Before Christianity became legitimatized by the Roman Empire it consisted mostly of small groups, usually meeting in secret. There was little central leadership, which enabled each group to pretty much go its own way. This used to give Peter and Paul fits, they would travel from one group to the other or send them letters trying to keep them in line, only to have them drift off on their own tangents again. It must have been more fun being a Christian in those days, providing that you could avoid being thrown to the lions.
When the empire assimilated Christianity, they deemed it necessary to have everybody believing the same things. The bishops held a series of conferences trying to come up with a uniform doctrine of faith and, after much weeping and gnashing of teeth, they finally did. I don't think many people were happy with the finished product, but they were told that it was the best the bishops could do and they would just have to live with it. From that point on, the church leadership had to expend a lot of effort stifling dissent, often using draconian measures that were never completely successful. After about a thousand years of this, there was the Protestant Reformation, which sparked centuries of religious warfare. I think that the American Founding Fathers had the right idea with their separation of church and state. We've had some religious conflict in our nation's history, but nothing like what they had in Europe.
The reason I said that about Sterling was, they told him that he couldn't own the team anymore, and that he would have to sell it. Well I don't know much about sports, but I do know that, when somebody is trying to intimidate you, you can't give them what they want because it just encourages them. If I was in Sterling's shoes, my reaction would be, "If I can't own the team, ain't nobody going to own the team!" I guess you could call that spite, but I would call it teaching them a lesson. I had never heard of Sterling before this, so I don't know if he's a nice guy or a mean prick, but I still can't help but wonder what he's doing having a colored girl friend and being in the sports business if he doesn't like colored people. There's probably more to this story than meets the eye, but it's just sports, so I'm not likely to look into it any deeper. I'm more interested in that Bundy thing, and I'll try to remember to Wiki it this weekend.
I think I told you this before, sometimes "they" just means other people. The Big They would have a hard time pushing their shit on us if all the regular people would just refuse to cooperate, but you can't tell them people nothing. That's why I hardly say "we" anymore.
I wasn't aware that Beaglesonia was standing in the way of your KBW. I mean, we're four hundred highway miles apart, maybe three hundred as the crow flies, and there's lots of neutral territory between us. If you want to submit a list of specific grievances, I'll have my people get together with your people, and maybe we can work something out.
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