Posted: Mar 15, 2012 12:38 pm
trubble76 wrote:I don't have any entertaining images for "militant secularism" because it is a nonsense.
I think some believers imagine a squad of Dawkins clones kicking down doors and viciously stripping houses of tasteless religious tat.
Some of them really don't understand the difference between 'secular' and 'anti-religious'.
I don't think it's all simply down to people defending past privilege - some people do seem to get an excessive quiver of validation out of imagining enemies, since they only really value things that they can see other people lacking, and ideally plotting to take away from them.
For some people, having a few 'travelling folk' living in the field down the road is not just something that makes them a bit more cautious about home security, but actually makes them appreciate what they have far more than they would have done otherwise.
For some people, the paranoid idea in the Cold War that there were hordes of salivating commies just waiting to parachute in and rape their wife and daughters would have been not simply unpleasant, but somehow thrilling, making their wife seem much more alluring.
I think everyone will have a little bit of that about them - a real threat can help people stop taking things for granted.
The problem is when it gets pathological, and people end up reading the Daily Mail, and taking it seriously.