Actually it was whose supposed earthly personification of the son of their mutual invisible sky friend who was also his own father and a ghost was the real one. The Catholic Pope, or the King of England(who had himself made the pope of the Church of England). And it's not like the Catholic Church hadn't been just as bad, and for much longer. Maybe the short term hype was a fight against religious oppression, but the long term goal was to simply exchange the new religious oppression with the old religious oppression where Guy Fawkes would be an oppressor instead of a victim.

+1 Mr Lint. The Catholic Church had been suppressing Protestants brutally, and continued to do so on the continent. Not that it makes it nice, but it is context.

And of course Guy Fawkes was a (baptised Anglican and) convert to Catholicism, following after his step-father.

well getting back on track. This act is rather bogus. its giving the government/military power to arrest citizens on US soil for military trial instead of trial by peers. (i know it says for those committing terrorist attacks) so all they have to do is provide some bogus information as proof and there you go. So think on it, they are slowly taking away rights to make you 'more secure'. By giving the government more power you have to give things up and its slowly getting to the point when the government will be telling you what to do and where to go but by that time it will be to late to fight back because the people will no longer have the ability.

yes, someone thinks that the executive doesn't have too much power even though Obama was the one who signed it into law. oh wait...

"When you kill one, it is a tragedy. When you kill 10,000,000, it is a statistic. They call me 'Killer!', but I live only to serve the People. And the People's history will judge me."

"Where the Romans failed, I will succeed. Russia's borders will stretch from coast to coast, for United Russia is our destiny. Those lands were taken away by corrupt tsarist Representatives and Senators who passed the bill, THEY were the enemies of the People!..."

Orwell and Huxley gave the otherwise ignorant and effectively clueless religious right a step by step methodology for subverting the system.

Thanks, guys. Self-fulfilling prophecy accomplished.

Umm... you've never actually read those books, have you Vox? Yes the right wing were the main leaders (though you could argue that the heavy Stalinist parallels in 1984 make it just as likely that the government was initally left wing, or even largely apolitical depending on how you read the revealations at the end, and the extreme Utlitarian government of Brave New World has a number of collectivist parallels), but religion was largely either transfered over towards the State, or removed entirely. So yes, they are taking some steps from those books, though if you want a literary parallel for what's going on now Neuromancer or Snow Crash and in a twisted way Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead would actually be just as or more appropriate, but for the most part this is an entirely self designed political malese drawing from several sources. And as I implied, the sniping towards the religious is uncalled for in that parallel.

I did not read past the disingenuous suggestion that I hadn't bothered to familiarize myself with the subject matter. Why did you even bother essaying your point past the schoolboy insult?

Because you missed the point of the narrative if you came away from those books seeing them as anti-religious screeds in whole or part. I've seen the exact same statements from people that haven't read the books, hence my 'schoolboy insult'. It's a valid criticism if you want to start bringing literary parallels into the question, especially since there are much better ones readily available.

I said that the christian right borrowed methodology, not that they were attempting to reenact the events of the novels. Your objection is specious and merits a good deal less of discussion than it's already received.

Found this while cruising around the web today if anyone is interested. It talks about this law.

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/12/n...the-perplexed/