Either you go to jail, get gassed, die, or you are humiliated. The last seems to happen to this particular artist. What's the problem?

This artist will probably pay a more subtle price. Whenever you are a creator and make a particularly doctrinaire work, you get associated with those causes. If you ever change your view - like see something in the cause and its supporters you don't like - you get hung as a traitor. And if you change your mind again...you become a dilettante.

About a decade ago, a news story compared Jane Fonda and Joan Baez. Baez has maintained a consistent politics throughout her life, since they grew from her experience and her genuine beliefs. Although I disagreed with her, I could respect her as a person following her beliefs. Not so Jane Fonda, whose dalliance with the Viet Cong - and then with women's health, and then Ted Turner, and whoever she's doing now - showed her to be pretty much a fake and a flake. If extraterrestrials were to land and start enslaving people, Fonda would wind up their spokesperson.

That being said, I find it curious that a freeper like Old Desalinization Dog, or whatever his name is, should come to this thread and bitch at anyone who would complain about Bush. When Bush leaves office and drinks and drugs himself to death, since he will by then have nothing to destroy but himself, I wonder how the Dog will react. Maybe he'll OD on Jack Daniels in sympathy.

Whether Hitler was a "real christian," or an atheist, or a twisted secular "humanist," is irrelevant.

The relevant fact is that he set up a cult of his own, a cult of personality, the central tenet of which was unquestioning loyalty to "the party," AKA, the cult, AKA, the embodiment of the cult, Adolf Hitler.

Calling Hitler secular just because he wasn't Christian is every bit as nonsensical as calling David Koresh secular, because he wasn't part of any recognized religion. Hitler was a God-figure. He WAS the religion, along with the NAZI party itself.

He even had his own bible, Mein Kampf. Every good German was expected to have a copy, and expected to have read it.

Mao and Stalin similarly used blind adherence to dogma, and unquestioning belief in authority, to elevate themselves to Godhood, to become not only the political, but the spiritual heads of China and Russia.

Secularism is the opposite of blind adherence to dogma. Example:

"Secularism does not say there is no light or guidance elsewhere, but maintains that there is light and guidance in secular truth, whose conditions and sanctions exist independently, and act forever. Secular knowledge is manifestly that kind of knowledge which is founded in this life, which relates to the conduct of this life, conduces to the welfare of this life, and is capable of being tested by the experience of this life."

Secularism is associated with truth and fact-based reasoning, with reasoning based on observation, and scientific study. Secularism rejects faith. That's the essential difference between a secularist, and a religionist.

Put another way, just because a non-Christian such as Hitler killed a bunch of people, it doesn't make him a secular mass murderer. He was just another kind of religious nut.

Yet another reason for me to be proud of my homestate.

Can we seceed yet?

I love that McDermott recommended Deborah Lawrence. I love that Lawrence made the ornament, attended the luncheon, and was wonderfully snarky about the whole thing. You got a major eye roll from me by being shocked they didn't put the ornament on the tree. This isn't a freedom of speech issue. It's a Christmas ornament on a Christmas tree at the White House. Of COURSE they weren't going to use it. I can't believe Lawrence actually expected them to use it.

But she'd be nuts if she didn't license it. Take the money and make more art or take the money and donate it to homeless charities, but take the money. I'll happily send you some.

Lastly, if you all really want to get under the skin of the resident righty naysayer, jwnelsonUSA, IGNORE him. Every time someone replies, you're putting a smile on his face. He's the type of troll that does it for the lulz. Ignoring him is the sweetest revenge.

I begin to understand more and more why I feel there is not TWO sides, right and left, but only ONE effective side-- to EVERYONE'S utter loss.

You are not ashamed to type what you just typed above? God, what pusses.

If one is to be considered RESPECTABLE or an ADULT, one needs to stand up and have the NUTS to challenge tyranny.

Obviously, the feminist flooded pussified masses that think they are oh so pure have no clue about ANYTHING.

No wonder bush got reselected. They damn well KNOW there are no real MALES on the left, hence no opposition.

I long ago gave up on this country emotionally. Now I need to go find a nation where real guys still exist, real people who still believe in something other than knuckling under.

you remind me why I cannot stand my former friends who were all liberals. PEH! the shit makes me SICK.

You're not saying anything new - just a variation on an "ends justify the means" argument that dates back to Machiavelli, at least. The problem with that thinking is that at the end of the day it's indistinguishable from "might makes right". Is that really the kind of world you want to live in? I'm pretty sure that there are people out there who are a lot mightier than you who hold opinions you revile, and would be happy to smack you down and shove those opinions up your ass. Obnoxious pricks like you rarely end up being the ones at the top, when it's all said and done. But I suppose you'll be happy to be someone's lapdog, when the anonymity of the internet gives way to the reality of real life.