Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

Hurrican Katrina points to the lies and the dastardly "faith-based" words of Tom Delay and other members of the religious right following the Asian tsunami They blamed that catastrophe on the un-Christian nature of the people affected. Clearly the same logic cannot apply to the suffering people of Mississippi and Louisiana. These words, and Pat Robertson's public call for the death of Hugo Chavez last week, should serve to remind us that religious fascism is not a unique historical phenomenon. It's happened before, many times, in places like Spain under the inquisition, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Savanarola's Florence. In each of these regimes church and state were considered one, and deviation from political or religious orthodoxy warranted some nasty punishment.