Yes, time and again, I can't help but congratulate China and USSR for freeing their people from the shackles of religion: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article33209.html Regrettably, few people are brave enough to embrace science and rationality over superstition.
it's simple, just tell people you will put them in jail if they practice their religion. As a matter of fact with that approach, you can free anybody from anything you want. That's how we free people from drugs.
Killing them also works, but it is a more expensive way to set a person free. We used that method in Iraq where we brought freedom to a few hundred thousand at a rough cost of 7 million each, so jailing them is more cost effective. We should have just put the whole country in jail.
if you're on the right side, imprisonment can actually be quite profitable. It is the number one industry in Terra Haute, IN. but to get back to opie's post, a lot of Amercans need to be set free from their constant complaining about the government. That doesn't seem to be a problem for the Chinese, at least not publicly.
Chinese government doesnt give a shit about religion, you can practice whatever you want. But they do care and will crack down on people who use religion as a pretense to organize and cause riots or commit crimes.
"The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord." Edward Gibbon.
It is a lovely industry for the crony capitalist. One of your employees gets to testify before the parole board, so you can hang on to your "clients" pretty much as long as you like. No client walks until you say they can walk. You have no vacancies in your line of work and that keeps your cost per prisoner well below the "horribly inefficient" public prisons. And your lobbyists work hard to keep the public safe from hardened criminals by lobbying for mandatory sentencing and popularizing Joe Politician's "tough on crime" stance. The studies you fund all show it can't be concluded that prison corporation lobbying has affected sentencing. Apparently folks are just much more criminally inclined nowadays, since prison populations have increased 400% since the advent of for profit prisons. Its just another innovation recommended by the Chamber of Commerce to make all of our lives safer and better. Imprisonment is one area where we are way more advanced than the Chinese. And it looks like this is an area where we are not only keeping our edge but actually increasing it. I don't hear any complaints, do you? Congratulations to America's Prison Corporation Crony Capitalists.
check out the PBS documentary "Slavery by Another Name", it just baffles me how some otherwise intelligent people, some who are quite knowledgeable about the market and economics, just dismiss out of hand the legalization of drugs, even pot. Until that changes, the prison poulation will be the only thing in this country that is growing and thriving, we even beat China. There's a lot of money in crime.
Totalitarianism prohibits questioning or challenging its authority; religion prohibits questioning or challenging the authority of god; as the ultimate authority comes from god in any religion, totalitarianism and religion are one and the same thing.