What do Afghanistan and the FCC Have in Common?

There's little more irritating or dangerous than cultural conservatives. Now I don't care what anyone believes in. If you think evolution is hogwash, that's fine. If you want to teach your kids that evolution is hogwash, that's fine. If you want a private school to teach that evolution is hogwash, that's fine.



It's when people's personal beliefs and morals become the basis for public policy when things go from fine to unfine. Like in Afghanistan the other day. A TV executive was arrested because his station refused to censor images of women dancing in short skirts.

Is this the kind of "Democracy" the US has installed in Afghanistan? Aren't two key ingredients to Democracy: freedom of the press and no religious involvement? Is it worth American military lives to support this pathetic, faux-Democracy? I'm not so sure.

We ousted the terrorist supporting regime, right? So why not, I don't know... leave? If the people there want Democracy, they'll fight for it, and earn it. We've given them the tools to get it. If they want their government to censor women's arms and legs, then they'll let them. Why fight to support a government that IGNORES fundamental keys to freedom?

And honestly, how fucked up is a male controlled society that hates seeing the female body? This picture is illegal for Afghani TV to broadcast:



What kind of society would have leaders that are terrified of the female form?



How eerily similar is this anti-scantily-clad-women crusade in Afghanistan to some movements by cultural conservatives and overly concerned shrill mothers to ban sexuality and violence in American media?



Democracy doesn't exist without the right to be obscene. Afghanistan doesn't realize this, and some very dangerous Americans are in the same bland, spiceless, swear-free boat.

What was that sound? It was John Ashcroft checking Priceline for one-way tickets to Kandahar.