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To: AwesomePossum
You're argument amounts to a tacit assertion that since all laws are based on morality, we have to abandon the idea that there can even be such a thing as a secular government, accept that it has to be theocratic and accept that all we can do is choose a theology.

I don't buy it.

I also don't buy the "It's the will of the people, so it has to be right." We live in a Constitutional republic, not a democracy.

James Madison to Joseph C. Cabell

13 Feb. 1829
Letters 4:14--15
For a like reason, I made no reference to the "power to regulate commerce among the several States." I always foresaw that difficulties might be started in relation to that power which could not be fully explained without recurring to views of it, which, however just, might give birth to specious though unsound objections. Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it. Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.

Justice Clarence Thomas

"I write separately only to express my view that the very notion of a ‘substantial effects’ test under the Commerce Clause is inconsistent with the original understanding of Congress’ powers and with this Court’s early Commerce Clause cases. By continuing to apply this rootless and malleable standard, however circumscribed, the Court has encouraged the Federal Government to persist in its view that the Commerce Clause has virtually no limits. Until this Court replaces its existing Commerce Clause jurisprudence with a standard more consistent with the original understanding, we will continue to see Congress appropriating state police powers under the guise of regulating commerce."

A republic, if you can keep it, indeed.

234 posted on 08/21/2007 7:04:03 PM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: tacticalogic; AwesomePossum
Your argument amounts to a tacit assertion that since all laws are based on morality, we have to abandon the idea that there can even be such a thing as a secular government

That is in effect, true.

There is no practical means to ensure an amoral position in this government or any other single thing. There is no "moral-neutral" position or any position outside the bounds of morality (whenever morality is concerned), as any position is a moral position by it's nature.

Hence "amorality" is a fallacy for all practical purposes except as a means of definition. The only real control is in whose morality one or all must embrace.

How then may one form a secular view (not to mention govt) when one cannot exist?

We have never been secular, only tolerant. Historically, all of our laws have necessarily been viewed through the prism of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

The only way to change that is to substitute another moral code, as the socialist left is trying to do. Secularism as well as multi-culturalism are simply means to their predictable end: Socialism/Communism.

258 posted on 08/21/2007 11:05:38 PM PDT by roamer_1 (Build the fence. Enforce the law.)
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