Separation of Church and State
Theocracies have worked wonders for Iran, Syria, Israel, Ireland. Let's follow their examples and create a stable, one religion country and live like they do. Well good news, that's where we're heading.
The first amendment of our U.S. Constitution, the one our forefathers thought so essential to list at the top of this country's document of governing freedom includes the freedom from religion. No religion in government. Now why is that? Well, at the time the document was written, people were persecuted for not being protestant. And the rules of being a protestant were governed by the church or heads of church. Heads of church were human. Humans are fallible so as ideas were changed/corrected, rules of religion changed. People wanted to get away from that, they wanted to stop a government from telling them what to believe at gunpoint, noose-point, guillotine-point. I believe in God, I just don't think He is American which brings me to my next point.
Separation of church and state serves another purpose today. Religious governments are emotional. When beliefs and our faiths are attacked, the natural human reaction is emotion, so we fight. If someone is trying to knock down the pride we feel in our beliefs, we have to silence them. When those beliefs become the official doctrine of a nation, it's no different. We defend those fallible beliefs with every resource we have and in the instance of a government, that means big boom weapons. The bad part of that is that we go to war for something men have defined on their own and amend with frequency. To what end does fighting for a religion serve? You fight for a way of life that changes faster than any outside influence could do on their own.
And it is this way because men rule this world, they always have because men are the aggressive gender of the species (BTW, this isn't an essay about sexism, all I ever talk about in all of my posts is human behavior). Men are in power because we are aggressive. We like war. We like conflict. We have to have an enemy. Just in America's history in the 19th century, we fought ourselves over some beliefs. In the early to mid 20th century, it was the evil axis powers. After that, the cold war; our own ally, the USSR was now our enemy. After the cold war, we thought, there's no one left. This meant finally peace at last! There were some remnants of "evil" communism left around the world but they didn't pose much threat (although one does today). So who's left to go to war with?
Don't worry. Take a breath. We found our enemy. It's God vs. Allah. We go to war with the Muslims. But they attack us you say? We're just defending ourselves you say? Do you know why they attack us? The first major event was what? Bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Do you know what their reason was for that? Because we started a fight with Muslims in 1990 in a little conflict known as the Gulf War. That's right, wars begets wars (by members of the same family in case you haven't noticed). The jihad was declared because us infidels went and liberated a Muslim country that geographically looks like it should be part of the Muslim country that invaded it. We started the fight. We were without an enemy after the cold war so of course we started it. You know where the term "it's none of your business" comes from. Yes, it was our business - big business and that brings me to my next point.
There is this long list of countries that fit Kuwait's checklist to be a nation under siege; a nation that could use our liberating help. North Korea, Sudan, China. Do we liberate them next? Nope, they don't have anything. No oil in particular. Sudan has coffee - we have plenty of that already. N. Korea, rice - no shortage there. China, we get their goods through trade. There's no need to act.
But fear not war mongering citizens! When the fight for the Middle East is over (and if we survive), we'll find someone to be the ultimate evil/menace to the world/unstable leader that needs to feel the brute that is the United States. Maybe it'll be us (again). We'll turn an inward eye to find someone. If the church could declare war on homosexual citizens, it would. Unfortunately, gay people haven't made it easy for us to find them by living just in the northern or southern regions of the country (the blue and the pink). They don't show themselves by living in a series of states threatening to secede from the nation, if they did, we'd nuke those states.
Take emotion out of government and there you will find peace. Leave people alone, let them live their lives how they want. Business can afford to lose a few trillion dollars in exchange for a human life.
