Posted on 07/06/2002 2:31:54 PM PDT by B. A. Conservative
Why must you consistently linger on the subject of fornication?
Meter Maid??????
redrock
That's it...Stay in your little Conspiracy Kook World. Keep thinking they're out to get us all...Stay in the building while it burns...Just because David told you too. Then blame "The Man", of course.
My revolution??? Cannot say I understand where you were going with that statement.
It seemed to be a fairly constructive article.
redrock
Geez, you're being positive.
Look at this, most FReepers do not even post. There are a lot more Lurkers than there are FReepers, I know because I was Lurker for months before I dared to post. I assume that you did the same. Free Republic had a profound influence on the election of 2000, and if it was not for our effort, Al Gore will be President today, no doubt.
That was the first time that I realized that we became a force to reckon with and that we are here to stay! Look at where we are now, and compare it back in 1998. Boy, what a big difference. This community will only grow larger and have more influence to change America for good in the next couple of years.
Maybe I'm just young and idealistic, but I'm optimistic. You should be too, hey what more can we lose? We already lost much ground to the Left, and it is time for us to counterattack!
Even though it can be alot of fun to read (sometimes), alot of real issues get bogged down in mis-guided witticisms from people who think they're alot funnier than they really are.
I'm just thinking that the person who posted this thread would maybe enjoy another forum also where people had to be a little more "visible" to one another. I might also, and I bet $1,000,000 that in general the comments would be alot more civil.
1. This ruling was given by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, not the US Supreme Court. I hope that the US Supreme Court has never given such a ruling. The reason I make this point is an important one: Federal Power versus State Power. The States may, to some degree, enforce their morality on the citizenry, IMO, and may exert even more approbation as the level of government grows increasingly local, with individual communities possessing the greatest influence over individuals in the realm of moral norms.
How can I, a Constitutionalist, espouse such a belief? Because governments, as they become more local, become more reflective of the will of individual people. Also, individuals who disagree with a moral code in one community can move to a different community where different morals are held...eventually finding his place. The *fundamental* rights are upheld by the US Constitution, which permits States, Cities, Townships, and communities to exercise their moral codes (so long as the Constitution itself is not violated). That, IMO, is the way the Founding Fathers, being themselves divided on how best to worship the Almighty, felt it ought to be.
The Federal Government was supposed to stay out of religious matters entirely, leaving that to local governments where people could more directly effect the morals they felt right and comfortable with.
2. The world of the 18th Century, and even the 19th Century, would be considered intolerable by many living in the US today. The Puritans, especially, lived a lifestyle that was very strict and unyeilding. Whether God especially approved of the Puritans or not, he did give us Free Will and that extended, to some degree, to how individuals chose to worship Him. To put it a different way, God didn't seem to expect us to all worship him in exactly the same manner or he would've made us all exactly the same.
3. The Government of today is not the Government of the past. It can no longer be trusted, even so much as the Founding Fathers trusted it (which wasn't much at all). Do you *really* think that if you made the Government the sole or most potent arbitor of morality that it would settle on a morality you agreed with, or that Christians as a whole agreed with? No. Governments are about power and domination, and will only approve those moral practices which further their bid for more power and domination.
Even if I thought that if the government were given limitless power to enforce a moral code and to use it wisely (which will never happen), I would not agree to give it such power. That is because morality and goodness come from within, usually based on *examples* from without. Force may, on the surface, bring about good actions, but they would be for the wrong reasons, and shallow. While Man was told to judge a person based on actions, God judges based on what is within a person's heart.
In short, I believe that the People are too corrupt to willingly revert to Christian behavior. The government is too corrupt to be trusted to pressure people to good acts, but is rather more likely to itself perpetrate evil acts with whatever power we give it. Our style of government cannot survive long when the people are corrupt, and so our government will change, in actuality if not on paper. That is what we have been seeing happen for some time now, and what is going to continue in the future.
The citation you have given is from a time long past, dead and gone and never to come again in our lifetimes, and probably not in the lifetimes of any now living, if ever.
You cannot use the government to overcome the will of the people, especially when it is nominally run by the people.
Tuor
Give me liberty or give me death.
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