Quote:
Originally Posted by skyline
Is it? I've seen the opposite happen with very little thought. There are many contries that like to think themselves as the poster boy/girl for democracy yet put through or uphold laws the general populace do not agree with. An Ochlocary might reflect the views of a people, a democracy doesn’t have to.
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Within limits. The chance of the US passing similar laws about blasphemy as exist in Pakistan and Afghanistan, both democracies, is absolutely zero. We may have religious nuts here, but the groups strong enough to have any real influence are not extreme enough to even have any desire to. They might try to get Intelligent Design taught in schools or what have you, but they're never going to get any laws passed that make blasphemy punishable by death (blasphemy can potentially receive the death penalty in both Pakistan and Afghanistan). And even if by some horrible anti-miracle they tried then the rest of the populace would have none of it. It's just not a possibility. I also don't really see the possibility of a mob of Americans burning down someone's house and murdering children over a blasphemous Facebook page.
And while I'm sure the people on the extreme end of the religious spectrum don't represent the entire population of Pakistan, the fact that they are numerous and powerful enough to have significant influence on the government suggests that if they are on the far, low end of the bell curve representing the strength of the Pakistani people's religious beliefs then the middle, where the most people would lie, is probably still much more religiously extreme than your average Western country.