The Winkest Link

By Wink

Do you sometimes wonder about Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Is he the cruel ruthless dictator we have painted him to be? Probably.

Is he a puppet for the Muslim Clerics of Iran, notably Ayatollah Khameini? Well, he certainly has been.

But maybe now, after all this time, he is developing a little backbone. It appears he may be staging a bit of a boycott.

This is a brave-brave move in a country run by a single religion. If the religious leaders declare you ‘impure’ they can remove you from office even if you won a legitimate(1) election, or they can execute you, or they can stir up religious zealots to murder you (similar to what pro-life zealots do to abortion doctors in the U.S.).

People (notably Glenn Beck) feel the U.S. founding fathers based our country on Christianity. This is demonstrably false, but that is a discussion for another day.

We do tend to run all our political candidates through the grinder of ‘is he Christian enough?’

Every president has been a protestant, save for John Kennedy, the lone Catholic. All are ‘Christian.’

Even so, a theocracy is a terrible idea. It stinks in Iran, and it would only cripple America. Theocrats do not allow their ideas to be questioned.

You only grow, as a person, as a business, as a country, by asking questions…. by questioning authority. To ‘believe’ whoever is in charge is to forfeit the intellectual high ground, is to forsake any possibility of improvement.

To get a teeny-tiny sense of what a theocracy would be like, note how the Bush/Cheney White House treated those who questioned the Iraq war.

If you dared question the war you were not just ‘wrong,’ you were an anti-American who supported terrorism. Supported terrorism!

Frankly it doesn’t even matter whether the anti-war protesters were right or wrong. They had the right to protest (and no, they did not ‘support terrorism’).

Not only were the protesters NOT un-American, they were the ultimate example of what America is supposed to be about… freedom. Our freedoms mandate we question our government.

I am not a big fan of the teabaggers, but they have the right to protest. That is America.

Now Ahmadinejad begins to question the Imams. Maybe he has seen the light. A secular Iran is their only hope to grow. God help him.
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(1) I am not saying Ahmadinejad won a legitimate election. He clearly did not. I am saying an honest election, anywhere, would not prevent theocratic leaders from removing the elected.