Replies

>>>> Perhaps, from the first, you could see the danger in the state acting as God. Would be gods see Him as competition.

But I don't believe in God, so how does this persuade me?

Second, having God as A generally common public presence has done nothing to hurt the growth of this nation to become the giant of the planet nor to deter its people from prospering to become the envy of the world. Why would you fix what was not broken?

Third, if you would not have God, you will suffer having gods imposed upon you. Gaia, for instance, as the envirowacko symbol and excuse for sacrificing your lands to her priests.

Those who don't look where we've been cannot see where we are going.

I also reject your notion that the state is taking on the role of God here.

Your flat denial of what has obviously been developing over the last 70 years does nothing to decrease our, er, risk in accepting your assertions. The Statist element is growing hugely even as, and likely in response to, the Left marginalizes itself.

I don't understand how you linked my comments to Marxism.

It came in when you included equality as a goal of this nation. Equal treatment before the law is not the same as seeing to it that everybody has an equal result in life. The former is American, the latter is Marxist.

And security is the promise that Statists use to make gains. Statism is a term I've been working hard to make better understood so that it may be used properly. It is incipient Statists who are the risk implied in my tagline. I have a short link if you're game.

>>>> For one, you have not been persecuted for your non-belief. The same cannot be said of believers in lands where belief is banned.

It's no accident that I haven't been persecuted. In early Pilgrim settlements, I would have.

>>>> Why would you fix what was not broken?

Americans are jealous about their freedoms. The rocks didn't bother me, but someone decided to debate them in court with Moore. This is that adversarial system again. In court, Moore couldn't hide the real reason for putting up the stones (or didn't want to hide it). It was revealed that he believed his execution of justice was based, not inspired on those rocks. He broke a bond of trust in impartiality then, and has repeatedly since he lost that first case.

>>>> Third, if you would not have God, you will suffer having gods imposed upon you. Gaia, for instance, as the envirowacko symbol and excuse for sacrificing your lands to her priests.

I don't agree to this assumption. And this is the very essence of our debate. To pin the perceived wrongs of our contemporary society on the loss of the Judeo-Christian God is to abandon duty to rationality. We must argue our preferred political directions with our fellow citizens, we must elect leaders of whom we can approve, and we must debate what we believe. We can not, and simply must not abandon rational exposition to a particular metaphysics because we believe that is enough. This is not what our founding fathers intended for us to do with our intellectual abilities and our public life.

It's only when the law doesn't protect me from irrationality that I am at risk of being forced to obey irrational laws that are imposed out of the worship of foreign gods, as you suggest.

>>>> Explain why did you felt the need to add "here" at the end of ["I also reject your notion that the state is taking on the role of God here."]

I mean this in two ways. First, Thompson is not assuming the role of God (and neither is the Ethics Commission or the Supreme Court). Second, America isn't assuming the role of God. This logic doesn't work for me -- restricting the application of Judeo-Christian ethics to what is rational and logical is perhaps a worship of human intellect in certain devout perceptions, but this is the essence of the Enlightenment: we ARE able to explain ourselves and our reasons for doing things. To doubt this is to doubt the whole Age of Reason. Therefore, practicing Christians should feel comforted by the knowledge that neither their own personal dogmas nor anyone else's (be it Christian or otherwise) can be imposed on them. That is the take of my patriot parents, who are the most devout Christians I know.

>>>> The Statist element is growing hugely even as, and likely in response to, the Left marginalizes itself.

OK, we have had several posts to this thread with my fears, now we get to see yours. I respect this point of view greatly, and I would just warn you: how great could the power be of a state that both seized political AND religious power together be? You fear the lack of religion (which has merely been applied to prevent oppression except in some unusual cases) yet the specific requirement of one religion or another could be just as dangerous. Before the Gunpowder Plot and after, Catholics were forced to attend Anglican services and even severely fined for refusing. Only the rich could avoid services. Furthermore, the Pilgrims and Quakers were ridiculed and continually fined, imprisoned, and reduced to paupers by the Anglican church. The America we know, where freedom from religion is just as important as freedom to practice religion, comes out of these horrific experiences. Each one of them is central to the Religious Reformation of the middle ages. Our increasingly agnostic government has emerged out of this very tradition. Specific religions represented by governments have always equalled oppression in our longer history. We know this, and so does our judicary.

>>>> Equal treatment before the law is not the same as seeing to it that everybody has an equal result in life. The former is American, the latter is Marxist.

You misinterpreted my use of the word 'egalitarian' with that concept, but I was also referring to equality before the law. I apologize for not making that utterly clear. I agree with you and other Capitalists who argue that it is a combination of a consistent legal environment (that includes equality before the law) and the opportunity to excel that makes our nation so great.

>>>> And security is the promise that Statists use to make gains. Statism is a term I've been working hard to make better understood so that it may be used properly. It is incipient Statists who are the risk implied in my tagline. I have a short link if you're game.

This opens up a lot of issues for discussion, and it's laden with a VERY interesting perspective, since you've said that the state is on the march. First, I don't believe it is on the march in this particular case. In fact, it is on the retreat in my view. Moore wanted a statist religion, but he succeeded in linking his icon to freedom of religious expression among certain devout Christians (certainly not all). Second, there has been a good deal of discussion about this that fails to take into consideration the feelings of nonbelievers in the state of Alabama and the rest of the country. Some Christians are quick to point out that the school prayer issue has been an abridgement to their freedoms, but they never concede that prayer is still allowed under conditions that wouldn't oppress nonbelievers. Furthermore, every Christian may attend private school, and our "activist" supreme court has ruled that vouchers are legal. This is a country that is determined to be fair with respect to religious association, practice, and expression. Finally, if statism is on the march, we need to discuss specific issues and address them together. Not everyone agrees on this subject, some of it is theoretical, and we do have a democratic republic in which we are free to elect people who will serve our ends as we wish. If we believe this country cannot maintain our freedoms with the Constitution as it is, then we must rewrite it. If we believe that this country will NEVER be able to maintain our freedoms because of a frailty of human nature, or because we have already gone off the deepend, then that is much more dangerous and pessimistic. I don't think the blood of patriots shed in the past was done so in that spirit. It would be defeatist, and completely unamerican to say that our system of government is DOOMED to failure.