A Price Above Oil

Fray Luis De Leon’s sixteenth-century pedagogical work La Perfecta Casada (The perfect wife) is a manual for household management in all aspects. Of course, it demands pretty severe submission and subjugation of women.

The group Ladies Against Feminism would love to bring it all back. They’re not alone– plenty of people out there are all about the modest swimwear and head coverings. Oh, sure, there’s plenty of Christians showing skin and even hip religious-themed clothing (Christians for Cannabis, anyone?), which is all well and good– none of this is mandatory.

Still, the religious right, via Ashcroft and his crew, are running the show in a lot of ways, and I’m wondering how much freedom I’ve already lost. I want to know how close we’re getting to The Handmaid’s Tale here. Even Margaret Atwood wants to know. It’s not just religious extremism I fear, although I know that non-Christians are more targeted by the current rash of extrajudicial detentions in the US. The jingoist hounds are baying that I’m a traitor because I think this is an unjust war, that Bush has the wrong motives at heart, that we’re bathing in blood and pumping it at the Shell station.

Everyone who’s studied World War II and the holocaust remembers this:

They came for the Communists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Communist;
They came for the Socialists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a labor leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Jew;
Then they came for me – And there was no one left to object.
– Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Pastor, 1892-1984

Well, they have come to detain and register Arab men. They have come for the homosexuals in the middle of the night.

I mean, how much is too much to take? How late is too late to get out?