Pope Ratzi

The BBQ Pit
421

You see a logical chasm, I see a pothole that was neglected to keep this thread somehow tangentially related to the Pope and the Catholic church, and to keep my post from becoming thesis-length.

The paper is about factions. You take any sample of people in the US outside of Castro street, and you’re going to get more people in the Catholic faction than you are in the homosexual faction. If the insistence is that Catholics alone only make up a plurality instead of a majority, then just replace “Christians” for “Catholics,” or I guess even more accurately “all those opposed to same-sex marriage on religious principle.”

Sorry, but I don’t give a good God Damn what you think about gay marriage, furt. You and Bricker brought up Federalist #10 as an absolution from voting out of concern for the public good. I explained why I don’t think it is. You demanded a specific example instead of talking in vague platitudes. I provided one, and anyone who recognizes my screen name knows exactly which example I’m going to pick. I’m not sure what more would constitute being “worth” an actual response from you, so in lieu of that, I’ll simply offer up a most heartfelt “fuck you.”

Bricker, on the other hand, is worth replying to. Because I believe I finally understand the point he’s trying to make, but that it’s short-sighted.

Not hardly! In fact that’s almost the opposite of what I’m saying. What’s good for me is what I say it is. What’s good for you is what you say it is. The common good is that we both get our way in cases where they don’t conflict, and that there is a rational way to resolve conflicts when they do.

You are steadfast in your belief that representative democracy is sufficient as a rational way to resolve conflicts. And you mentioned the Federalist papers as a cite for this. My example was intended to demonstrate that a representative democracy alone isn’t sufficient, and it doesn’t remove the need for individuals to vote according to the common good instead of self-interest.

Here’s a quote from earlier in the thread:

In Federalist #10, Madison was no more absolving you of the responsibility of voting towards the public good, than Miller’s parents were telling him to go out and get fucking shitfaced!

The paper says that it is the ideal that no self-interested minority faction be able to sieze control of the government against the wishes of the majority, nor that any self-interested majority faction be able to oppress the desires of a minority. Now, it says that it’s inevitable that people will let their passions and opinions overtake rational thought and they’ll act out of self-interest, and we’ve seen that to be the case. Therefore, some rational mechanism is required to prevent that from overtaking everything, and a republic is a far far better mechanism to handle that than a pure democracy or loose confederacy. It addresses the large majority of those situations perfectly equitably without causing the country to descend into civil war or a totalitarian state.

But ethically, not legally: is that alone sufficient? Are we not bound to at least make rational considerations to try and uphold the original principles behind the republic in the first place? Do we only have the choice of acting completely out of self-interest, or abandoning our liberty altogether?

What happens when we run into a case where the republican system fails to protect a minority opinion from being overwhelmed by a majority one? Are we left with no recourse? We’re supposedly not allowed to appeal to the judiciary, because that creates activist judges who are ignoring the will of the people. We’re not allowed to entreat people to vote for the common good, because that violates the freedom of religion and the First Amendment and the liberty of everyone to vote out of self interest. What’s left? Nothing?

You could say (and I think are saying, but I may be mistaken) that in my example, the proponents of same-sex marriage are the obnoxious individual faction attempting to exert undue influence on the will of the majority and suppressing their freedom of religious belief. Or, “what’s common good is what I say is common good.” But all I see are numerous examples of how it’s not a direct conflict of interest against religious belief, and there are no rational non-secular arguments against, so it’s just a case of oppression.

I don’t want to start yet another tangential argument, but I only say this as a counter-example to the accusation that I act only out of self-interest: As I’ve said before, I’m morally opposed to polygamy. Everything I understand about my religion is against it on principle. And as I’ve said before, if the vote were completely up to me with absolutely no outside considerations, I would vote against it. However, it has been demonstrated to me on this message board, that that’s neither a secular nor rational viewpoint. It doesn’t affect me directly, I have no objections to it other than religious ones, and I have heard examples of people who claim that it works for them. So I would be ethically obliged to vote in support of it if a rational presentation of it were brought to ballot.

And example 3, that This Year’s Model brought up and I never replied to: gambling. He’s opposed to legalized gambling, and would vote against it, and has in the past. His reasoning is that there are rational arguments against it, and it does affect society as a whole. Therefore, he has a valid non-secular reason for voting against it. Personally, I don’t agree with his conclusions, but I believe that his vote is completely valid and permissable. However, if he’d simply said, “I’m against gambling because the Bible says it’s wrong,” that would be impermissable. Religion can most definitely be part of a justification, but it can’t be all of a justification.

422

Incorrect; we brought it up in response to your assertion that the framers wished SOCAS to extend all the way into each individual citizen’s mind.

I’ve repeatedly asked you for any sort of support for this claim, which you still have not supplied, and I expect never will. Federalist #10 was commended to you as an example that the opposite was in fact true: that the framers expected that citizens would vote as they saw fit, and the competing factions would balance out. Is this a guarantee of perfection? No; the framers never claimed it was. It’s called “The American Experiment” for a reason.

Instead of defending your claim about the design of the framers, you have only responded how you think it should work; which I have pointed out is a completely different thing.

In point of fact, I agree with you, and my reasong process is rather similar to yours. But what you’re missing is that the issue is not self-interest vs. national interest, but as Bricker has pointed out, whose vision of national interest wins out. Jerry Falwell, hooked up to a polygraph and with a shotgun to his head, will say that he is acting in the best interests of homosexuals.

You are free to follow your conscience in whatever way you see fit; but there is no requirement, nor was there any design, nor yet any expectation that people engage in the same mental process you do.

423

Bullshit. I’ve supplied two fucking novellas of support.

You’ve supplied nothing but condescending one-liners, claims that I’m not saying anything of worth, and nothing but “I’m right and you’re wrong” while accusing me of saying the same thing.

Maybe somebody else will take the time to explain it to you; I think you’re about fucking worthless.

424

Sorry, quoting James Madison and saying he’s wrong is not a cite.

You made a specific claim about the intent of the Founders. You can’t back it up. I’m sorry that pisses you off.

425

Y’see, SolGrundy, that’s the part I’m not getting. Why not? If a person’s religious beliefs inspire their vote, why are they not allowed to use their beliefs when my non-religious beliefs are allowed to inspire my vote?

As much of an atheist as I am, if a Roman Catholic cleric came along running for Congress and said, “I am against the death penalty; I am against legalized gambling; I am for socialized medicine; I am for old age pensions; I am against war; and I am for civil rights - and all these stances are completely inspired by my religious belief!”, believe you me, I’d vote for him in a hot second. (There used to be such priests around - it was JP II who forced Fr. Drinan to retire from Congress.)

How the votes are inspired is none of your or my business. All we can do is agree or disagree. Side with or fight against. Support or oppose.

We do not, and can never have, the right to rule how someone else thinks.

426

I don’t think SolGrundy is saying it should be illegal to vote based solely on religious belief; but that it’s inconsistent with the ideals of the Republic to vote to infringe the rights of others simply because your religious beliefs disapprove of their actions. If a person is committe to freedom then they are obligated to base their votes on reason not faith. Without a rational reason then infringing on others betrays the ideals this nation was founded upon.

427

Well for starters, don’t make it out to be all or nothing. My claim was that it most definitely can be part of the justification for a vote. In fact, it’s inevitable.

I’d be inclined to vote for him, too, since I agree with all of that. (I’m not a fan of gambling myself, so I shouldn’t care if it’s legal or not.) So we could both vote for him, and the three of us are in agreement, and everything’s cool. I don’t care why he believes what he does, as long as he agrees with me.

But what happens when there’s a conflict? What if there are a bunch of non-Catholics who have a differing opinion on one of the issues, and they have a long list of rational, secular objections to our opinion? How does he respond then? “Well that’s what I believe, and you can’t change that.”

You can’t use rational objections to argue against religion; at some level, religion is always based on irrational faith. It’s unassailable. You can’t argue against dogma. It’s not necessarily based on what’s fair for everyone, it’s based on God’s Law. And if you argue that part of the religion just doesn’t make sense, then you are insulting that religion’s God.

So how do you possibly argue against that? If you’re a moron, you say, “Well, your religion is stupid! Fuck your religion!” If you’re a moron of a different stripe, you say, “Tough. I have God on my side, plus there are more of us. I don’t have to defend my religion to you. You don’t like it, move somewhere else.”

If you truly and genuinely care about what’s best for all, you look past your religion, you compromise, you find how your religion doesn’t necessarily apply to all people, and how your religious beliefs and other people’s beliefs can co-exist peacefully. Not because you’re legally required to, but because it’s simply the right thing to do. It doesn’t mean you’re always going to get people to agree with you – I don’t think we’ll ever find an answer to the questions of abortion and the death penalty that satisfy everyone on both a moral and religious level, for example. But it does mean that when they disagree with you, you’ve done everything possible to find out why, and you have a rational explanation for why you’re sticking with your opinion.

Okay, what just happened? How did we get from, “Everyone has the responsibility to to vote considering not just their own self-interests, but the interests of everyone in their community,” to “We must immediately institute Thought Police so that everyone always agrees with me.”

428

I’ll grant it’s not as solid and airtight an argument as just linking to James Madison, posting pompous and condescending one-liners, and accusing me of saying something I’m not, but it’s the best I can do.

I think I see part of your problem, though – you have to read the parts in between those black rectangles. The parts without the boxes around them are the parts where I was talking, not James Madison. Once you read those, you’ll see that I never said “James Madison is wrong” and that you’re an idiot. Hang in there, though, champ: you’ll figure out this whole internet thing soon enough. I believe in you!

429

And the reason The Federalist was trotted out was to show that it ISN’T inconsistent with the ideals of the Republic to vote in this manner.

Ah ha!

(This is a debating term of art, meaning, roughly, “Ah ha!”)

I get it.

You’re arguing not that it’s required, but that it’s the wisest thing to do.

I can hardly argue with that. Of COURSE it’s the wisest thing to do. Any religious-held conviction that cannot point to some aspect of rationality in support of it is on pretty shakey ground, and it’s not wise to base your vote on such a principle.

On that, I am in complete agreement.

Where my red flag waves is for statements like, “It is impermissible to vote for such reasons.” THAT, I don’t agree with. Wise or foolish, voting your conscience is absolutely permissible. It’s a foolish person whose conscience is formed solely by religious pronouncements, and not at all by his own rational examination of the world. But that fool’s vote is permissible.

Just not wise.

430

And how good is your information about what the President believed?

431

Hey, Sevastopol. God knows Bricker can at times be a pompous ass, but at least some of the time he tries to argue on a fair and equitable level. I would have read that statement as “what the President said he believed” with the presumption that he’s telling the truth, like all presumptions subject to disproof.

My concerns about what the President believed and the pre-/post-Iraq War status of that information are twofold:

  1. If we thought we had that information, why is it not now made public? While we may have the occasional mole in other countries who needs to be protected, the majority of the information would have come from within Iraq, and can now be made public. Why isn’t it?

  2. To what extent was the information given the President and his advisors “telling them what they wanted to hear,” creating a vicious cycle in which policy and information-gathering reinforce each other towards an end desired by some, probably for political reasons?

Mr. Bush may have been as honest as the day is long, but acting on information garnered in the expectation that he wanted justification for a war on Iraq, which of course would reinforce his preconception that we needed to make war on Iraq. And anyone who has ever worked with inconclusive data knows how easy it is to read inferences into data that point in the direction of what you presuppose.

432

I love you too. :slight_smile:

Correct.

If we had an Iraqi mole, and that person is still able to play a role in the new Iraqi government, then why would we destroy his effectiveness by revealing his -pre-war espionage for us? Better to leave him in place where he can spy on the new government for us.

I think that’s a good description of what happened. I’d say most of the key pieces of deduction arose from that sort of process.

Yes, that’s exactly what I think happened.

433

That’s basically it. I used the word “impermissible” because that was the word you used in the post to which I was responding. There’s no mechanism to guarantee that people will vote responsibly; that’s not possible. If someone votes in favor of religous dogma instead of in favor of the principles of the United States, rational discourse, and the equality of all people, then I’d say he’s being more than just “foolish” – I say that ethically, his vote is worthless. Realistically, of course, his vote is worth as much as everyone else’s.

My frustration came from the feeling that I’m desperately trying to make a point, and everyone else is just trying to win an argument. Make one too-clever comment about separation of church and state being written into the Constitution, and people respond as if the entire principle is invalid.

I still maintain that according to Madison, the ideal of the Republic is to account for the fact that people will inevitably vote according to passion instead of reason. And that as described in his preamble, the ideal of America is that when different passions conflict, reason is the arbiter. Ergo, religious beliefs shouldn’t have the final say in civil disagreements, whether at the federal, state, local, or personal level. Why do people hate America so much?

And now that calm and reason have returned, I can address a left-over point:

I’ll just say that I’m skeptical. I’ve no doubt that there are people out there who do sincerely believe that their opposition to same-sex marriage is for the common good, that if they could just get the homosexuals to overcome their lustful temptation or mental illness, that they’d all be much happier. For those people, it does come down to a difference of opinion, and that’s valid. Falwell is not one of those people.

But I believe that most of the opponents don’t even think about it that far. They’re doing exactly what Madison predicted they would, acting out of self-interest. They’re saying that it’s icky and gross to me, it’s sinful to me, that they can do whatever they want, but my voting for it would be the same thing as my condoning it, and my beliefs and my liberty are crucial and defended by the Constitution, so I’m in no way obligated to vote for it.

And while they’re dead wrong that voting to allow something is exactly the same as condoning it, they’re right that they’re not legally obligated to vote for it. And their vote, like their religious beliefs, are unassailable. So nothing happens. And the most vocal opponents do everything they can to subvert the representative democracy in order to make sure that nothing happens, that majority wins, and that the status quo is maintained. A representative would be obligated to act on behalf of all of his constitutents, even the homos. A judge would be obligated to analyze the situation based on reason and equality instead of just religion and having a gut-feeling that it’s wrong and makes him uncomfortable. So the opponents always make sure that it’s left up to a popular vote, knowing that people are going to say “well I don’t have a dog in this fight, so I can vote however I want.”

And I’ve just taken the thread even more off-topic than I intended to, so that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

434

Mmmmm…mental image.