Posted on 08/29/2006 6:51:14 AM PDT by headsonpikes
We all know the basic alternatives that form the familiar "spectrum" of American politics and culture.
If a young person is turned off by religion or attracted by the achievements of science, and he wants to embrace a secular outlook, he is told--by both sides of the debate--that his place is with the collectivists and social subjectivists of the left. On the other hand, if he admires the free market and wants America to have a bold, independent national defense, then he is told--again, by both sides--that his natural home is with the religious right.
But what if all of this is terribly wrong? What if it's possible to hold some of the key convictions associated with the right, being pro-free-market and supporting the war, and even to do so more strongly and consistently than most on the right--but still to be secular? What if it's possible to reject the socialism subjectivism of the left and believe in the importance of morality, but without believing in God? ....
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
"Rule by might" isn't as pervasive as you might think. It doesn't matter how tyrannical a leader might be, he still has to have the loyalty of a goodly portion of the population. Somebody actually has to act as an enforcer of the ruler's edicts, and odds are it won't be the ruler himself.
For example, Joseph Stalin was about as tyrannical as they come, but he only succeeded because there were folks loyal enough to him without coercion. And the massive population of the Soviet Union could not be kept in check through intimidation alone -- the Czars tried this and look what happened. Stalin gave the peasantry land, education, and other goodies in return for support. To this day there are folks in Russia who think ol' Uncle Joe was God's gift to creation.
Right and wrong are not derived from Christian values. Is it right or wrong to kill heretics?
It is the "deferred interest & penalities" on the price of Nixon's "Southern Strategy"....
And? Humanity might be an animal, but he is a social animal. Any social group, be it composed of chimpanzees, wolves, or people, must be able to work together to survive. Such pressures will eventually give rise to something equating to "morality."
The Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy had no laws?
Cite for that?
I find myself diverging somewhat from the rational self interest set.
I think there is an element of morality that is distinctly non-rational and even counter to self interest. For want of a better word, I will call it love.
Love obviously has utility for a species, but particularly in humans, it is rather unfocused. A purely utilitarian love would be concentrated on mates, children, relatives, tribes, nations, species, in roughly that order of priority.
But human love is diffuse and gets applied to pets, animals, living things in general, and even inanimate objects.
I'm sure the sociobiologists have some sort of calculus to explain all this, but I merely take note of it. Love, and the desire to benefit others and avoid harm to others, is a powerful motivator, and it is independent of religion and authority.
Ten minutes? Heck, thirty seconds of skimming a DUmmie FUnnies post will do the job....
But you will suffer consequences. Your victim's family might come after you or your family. Your society might decide that you're too dangerous to keep around (you might kill one of them next).
Actually, quite a few have throughout history.
Nope. Societies attempt to remove, one way or another, those incapable of living peacefully with their neighbors.
Many ignore it as long as they can benefit from it. Slavery is only one such example.
It's all part of rational self-interest.
Example, if two persons are castaways on an island and one decides to kill the other in the rational expectation that since no one can know that another person was with him and he can easily hide the remains, that rationally he will exist longer with the remaining food and thus have better odds of living long enough to be rescued, would it be moral or immoral for him to do so?
You see, the problem is philosophical. Sometimes immoral things are rational and in a person's best interest. And sometimes, even if they are irrational, they are right or wrong.
I'm not calling you a liberal, (i'm truly not) but your philosophy is kindred with theirs.
Just out of curiosity, if Republicans don't live up to your expectations, what is your response?
I would think that a person who has both high expectations and high ideals would be an activist, working for candidates who best represent them. In the long run, it is the candidates who inspire street level support that win and move up.
And, I'd like to see all this rhetoric that's supposed to be coming from the RR making a big deal about English Common Law being evidence for some important conclusion about belief over non-belief. Never have seen the argument actually made, only references here.
Really, you need to bone up on your history. The Church left Britain with the Legions, slowly returning a few centuries later.
It may be a fundamental interaction of our social instincts and our greater intelligence. One can over rationalize to the detriment of society on occasion; it helps to have some built-in check to that.
Calling me a liberal is fightin' words (just sayin' :-)
Do you doubt that the governments and/or organizations described in the Bible tend to be top-down as opposed to bottom-up (democracy)?
Where do you think the Divine Right of Kings came from?
Well, take up your beef with Sir Walter Scott and the long Arthurian tradition--which includes quite a few clergy. The church disappeared from Britain when the Pax Romana faded! Oh, my!
I guess I don't get to say any examples of this claim that Common Law is being used as some sort of argument to authority in theology?
The Bible specifically addresses slavery as a good thing. If God says it's okay, then it must be moral, huh?
Your example is, of course, an extreme one and not likely to affect society as a whole. A similar situation to what you describe actually happened to the crew of a whaling ship in the mid 19th century. The upshot was that, before they were rescued, a couple of them had been killed and eaten by the rest. No one was prosecuted for the killings (the victim's were chosen by lot) or the cannibalism, as the pragmatic and very Christian folk from these whalers' homeport felt the men did what they had to do under the circumstances.
Do those circumstances hold true for society as a whole? Nope.
You are a conservative without a busy-body social agenda, or possibly libertarian. It's getting so that there are so few of your kind left that they may try to capture you and put you in a museum, as a curiosity.
Know you are not alone.
Not to mention The Unspeakable (as opposed to the Speaker, Dennis Hastert.)
Apparently we're not interested in maintaining even that much.
Promulgating conservative principles and programs... not so much.
Eh, I'm a pragmatist. But it has its limits, of course.
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