Toxic Trilogy

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." -- George Orwell, "Animal Farm."

   Politics and religion don't mix, it has long been said. And when economic policy is added to the mix, the result can be toxic.
   True Believers incite a major conflict when they insist their way is the best -- to them, the only -- way to salvation, whether that be economic, political or religious.
   One wrinkle in that last concept, of course, is the matter of salvation itself, since belief in the need for salvation assumes there is something from which to be saved. In many spiritual traditions, salvation is not an issue, because members do not believe that people are inherently evil.
   In addition, there are many traditions that, while strongly spiritual, do not speak of an afterlife even as they worship a deity. Moreover, some traditions emphasize moral behavior, which stresses relationships with other people, compared to religious institutions that emphasize a relationship with a deity. Then there is the atheistic tradition, which denies the existence of any deity, as well as the agnostic tradition, whose members say there is no way of knowing. Meanwhile, these same people may be quite moral, in that they do not lie, cheat, steal, kill or otherwise do harm to others.
   So when the self-appointed guardians of the public morality combine their efforts with their self-proclaimed True Belief in a certain religious tradition and insist that it be joined to political correctness and then combine both with economic policy, that can only brew trouble for a society founded on a principle that all are created equal.