WHO WON THE ELECTION?!

[slapdash21]

i dunno if i would call anti-bush-ers the odd exceptions...kerry won a decent amount of the states (including my own, which is assumed, since he is the senator from MA), and there are also other people against bush but didnt vote for kerry. there was also a small minority of people who voted independent. i dunno how closely split down the middle between people for bush and people against him, or just that anti-bush people just talk louder, but sometimes it feels like im only hearing anti-bush sentiments.

[Jeremy]

I like to think that footbaggers are more intelligent than other groups of people...

[sPinko-Mania]

In Australia you can swear on the bible if you want to - or on any other religious figure - or you can just make a pledge to tell the truth. There is no mention of God on any Australian money as far as I know and there is no mention of God in our national anthem

Same thing happens here with the swearing thing I think, some MP swore on the Koran semi-recently for something. Same about our anthem though...

Ok I was exaggerating a bit - but it seems very untolerant to want your religous beliefs imposed on people that don't have the same beliefs - and I can't see it helping your religion - but rather making people resent it - just as I would hope they resent anything that takes away their freedoms. Clearly there is a cultural difference between Australia and the US - because it seems like the US public actually support people who take away their freedoms (in general - there are obviously the odd exceptions who disagree with Bush).

I understand what you're saying, that if a religious person wins office by majority s/he will then implement religiously derived policy on the minority of people who don't want it. That sucks, but it's true of any democracy, the fact that in this case it's policy that has religion as a basis for its normative aspect opposed to a non-religious basis makes it suck more (a personal opinion). But there will always be at best a minority, and at worst a majority of people who are having laws forced upon them in democracies.

I think I may be misinterpreting you a little in what you mean by 'forcing beliefs' on people, sort of hard to tell over the Internet sometimes.