Posted on 05/27/2003 5:59:16 AM PDT by SJackson
Thus, this debate is NOT about restricting "rights" but simply a political debate about the moral clarity of a party.
Osama bin Laden would fully agree with that statement.
1. European society fought about 150 years of wars (ca. 1500-1648) that finally led to a general consensus that the state should not enforce religion as such. The overwhelming majority of Americans are not interested in setting the clock back on this issue.
2. The principle of separation of church and state is fundamentally libertarian. It precludes government from acting with certain motives, and in certain spheres. But pure libertarianism--of the kind that says you cannot regulate anything two consenting adults do--is not a complete or acceptable answer either. For example, prostitution has an impact on society, and the government is entitle to recognize that impact and forbid it.
3. Although the government should not enforce religion as such, the Republicans and their leaders certainly are entitled to express their opinions on moral issues. Moral suasion is legitimate right of every citizen.
4. In order to persuade non-"Christian conservatives," Christian conservatives should (a) make clear that they recognize the principle of separation of church and state; while (b) articulating non-explictly religiously based arguments against the homosexual agenda.
The record of "conservative Christian" groups in having the state enforce morality in the United States, from the abortion debate to Prohibition and blue laws to laws against gambling and prostitution is hardly encouraging, so a suspicion of "conservative Christians" is hardly a canard.
While America was settled by religious refugees primarily from England, church membership was hardly universal or even terribly widespread in the colonies or the early national period. A greater percentage of Americans are church members today than 150 years ago. While the Founders were all Christians or Deists, and they were certainly culturally Protestant in their worldview, they were all also men of the Enlightenment and sought to liberate humanity from narrow religious views. The Founders were deeply suspicious of the confluence of state and religious power, and deeply suspicious of the greatest proponents of that joining of secular and religious, the Roman Catholic Church. The Founders were not supporters of all traditional order, rather they created a new one, which became the classical liberalism that modern conservatives seek to preserve and maintain.
Religious conservatives need to understand that there is tension between their religious worldview and the Founders' vision. The key point, however, is that the Founders' vision has a place for religious conservatives in it, where there is suspicion the vision of religiouis conservatives does not have a place in it for the classical liberalism of the Founders.
In my view, "conservative Christians" need to understand the intellectual and historical antecedents of the different view and will ultimately have to choose between supporting a conservatism that differs from theirs, but preserves a sphere in which they are free to live as they choose, and supporting a state that is tinged to a greater or lesser degree with theocracy. If the latter, there will be little support, and the left, who will not even respect their sphere, will gain power.
Simply put, the Bill of Rights are restrictions on what the government can do, NOT restrictions on what citizens can do with government.
For Conservatives to somehow acquiesce and support a "principle" not supported by tradition and certainly not historically accurate will not, and should not happen.
Now, what should be supported from a politically prudent POV is different. IMHO, Conservatives should be supporting the conservation of tradition at a state level rather than a national level. If a Conservative, in order to give a voice to their POV advocates federal legislation, it flies into the face of politically supported tradition of the conservative, namely strong state governments and a smaller centralized bureacracy.
Look, I'm not a grammanalist. I have made it quite clear, and others can attest, that I have been given full, unfettered access to a Creative Spelling Dictionary. Futhermore, I reserve the right to construction word lineage as confusing as possible to reach my goal of confounding the masses if need be.
Does the sentence structure have to be perfectly acute for you to apply the premise?
Let me see if I can make it everso clear for your Preistly Word Arrangement.
If the author replaces the word "Homosexuals" with Abortionist or Drug Abusers, would his conclusion still have the same merit?
I beg to differ, I think your quite cute! ;-)
Homosexuality is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
What part of WRONG do people not understand?
The part where it interfers with their selfish desire...
Using poor logic to demonize my statement doesn't refute it.
I'm sure that bin Laden would also fully agree with the statement: "Water is wet."
The "principle of separation between church and state" is not a principle, but the private opinion of one seminal US statesman - who was himself an adherent of secularism, vide his bowdlerized New Testament.
The man is the worst kind of moral idiot: an ARROGANT moral idiot. He just repeats his same initial errors, and worsens them. AGAIN he mishandles Jesus' teachings, about which he clearly knows or understands very little. Then he digs deeper by confirming that he doesn't at all "get it" about homosexuality, and to top it all off he has to tell us that he's a Jew (!!! — who knew! Oh, right; EVERYBODY). Ironic, isn't it, that someone who so rails against black liberals dropping the race-card, hints at his own little ace up his sleeve?
What a fool.
Dan
First, "founders...sought to liberate humanity from narrow religious views."
No, the founders sought to free a nation from religious persecution and a state sponsored religion. They did not seek to liberate humanity and they did not seek redress from "narrow religious views."
The other exception is the purported ability to separate a government from its foundation. As Kirk stated with much of taken from Burke, "At heart, political problems are moral and religious problems."
That said, Conservatives, like Burke, should distrust "abstractions", that is absolute POLITICAL dogmas separated from political experience and particular situations. In many many ways, that which is supported by "Christian conservatives," of which I am one, can be considered an abstraction.
The words "separation of church and state" are not part of the text of the First Amendment. I did not claim that they were. But the text is a particular manifestation of what was in fact a widely recognized principle.
Having said that, I do not understand the distinction you are trying to draw. I do not assert that either the Constitution or government should prohibit anyone from making explicitly religiously-based arguments. I merely assert that anyone with a firm grasp of the historical and philosophical basis of the Constitution will reject them.
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