Lee Malatesta: ``Lee argues that the implicit materialism, or Hobbesian thinking, seen in the religious right is a result of the forces of secularisation. This is the liberal basis for universal rights where the individual's base political right is its existence as a distinct political entity in the polis.''

I'm not quite clear what the antecedent to `this' is in that second sentence. Secularization? Materialism?

I was probably insufficiently clear with regards to the strict materialism of Hobbes. It isn't implicit. It's explicit. (It's implicit in the rhetoric of some of those on the right wing whether religious or not.) It also disqualifies anything abstract from real existence. Freedom of conscience for Hobbes means that so long as you are free to think whatever you want, you have freedom of conscience regardless of whether or not you've got freedom to act on those thoughts. Because the conscience, for Hobbes, does not have real existence. That is what I mean by strict materialism. Justice, rights, goodness, all of these have no existence, only that which is material has existence. So there is more than a little bit of irony of folks like Romney arguing that the right to exist is the primary right.

That level of secularization, I assert, is harmful to liberal democracy. It destroys the idea that there is any right other than the right to exist. It makes any alternative to death into something rational and gives the state the justification it needs to suspend any right in the name of security.

The point of all of this is that, from what you wrote, I don't think I got my message across clearly. The possibility exists, however, that maybe I'm simply misreading what you've written.