Stringsinger is absolutely right. What people in the US have to understand is that what you're reading and hearing from Bachmann, Perry, et al is NOT the sum-total nor deepest depth of their beliefs and policies.

These people are influenced by the writings of men who support the totally unquestioned right of just about anyone to bear arms SPECIFICALLY SO that they might train their "Christian" militia to police their streets and enforce "Biblical" law and "justice".

This is NOTHING short of the "chickens" of the strife between Isaac and Ishmael coming home to roost. (For those who don't know the Old Testament story, Ishmael was the illegitimate son of Abraham and his servant-girl, Hagar. Abraham went to her to have a son because he did not believe that God would provide him an heir through his aged wife, Sarah. Sarah later conceived and had Isaac, who would become Abraham's legitimate heir.)

The strife between the descendants of Isaac (historically representative of the Israelites) and those of Ishmael (historically, the other Arab nations) has been carried on for centuries; each has used force, military might and even outright attempts at total genocide to try to rule the other. Their interpretations of Biblical and/or Quranic law have differed, yet they have been in lock-step as far as their willingness to take their defense of "truth" to its bloodiest and most tragic extremes.

The so-called evangelical right in the US is the bastard stepchild of the Israeli/Arab conflicts, and the far-right nutcases here in the States have learned from their "parents" very well... they are learning that "might makes right" is supposed to solve everything.

One of the reasons that the quality of education in the US is so wildly disparate is because in some places, you have economically-advantaged people on the "left" who are actively trying to defend their students from the equally-priviledged right-wingers who are insisting on making experiential faith and religious dogma into mandatory curriculum. In other places, however, you have very DISadvantaged people who are being denied the same educational opportunities as others, and their families are often only receiving help from community organizations, many, many of which are church-based (church - read: evangelical Protestant). Those people are the "masses" that are being courted by the Bachmanns and Perrys of the political world... they are taking the very real needs and struggles of the lower-class citizens and wooing those people with the promise of a "better tomorrow", or "pie in the sky". They're promising them that in exchange for their votes, these "righteous warriors" will turn their country into one where "God's law" is the rule of law.

See? The power-hungry candidates (sheiks and imams) are rallying the poor under the banner of "let our power and money be used to dictate both legal AND moral standards in our country".

Soon, if these buffoons get their way, women will be served summonses in the street for not dressing right, people will be fined and/or arrested for not being in a church on a Sunday... it will be John Calvin's Geneva all over again.

Do the reading... Calvin is a HERO to many of these evangelical stormtroopers, and the ruthless rule of his proto-Taliban in Switzerland centuries ago would be heaven on earth for these wackos.