this is the absolute truth and it's really good to see it stated plainly. Lets hope progress is faster in this case than has been the case with race.

thank you for that article, I hope it is widely read from Arkansas to Iran.

As would Hungary, the Soviet Union, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, North Korea, mainland China and Kampuchea.

try seeking high elected office in America as a professed atheist who believes in secular reason based morality. There is exactly one in the House(?) of Representatives.

America is so much closer to sliding into Iran's form of majoritarian religious tyranny than it likes to admit.

Michael Lind's excellent foray into the long-neglected fundamentals of liberal society leads the reader right up to the trough, but doesn't quite get to the drinking.

Our own country has been slowly, incrementally converted into a not-so-separated church and state for about a hundred years, ever since a group of late Victorian-era evangelical Christians decided that our national civic life was not religious enough, and started stamping sacred mottos into everything.

They feared, in dark and unintentional irony, that Americans would leave no artifacts to history that would show that they had been a Christian people. So they replaced "e pluribus unum" with "In God we trust."

The former was presumably too open-ended — "many" could include anyone, even non-Christians, and surely the Founders hadn't intended that, had they?

Just to be safe they also gave us "America the Beautiful" around the same time, with its clearly-voiced Christian exceptionalism, and teetotalling (which eventually became Prohibition) and the Racial Exclusion Acts too.

Eventually the pledge of allegiance fell, with (more unintended irony) the line about indivisibility split apart to fit "under God."

Doesn't

...and to the Republic for which it stands,

one nation indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

flow like it has a purpose? But no, no less a patriotic American than Eugene McCarthy stepped in and personally ensured that we would never forget that nothing is more American than to be divided along religious lines.

Now, after a half century of quiet impasse, we have seen a lurching resurgence of Christianism in the form of government-subsidized "faith-based initiatives."

Maybe Michael Lind doesn't want to draw unwanted attention to the Democratic leaders who have enabled, or even gleefully joined, this revived assault on the very principles about which he writes so eloquently.

But those Democrats bear their share of responsibility for the slow erosion of our own secular republic. And it's likely that if they don'act to reverse the trend, no one will.

Do it at every stadium in the country. That would be much more fun that baseball ever was.

Unreasonable religious fanatics can only truly be dealt with by hungry lions.

Statement: "There can be no ocean without water."

GLR's response: "The Great Salt Lake would like a word with you. As would the Mississippi River, the city's sewer system, my bathtub, and the mud puddle at the end of my street."

To condemning fanaticism. Try wrapping your minds around that.

"Secular government is the basis of both liberty and democracy. It is important to emphasize this, because of the tendency to portray the struggle in Iran in terms of a global conflict between democracy and dictatorship."

Absolutely correct. I'm shocked at the professed freedom-loving liberals who adore tyrants and dictators and think freedom is just for those of us in the West.

The women living under the oppresive burden of Theorcracies want nothing more than freedom: freedom from religious tyranny and misogyny. Their voices beg to be heard. Stop tolerating oppression in the name of multi-culturalism.

Be they in afghanistan, iran or the governor's offices of minnesota & alaska.

I don't need to be ruled by fanatics of any stripe, either fundamentalists or technocrats using 'facts' to justify their cruelty. And democracy itself can be horrible when the public are heartless and ignorant rubes.

The article looks suspiciously like part for commercial media's push to drive a wedge between liberal christians and secularists. I thought they had hired Sam Harris for that. He must not be doing the job, so they're subcontracting out the work.

Is it "cultural imperialism" to insist that natural rights be the basis of limited and secular government?

No, it is not. However, it is cultural imperialism to insist that limited and secular government be the sole public authority that the people are allowed to choose to protect their natural rights.

Well you have guts Michael. Keep writing this kind of stuff and you will end up in sorry shape. These Islamo's are NOT peaceful Christian's and Jews...they do not like it when people knock their faith and some are very, VERY violent. Their goverments are directly tied to their faith!

You are a far braver man than I. Even still if you continue to write such things perhaps you should consider carrying a pistol? Just a thought...

Let's see, this is another fellow that dared to criticize:

"AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — A filmmaker who was the great-grandnephew of the painter Vincent van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street Tuesday after receiving death threats over a movie he made criticizing the treatment of women under Islam."

For what it's worth, I agree with the substance of a lot of what Lind is saying here. Theocracy scares the hell out of me and I try to do my part to fight it. But despite all this, Lind's article is just terrible.

If Lind had bothered to listen to what the actual protesters in Iran are actually saying, he would have noticed that Fighting Theocracy in the Name of Secularism is hardly how they themselves see what they're doing. The protest movement contains many secularists, but that is by no means all of them, and it's certainly not the message they're trying to send.

Which means that Lind is hijacking this moment, and misusing and appropriating a protest movement whose people are literally dying in the streets, to flog his own, only sort-of-related point. To project your fantasies and ideologies onto people who are risking their lives and wouldn't actually agree with what you're saying, to use this moment to launch an extremely generic Secularist rant rather than letting that rant stand on its own merits, is obscene. Shame on you!