fundimentalism is the new communism

When the berlin wall came down there was a famous book written that it marked the end of history. This was not refering to history as a string of events through time, post-modern accedemia isn't quite that arragant, but an end to the dialetic mechanism of history talked about by Hegel as the thesis (laisse-faire capitalism) and antithesis (communism) had collapsed to a synthasis (liberal democratic capitalism) without a new antithesis springing up to counter it. And to a greater or lesser degree his was correct, most of the worlds important economies are now market based but with some kind of social safety net and no new ecconomic model has really risen to challenge the orthodoxy.

While ecconomics might hae settled for the time being history, in the dialectic Hegelian sence, continues. New battlefronts have risen, not ecconomics this time but morality. Not the Clash of Civilizations between the west and Islam, but rather between libertarian secularism and religous fundimentalism, which has it's most visible manifestation in the radical Islam of Al Q'aida and the religous right in america. Both of these groups of zealots wish to use the code phrase 'family values' and brand the libertarians as 'anti-family'.

The 'family values' that the fundimentalists preach, literally, tend to be negative (anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-gay, anti-sex education) and not so much about reinforcing the family as about destroying the rights of people as free agents able to make up their own minds and take their own descissions, prefering simply following whatever religious dogmas they have been given. This is the force that stones women to death for being raped, or forces them back into burning homes for not wearing the 'modest' clothing required by dogma. This is the force that encorages the murder of doctors helping women in need, that discourages science that questions it's dogma prefering to peddle myths to children on the same basis as fact. It also chooses to ignore and distort fact, trying to seem the victim in order to get suport as it has nothing positive to contribute. Islamaphobia is one ofthe manifestations of it's demand for victim status, however it is not something that really exists but is merely a smoke screen that fundimentalism uses to try and cover it's murderous ways. It is a murderous, bigoted, force that wants to crush the world in order to 'save' it.