JUAN COLE -- READ HIM

Juan Cole, Professor if Middle East History at the University of Michigan, and writer of the excellent Middle East blog Informed Comment, clealry illustrates our slide into theocracy:

The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan. These tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate decisions matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and the legislature to bear on them. President George W. Bush and Republican congressional leaders like Tom Delay have taken us one step closer to theocracy on the Muslim Brotherhood model.

The whole thing is worth a read, and it is not that long, but I will leave you with his conclusion.

Republican Hisba will have the same effect in the United States that it does in the Middle East. It will reduce the rights of the individual in favor of the rights of religious and political elites to control individuals. Ayatollah Delay isn't different from his counterparts in Iran.

Whatever happened to the good old days when conservatives opposed government interference in people's personal lives?