally tend to be socially conservative, this does not make a difference to those possessed with the compulsion to force their morality upon all others for their own good. This is not to say fundamentalists and other religious extremists are Nazis or Stalinists, but that they hold very similar views on these 'family values' and sexuality subjects and employ similar language in their positions and propaganda. They represent similar dangers to free societies as they always have throughout all of western history.

Bruce Wilson writes for Talk To Action, a blog specializing in faith and politics.

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