The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[Alex]

Sure, confirmation bias is a hard road to get off. When it comes down to it, I just try to resist holding up the founders as particularly useful participants in current discussion. They were smart, they are interesting to look at, but ultimately they are individually irrelevant and one can find a quote to support any position especially when one simply finds the quotes through Bartlett's rather than actual familiarity with what they had to say.

Doesn't make it any less annoying to deal with.

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, not only did she FAIL the question very specifically later - as GD just referred to, if you watch the clip, it's inescapable what a DUMBSH!T she is. It's really quite astounding - even for her!

[JWBear]

For anyone who's interested; here is a good list of Madison's thoughts on the separation of church and state.

my favorite: (Emphasis mine)

Madison's summary of the First Amendment:

Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contary to their conscience, or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform (Annals of Congress, Sat Aug 15th, 1789 pages 730 - 731).

[scaeagles]

I agree with that 100%.

[JWBear]

I doubt Christine O'Donnell does. (Or the majority of teapartiers, for that matter.)

[Alex]

I'd bet she does. She and I would just disagree on what it means government can do without actually doing "compelling" anything.

[JWBear]

Oh please! She and her ilk would like nothing better than to shove their own personal brand of religion down everyone elses's throats.

[alphabassettgrrl]

The thing I seem to be hearing as an undercurrent or an assumption this election year is that "freedom of religion" to some people means freedom to be any kind of Christian that you want. These people seem to be confused why anybody would want to be anything else. Why would someone be an atheist? Or Buddhist? They just don't get it, and that part is ok.

Where I start to have issues is that they don't want those "inconcievable" options to be options for other people. Protesting the building of mosques, trying to pass laws based in religious ideals, trying to get creationism taught in schools... those are things I have issue with.

[scaeagles]

How so, JW? What is it that she would do? I would guess the two primary things on everyones mind would be her stance on abortion, same sex marriage, and teaching creationism.

Abortion is opposed by many non religious people as well. It's a 50-50 split in most polls. Same sex marriage is something like 60-40 against and even in CA there were votes that showed opposition to it. Creationism...OK. Maybe you have something there, but I fail to see how that's a huge threat unless you are talking some sort of slippery slope argument, and I make those all the time, so I'm OK with them.

Typically what the division on the meaning of separation of church and state comes down to what is viewed as hostility toward religion, Christianity in particular. I think there are some extreme examples of it. They don't want to be threatened that professing as a tenet of their faith that homosexual conduct is sinful is hate speech. They don't understand why groups want crosses taken out of Arlington. Any number of things. And I do believe it scares them. While I'm sure that there are groups that would like the Bible taught as...uh...gospel in the public school, I think those are quite a huge minority.

The fear is that to many, freedom of religion is becoming freedom from religion. While no one is forced to worship, nor should they be, no one should be forced to NOT worship or think as they please.

I also do not think that the protests against Mosques have as much to do with Islam as is it opposed to radical Islamists. If CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and the Saudis and bin Laden and whomever were willing to all denounce radical Islam, much of this fear would subside and i think the vast majority of protests would stop.

[wendybeth]

The fact that so many terrorists had seemed to be so assimilated into western culture (BBQ's with neighbors, partying at bars and strip clubs, living in suburbs, etc) makes it difficult for any Muslim to claim no affiliation or sympathies with extremists- people just say "yeah, that's what they want us to believe, but I'm not buying it".... Barack Obama has proclaimed his Christianity to the world, and I still hear on an almost daily basis that he's a closet Muslim, and by extension a terrorist sympathizer. Various individuals and groups have disavowed any allegiance to the extremists on multiple occasions, but the sad truth is that many people cannot and will not trust that they are being honest.