Be careful of what you wish for

[ShadowHM]

I have nothing but contempt for the fundamentalists: be they Muslim or Christian.  Their path is the path of the Borgia popes and the slave markets of Algiers.

I disagree. Your contempt reveals some unwarranted assumptions about how 'progressive' you seem to think we are.

Last I checked, the E.R.A. doesn't apply to women in the good old U.S. of A.

Women only became 'persons' in Canada in 1927.

We don't have to go back to "medieval darkness' to find some truly horrible examples on our own continent and in our own countries.

Secular Muslims, who are more numerous than you seem to think, do not view their women as property. The attraction of the fundamentalists, in many cases, is a reaction to what they see as imperialism from the West. You know.....that old pendulum thing that causes reactions to go overboard.

And I am starting to feel that our own blindness to the perils of democracy and our knee-jerk assumptions about how well it works are also unwarranted. Remember Pete's signature? "Democracy - a system where opinons are counted and not weighed." *

There may well be other systems of government that can and will work equally effectively, and still contain something like a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Imposing a change from outside doesn't endear the change or the system to the hearts of those imposed on.

* My apologies to Pete if I mis-quoted.......I am sure the gist of it is right, if not the actual words.