grte

Probably.

Pimp my timber

I don't know that at all. Public services where I'm at are pretty well run.

Add another contradiction onto the pile.

It's called fusion, okay?!

I mean, yes. Maybe not the specific room, but if I have your address I do have a pretty good idea of where you do a lot of your peeing. I try not to dwell on it.

That would be good indeed, but isn’t really an aspect of secularism.

I would say it's an aspect of secularism when done in a sane way.

I think that wouldn’t make it a theocracy, as it’s more of a philosophy or way of life rather than a belief in a higher being that has a strict set of rules that a state could enforce. But I don’t really know that much about buddhism, so I might be wrong.

Well, I would say that ultimately all theocracies are that. In my view there aren't any deities, so all theocracies which claim to base their legitimacy on a supreme being are, well, wrong. They are really enforcers of cultural norms that just happen to have a belief in a particular deity as one of those norms.

Yeah, if the lesson you've taken from the last decade of American politics is that they used to be too hard on corruption and they're doing things right these days, you are probably very corrupt.

Which good parts of secularism do you think are missing here?

The part where you have enough social liberty that you don't have government officials telling you how to dress.

And “secular theocracy” is an oxymoron. Theocracies require the belief in at least one deity as a supreme ruling authority to guide the state, which is not the case at all here, completely the opposite even. So what makes you think that it’s a “secular theocracy”?

Putting aside that 'secular theocracy' is wordplay making fun of their attempts to secularize in such a way that they take on features of a theocracy, such as dress codes. I don't agree with your definition of theocracy. You could presumably have a Buddhist theocracy without any sort of belief in a supreme ruling deity.

"I want secularism but I still want overbearing authority figures telling people what to wear" is the silliest version of secularism. I want secularism but not the good parts, basically.

Happy 100th, Mel.

Congratulations on creating a secular theocracy, Quebec and France. Really valuable contribution.