Prohibition, part deux

I can't even tell you how upset the congressional ban on online gambling makes me. It's not because I'm an avid online gambler; I've never played a round of online poker in my life. I just think this new law, tacked on to a homeland security bill, is one more step on the road towards theocracy. I mean, what's so bad about a bit of poker? I guess the bible has a line somewhere that can maybe sorta be interpreted as saying it's bad to gamble, if you're drunk and you squint real hard (though I don't know why you'd be drunk if you think gambling is immoral...)

The most depressing part is that we aren't even heading towards a real theocracy. It's some sort of religious plutocracy. After all, it's not like they banned all forms of gambling. Playing the lottery online will still be very legal under the new bill. So basically, gambling isn't so immoral as long as it's funding our government. Meanwhile, we're losing our basic right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the pseudo-right is doing whatever they please.

You may be thinking to yourself, "dude, relax... it's just online gambling," and to an extent you're right. I just don't see this bill as limited to gambling. It could easily be television next, or the internet getting banned on the back of some homeland security bill that probably doesn't even make us safer. Who knows? I'm not content to give this stuff up for the tiniest chance of safety, because one day we're going to wake up to find we have less freedoms than the sort of countries we're so busy trying to create democracies in. And then we'll have to ask ourselves whether it was worth it. Except that'll probably be illegal.