Definitely, there is nothing wrong with a faith-based life. It's when it crosses the line into being used as a bludgeon to justify taking away the rights of your fellow human beings that it basically transforms into something else entirely.

Religion seeks out power, perhaps as a means for the faith to survive. But we've seen that there's also a point where that same power can corrupt, and attract followers to the religion that aren't seeking the actual faith, but the influence it wields.

Indeed, I'm not sure the most powerful Christians in America holding public office or the courts even believe in the faith at all, and are just appealing to the extremists as a means to retain their power.

Some people say this will never happen, but as long as blowhards who are trying to chip away at the fabric of our society keep getting elected into positions of power, the threat will continue to exist.

I keep being reminded of Iran's current struggles, and the conditions that led to it. The people who fled Iran after their so-called revolution would tell us of how the cities used to be extremely progressive by the standards of the nations in the region, and we see pictures of women not having to hide their humanity taken lifetimes ago. But what seems to get lost in that explanation is that the rural areas were still full of extremist nutjobs, and they took complete power under the guise of ending corruption and wrecked everything. And now the Iranians have to take to the streets trying to reverse that, protesting for the right for their women to be treated with decency.

What happened to Iran should be taken as a warning to us. We did barely avoid an attempted coup, after all. One could also argue that the Supreme Court itself is an attempted coup in progress at the judicial level too.