Taking a radical right-wing position on the part of an outgroup is not "liberalism."

[True Blue Door]

23. They have those laws by "common consent" because challenging them

is taken as a violation of them. That's fucking Orwellian, and practically Confederate to rationalize someone else's lack of freedom as an act of freedom by its victims while enjoying your own freedom from a safe distance.

Do I agree with such laws? Hell no, but it's not my country and I'm all too aware of Christian history.

A people cannot consent to depriving themselves and all future generations of consent. That is not a moral possibility. It is not possible to justify any state other than a democracy with functioning and enforced freedom of political speech. And it is not possible to be a liberal and believe otherwise. That viewpoint is at best libertarian.

Personally, I'd be pleased if all the desert religions would disappear, I find them all divisive and damaging.

True, the desert has not exactly been a wellspring of reason and human solidarity. Not even in the United States. It seems that when there's not enough water, life becomes something other than it should be, and human life inevitably takes its cues from nature no matter how we resist.

I hope that once solar-powered seawater desalination and piping is economically practical, the Middle Eastern countries terraform their deserts, and slowly social change follows. Maybe when we get going with our own such systems in the Western US, and they end up extending into Arizona and so on, some of our own crazies will chill the fuck out.