That is hilarious. The first time all year you didn’t all-cap Trump’s name just so you didn’t look stupid giving your “virtue signal” dig. Are you gonna switch back?
This is a really ugly sentiment. Replace the word “Muslims” with “Jews” to see how it sounds, and kindly remember that Christians (a substantial majority of the electorate) have a dismal human rights record if you take much more than the last 50 years into account.
A hundred years ago, women in the US couldn’t vote. Black people were not free.* Native Americans were not citizens, and the government was actively suppressing their languages and cultures. Things are not perfect, but look how far we’ve come in 100 years.
Muslim (and other) immigrants will cover that same distance in a generation and a half or less.
*Edit: practically speaking, I mean. I know when slavery ended!
Why should we take more than the last 50 years into account? It doesn’t matter if those people would make equally bad immigrants, because those people are dead, and nobody’s stupid enough to argue we should be allowing tens of thousands of zombies to immigrate to the United States.
Because if you don’t know your own fucking recent history, you don’t deserve to be making political decisions.
If a sizable percentage of Jews were Orthodox, I would have no trouble saying the same about them. In fact, I can say it right now about Orthodox Jews:
I don’t really want Orthodox Jews becoming a large percentage of the electorate. (The outrageous situation in East Ramopo, NY, gives a good indication on a local level of what a disaster that would be.)
People need to stop treating adherence to religious dogma like it’s similar to race, gender, or sexual orientation. In the free world, at least, one can freely abandon a religious affiliation–and I highly recommend they do.
Indeed. It sounds quite like the nativist nonsense against the Irish or Italians a hundred years ago. And people are going to be quite ashamed they reveled this sort of bigotry.
Once again: you are conflating race/ethnicity with allegiance to an ideology. I’m not going to let you get by with that–I’m gonna call you on it every time.
Religion is not merely an ‘ideology’ - as I pointed out upthread people like Harris and Maher, and apparently yourself, don’t understand religion. This is one of those instances.
Think about this, what exactly do you consider the line between Judaism as a religion and Judaism as an ethnicity? Because there are plenty of atheistic Jews who would strongly consider themselves Jewish.
That’s fine, but Judaism is really the only religion you ever really hear that about. And as I thought I made clear, I don’t have any problem with non-Orthodox Jews.
You’ve never heard of “Easter and Christmas Christians” or those who are “Catholic in Name Only”? There are tons of Muslims who merely identify as Muslim. Why, because the faith is part of their identity - it’s far more culture than spiritual to them. For example, I’d bet that the number of Muslims in the West who drink alcohol is pretty high percentage.
That’s not the same as being a flat-out atheist and still calling yourself Muslim or Catholic. And “Catholic” is not the same thing as “lapsed Catholic”. Furthermore, those secular Jews may very well have grandchildren who still think of themselves as Jewish. There’s no way two lapsed Catholics will have grandchildren who call themselves Catholic, unless there was some kind of intervening union with a Catholic.
This. I’m a cradle Catholic. I haven’t set foot in a church of any kind since my mother’s funeral in 2010. I haven’t attended Mass regularly since roughly 1990. But I’m still culturally Catholic. Toss me a “The Lord be with you” and “And also with you” flies out of my mouth. I still love liturgical music. I still make the sign of the cross when I pass the “tabernacle ray”* of a Catholic church. That’s all pretty much unconscious reflex. I’m a total atheist…no actual Catholic (or any other religious) belief in my consciousness.
*Tabernacle ray = the forward-vectored geometric ray originating at the centerpoint of a Catholic tabernacle, in which the Real Presence is supposed to be housed. There were 20 Catholic parishes in my hometown. Riding in the car with my mom was EXERCISE!
Of course, freedom of “allegiance to an ideology” is enshrined in the Constitution, so call it all you want but discriminating on the basis of religious belief alone is a no-no.
Yes, the same Constitution that allowed Southern states to enslave human beings but still count 60% of their numbers for congressional and Electoral College representation. Nothing magic about the Constitution. We could and should eliminate that protection (and start taxing the hell out of churches).
There’s plenty magic about the Constitution. It’s the underpinning law of the land and requires a hell of a lot of effort and cooperation to change it. Somehow I don’t think allowing religious discrimination is going to garner such effort and cooperation.
I’m not saying it’s likely to happen. Neither is reform of the apportionment of Senate seats (actually much more difficult due to the “without its consent” bit) or the Electoral College, but that doesn’t change the fact that they would be good things to do.
No it would be a bad thing. It opens the door to banning political positions. Would you really need the Constitution changed to start taxing Churches anyway?
I thought I was Christian until I went to a Catholic high school for two years. I didn’t know anything about “my” religion barring that Jesus existed and was the son of God, and you prayed to God to say thank you and if you wanted stuff. Things I was ignorant or wrong about:
- I thought Mary was god’s wife and therefore a sort of goddess
- I didn’t know what the trinity was
- I didn’t know what mass / communion was
- I didn’t know the difference between Protestants and Catholics (I had one parent from each)
- I didn’t know any of the stories from the Bible, up to and including the death-and-resurrection stuff. I knew Easter and Christmas were things but nothing about the religious connections.
Even though I don’t believe in the religion, so much of my cultural and intellectul heritage stems from Christendom, and so many of my relatives are believers including my mother, that it would be deceptive to pretend it’s a group I’m not part of. I’m just collassally bad at it with no desire to change.
How do you figure? Freedom of speech and assembly cover that just fine.
Doesn’t freedom of speech and assembly cover religion pretty well also?