The reality...is that we are intrinsically part of a larger society and world, and that our fate is intrinsically bound up with the fate of everyone else on the planet and the fate of the planet itself.

This, for me, is a key concept. I've said before, and it bears repeating: when Gaia has had enough of our destructive hedonism, she'll just roll over and scrape us off her backside.

I marvel at those among us who pretend there will be no consequences for our divisive and derisive mistreatment of each other, and our inexplicable lack of respect for the ecosystem that sustains us.

This easily leads to an attempt to keep society pure for what are described as moral but fit into a kind of religious or quasi-religious world view.

Ultimately any attempt to do this is going to need to look at details. Saying "peace and love" is fine, but in the end you have to operationalize what they look like, that the minimum standards are for each, and if somebody is non-peaceful and/or shows hate, find a way to correct them and remove any kind of reward for the bad behavior. This might mean having clear rewards and benefits to complying and conforming, it might mean a kind of re-education and resocialization, or it might mean some sort of punishment system. Of course, at first you'd be gentle and look at big picture, but as time goes on the frustration of having individuals fail to achieve the right goals and instead find loopholes and ways around the gentle prompts and corrections necessarily leads to greater and greater strictures. After all, the general welfare and common good must outweight individuals.

Now try this.

"In order to avoid divine retribution, it is necessary to teach our children that homosexuality is wrong. Those who exhibit this behavior must be resocialized. And if they continue, we must have some penalty for them and above all not reward them."

You could put in all kinds of things if you don't like homosexuality as an option. You could use Sabbath-breaking, with blue laws. You could have tithing or tax payments, if either is something you think is important. You could add race relations and questioning every word and deed or you could add race mixing with covenants and anti-miscegenation laws (with both, nicely enough, having something like a one-drop rule). They've all been there at some point in US history.

Or you could look at what the MB says in Egypt and Annusra in Syria. Extreme examples, to be sure. All societies do something like this, but it's necessary to temper it in a very deep-seated and principled way to keep the pure1% from controlling the filthy masses. (Wait. What? 1%?) Speech is fine. Beyond that, every action to produce compliance has to be questioned.

Because it sounds so good, words of honey that are sweet to the ear. But it ends in theocracy and despotis because ultimately just saying words and just preaching doesn't get the desired--and then required--behavior.

The church I was in started out that way. We had gentle prompts to do as God commanded. Love our brother. Love Jesus. Do what was right and moral. Ten years later we had secret informants rooting out evil and corruption, people called for ministerial counseling that hadn't requested it, people were warned to not associate with others and some were excommunicated. We hadn't done as needed and eventually God would spew us out; every attempt to guide us was met with some way around the "guides". Six months after this became clear, 50% of the membership had vanished. I worked for the church. The ministers were flummoxed, confused, felt betrayed, and finally said that those who left must not have been "true" Christians. They honestly couldn't see themselves in the role of the bad guy. They had all the best intentions. They thought they served God. They lost their humility, and no longer served. They ruled.

But what's strange about a lot of thinking is it mixes a purely economic principle with purely social principles. You can have capitalism and despotism. You can have capitalism and libertarianism. Just as you can have socialism and despotism or socialism and libertarianism. In practice, socialism and despotism went hand in hand because despotic actions were necessary to produce the "good" socialist worldview. And there were a lot of True Believers in the USSR, those who were idealistic and really thought they were sacrificing their all to build socialism. It's when those vanished, confused and failed, that the break-down of the system became inevitable; it's also when those idealists vanished that most of the worst abuses petered out. Evil is at its worst when those committing it have only good goals and are just trying to make people and society good and stop being servants but start trying to be rulers. They delude the foolish, and they are the first to be deluded.

We would do well to have more religious leaders who think this way.

I'm an atheist, but that is a beautiful piece.