Katherine Harris, unifier...

I got a real kick out of this article by Leonard Pitts, Jr. on Chron.com. Here are a couple of excerpts.

Harris has brought this nation together, done a more effective job of uniting people than any prayer breakfast, sensitivity class or Benetton ad I've ever seen. Thanks to her, Christians and Jews, Muslims and atheists, Republicans and Democrats, are now standing as one and saying, "That Katherine Harris, what a moron."

Really warms the heart.

Harris, GOP senatorial candidate from Florida, produced this united front by doing an interview with the weekly newspaper of the Florida Baptist State Convention. In it, she pronounced the separation of church and state a "lie" and warned that if Christians don't stand for election, we will end up "a nation of secular laws." The coup de grace was this bon mot: " ... If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin."

And later on...

The forces of Christian fundamentalism have made terrific inroads in the Republican mainstream over the last quarter century. Some would argue they are the Republican mainstream. At the very least, they hold a position in the party roughly analogous to that held by blacks in the Democratic Party. Namely, they are a core constituency that sometimes demands, as a price of its loyalty, that the party adopt positions that are politically risky.

Where blacks are concerned, that usually means affirmative action. Where the GOP's putative Christians are concerned, it means theocracy, it means Vote God, it means just what Harris said: a nation where only Christians can be elected and where the Bible supersedes all federal, state and municipal codes. Just like Iran, except with crosses instead of crescents.

This last bit about Iran resonates with me. One of the most frequently heard complaints about the West and the US in particular is that our culture is smothering the Islamic culture of middle-east countries. But the irony is that the danger to America and its values, i.e., our culture, is really that the right-wing wants to make it more like Iran. A theocracy where, as the above notes, the Bible trumps the Constitution.