And that is exactly my point. The problem in the world is and always has been...ruthless regimes of one type or another...whether or not they were outwardly "religious" regimes. The study of history reveals plainly to me that they are all religious about something, though, including diehard atheists like Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot or pragmatic imperialists like the British, the Americans, the Germans, etc. I'll tell you what they're truly religious about. They are religious about their own exclusive monopoly on power and privilege, that's what. That is the very prosiac and commonplace "god" which they all worship and serve.

The ceremonials vary from place to place...as do the "religious" icons and symbols. In the USA, for example, those icons are things like the flag, the American Eagle, the White House, the presidency, Congress, the Statue of Liberty, the Washington monument, Mount Rushmore, etc. If you don't think it's a religion, you're not really looking at it very carefully at all. You don't need a church or a deity to have a state religion. You just need centralized dogma, rigid belief in that dogma, a hierarchical authority structure to enforce the dogma, and lots of obedient followers.