“Vatican Ministry of Health” – my big, fat, hairy A$$.

Moose

Last year, church-state partnership was the obvious threat and so Palin was the obvious choice. With the election of Obama, the church-state (theocracy) partnership has become slightly less of an issue (even if he is giving out more Faith-Based Initiative money than Bush was) due to the growth of the pernicious state-corporation (fascist) partnership. That said, church-state was my deciding factor anyway, based on the nominees (mainly because it’s still very significant on the world stage, even if it’s currently cooled a bit in the U.S.).

Most of them, while stupid, weren’t posing a systemic threat to society, so I only really considered four:

4) The British Chiropractic Association: While there are good reasons (regarding natural rights) to have libel laws, the BCA gives a good utilitarian argument as to why society might be better off without them. While “trying to sue” is bad enough due to the intimidation aspects, they didn’t get my vote since so far they haven’t actually been successful.

3) Tony Blair: Mainly because I don’t like him. His statement “We face an aggressive secular attack from without” is mitigated somewhat by the follow-up “We face the threat of extremism from within.” He’s technically correct that secularism is a threat to religion, but misses both the mechanics of why this is and the fact that that’s a good thing. He’s right that extremist religion is a huge threat. If he becomes president of Europe, he’ll be a threat to reason, but right now he’s just a harmless crank.

2) Anjem Choudary: Trying to impose Shari’ah in the UK. Scary, but again no credibility beyond the “trying” part.

1) Dermot Aherne: The winner by virtue of being the only nominee not to have the word “trying” in the description of what they did. Plus, Ireland has always been a fairly libertarian country, so passing a law like this there is much worse than it would be in other parts of the world, since the nation had further to fall.

It’s the “about matters of religion” bit I have trouble with in deciding who to vote for.

The criteria listed on the poll page is “contribution to the cause of unreason,” not specifically religion. I’d say that other criteria than religion can and should be considered. Otherwise, the BCA wouldn’t have been a nominee.

I think I might vote for Chaudary, though I don’t live in the UK. I am not a fan of the Pope either, especially because of the immense power he has.

I’ll decide between those three. XD