But I don’t think we’re talking about who among today’s rank and file citizenry holds what opinions – we’re talking about the basis of the laws forbidding these things.
Also, while there’s no way to prove it, it’s my opinion that most of the oposition to these various things is religion-based, although not everyone with these attitudes will admit that they’re religion-based – most, not all (there are always exceptions).
Aldebaran (“there’s no such thing as Islamic terrorist”),
US judicial system is founded on a principle of providing equal protection under law for all people regardless of faith, ethnicity, and political allegiance or lifestyle choices. Therefore, there can be no such thing as a biased US judge.
This court doesn’t see merit in continuing discussion on this subject.
Signed,
The Hanging Judge.
P.S. If ever find yourself trespassing through my jurisdiction, don’t yew make anytrouble, boy!
President Bush makes a weekly radio address to the nation. Since 2003 began, he has made 31 of these addresses. In only three of them did he make any mention at all of God or religion: 1) during the Easter/Passover season, 2) on our Independence Day, 3) and once during Operation Iraqi Freedom (“We know that freedom is the gift of God to all mankind, and we rejoice when others can share it.”)
In all the various press conferences that President Bush has held in 2003, he has mentioned “God” once (March 6).
You castigate Bush for referring to God all the time and hold up Belgium as a model civilization as far as SOCAS goes. Well, frankly I agree with you that Bush goes whining to God too much.
Unfortunately, you follow that with an example of the king of Belgium refusing to sign a law because it goes against his religious principles. As I said, I do agree that Bush refers to God WAY more often than I am comfortable with but as far as I know he has never refused to sign a bill into law because of his religious beliefs. So, which is it? Frankly, Belgium sounds worse than the US when it comes to SOCAS.
Regards
Testy
Do Belgians feel that way about the Brits too?
Thanks for some facts, Walloon.
Aldebaran, you stated:
An elected or appointed official in Belgium who made reference to God or religion in a speech or public commentary would be thought mad, ruin his career and would incite deafening protest from the public. That’s your assertion, and it is understood.
In America, the difference is that there is not a presumption that an elected official, be they judge, governor, congresperson or president, is “ready for the madhouse” because they dare to utter a remark which references their personal faith-based beliefs. The only presumption is that people should be judged on their official actions or their stated intentions. They are free to believe as they choose and to publicly state those beliefs.
However, if a judge starts making rulings based on Mosiac law or Shari’a or Hammurabi’s Code in contradiction to the laws of our nation, his decisions will be appealed and he will face strong opposition in the next election or, if his actions are truly egregious in the eyes of the electorate, a recall.
If a senator starts spouting off about how we might have been better off with forced segregation or how homosexuals are the moral equivalent of necrophiliacs and beastialists because “that’s what God says,” he’s going to be up against the wall come election time. But even then, what happens next will be a result of the decision of the voters, not because the general public clamors and slanders.
Does this mean that we don’t have a secular government? No, it means that we have a government which is secular in function but made up of men and women who are free individuals with the right and ability to believe as they please and speak their own consciences as they see fit – free to do so largely because they will face the repercussions of the choice to speak, if any, as necessary.
When our governments, on any level (local, state or federal) start enacting laws or programs which favor any religion (of any size or character) in any fashion, or offers benefits or enacts penalties against adherents to some religions (in any way) and not others, we’d consider these things to be breaches of our Constitutionally decreed two-way protections.
But individuals are not the government, even when they are government officials. No one person’s comments, not even the president’s, are always indicative of an official position or decree of our government. If George W. Bush called an address to the nation that was broadcast on every television and radio station in the country tomorrow and said “I state unequivocally that Jesus Christ is Lord and only through submission to and faith in Him will our nation be saved. All Americans need to believe in Jesus. No more Judaism, no more Islam, no more of this Wicca and Paganism and Hinduism. Forget your Buddha and your Zoar, Sikhs unwind your turbans, there should be no more Jains or Animists. Christianity is the only answer.” until there is a law enacted which demands that all Americans pay at least lip service to faith in Jesus, it’s nothing more than the opinion of George W. Bush. He would be judged on it, there would be many who would choose not to vote for him because of it and then, there would be many who would choose to vote for him because of it. Freedom, again, reigns.
Further, we are a nation with a diverse population of nearly 300 million people. The number of notable comments and public officials taking religiously based stances is not nearly significant in quantity to qualify as anything more than a blip on the radar screen here, no matter how significant or unusual they appear elsewhere. And, as has been noted, since the majority of those who are taking stances aren’t advocating or justifying acts of violence or opporession against innocent people to further their own religious or political goals, it is not inconsistent that our focus would be on those who are doing so.
You got any proof of that falsehood?
Dal may have other sources, but this site goes into a lot of detail:
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/mashist.htm
The list includes George Washington, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, several signers of The Declaration of Independence, several signers of the Constitutiion and even LaFayette. Most of Washington’s generals were freemasons.
Is it my imagination or has the world grown a lot more suspicious of the masons than they were twenty or thirty years ago? When I was growing up in a small town in the rural South, just about every man I knew was a mason. The women belonged to a corresponding organization, the Eastern Star. There were also special clubs for teenage girls and boys.
Well, if you feel comfortable with a president and politicians and judges who make of their faith constantly a statement in public speaches, thus clearly indicating that their faith influences their line of thinking and their way of governing and decision making, that is your choice.
As it is however that the USA mingles itself in countries wordlwide - approval and acting on a principle of flattening a sovereign nation including invading it and occupying it - in complete violation and comtempt for international law…
You should be at the very least be able to understand that a president, government, judge who declare and show openly that God in the form Christians perceive Him is what inspires them, are showing constantly to the rest of the world that the USA is a country where Christian fanatics rule and where government decisions are largely influenced by such fanatics and where the State leader is such a fanatic.
If you think that a country like Belgium where the head of State, in casu the king - who by the way can’t act on his own responsibility but needs to be in alignment with the government - can’t refuse to sign a law that was voted and approved in a democratic way, is such an extreme a bad example of how complete separation of religion and state is endorsed and implemented;
I can only tell you that I wouldn’t like to live in the USA where people claim to live in a secular nation while president and government and judges are that influenced by their religion that they constantly feel the urge to speak as if God is personally on their side.
Where rethorics like “God bless America”, “God’s Nation”, “God this and God that” are constantly part of public speaches of president and other civil servants payed by the tax money. Where the name God is even printed on the money in complete disregard of those people who don’t even believe in a God. Where children are forced to utter the name God daily at schools and where a judge is elected while campaigning on endorsement of that same type of fanaticism and puts the Christian Ten Commandments in a public courthouse.
I find such a nation where such habits are seen normal while it has the military power to flatten the whole world - and has shown to be most ready to do so - a danger to world peace.
I find citizens of that nation who find such religious fanaticism absolutely normal, not seeing the lunaticism of it, a danger for their nation and since that nation can flatten the world: for the whole world.
Americans are very quick to boast about living in such a nation that in fact spends their tax money largely on research and fabrication of the most murderous weapons the world has ever seen, and is most ready to use them in order to protect its economical interests no matter the cost of lives in other nations and no matter the violation of international rights.
Many Americans are very proud of this ability of the USA to have dreams of world domination and of a government that is quite busy to bring those dreams into reality.
Yet they are not very quickly to accept that if you are proud to be part of such, you have also your part in the responsibility to have such overwhelming power handed over to people who think and reason as someone who leads such a nation should think and reason: namely completly secular = without their brains filled with religious rethoric and religious thoughts, shining through speaches while giving order to go kill thousands of people,telling the US population that their sons and daughters are fighting “evil” and letting them know that God inspires him. That in fact he is so to speak the president of the USA because God found that needed for America.
Allowing and applauding by a large part of the US population such religious obsessed president and government, putting such a fanatical Christian judge in such powerful position, finding it normal that such is possible, are to me signs that the USA urgently needs to wake up.
The mistrust worldwide of your current government isn’t only due to the criminal blunders and the arrogance they display.
Everyone I speak with in every country I visit has more then enough of this fanatical exaggerated religious aura your current president and government likes to keep up.
If you think the Christian rethoric of your president (he is not the first to do this yet the first to exaggerate that much and using it while invading a sovereign nation) is only a problem in the MENA region or to Muslims wordlwide, then you should listen a bit to how it is perceived in the rest of the world
If you aren’t able to understand that the actions of this particular judge are the more a sign to the outside that the USA is a country where every extreme lunatic is made able to have a powerful position (and I’ve read this man’s next plan is to become governor), then I think you have a problem with understanding the unease the world feels today with everything that goes on in the USA and especially with its foreign policies and the way those are selled sauced with religious rethoric to the US public. (I don’t consider them to have any foreign policy worth to describe with that term, but that is an other issue).
Salaam. A
Zoe: dal didn’t say that some Freemasons founded the country, he said that THE Freemasons founded the country. That’s conspiracy theorist crap. The organizatio of Freemasonry did not found the country.
p.s. The special club for teenage boys I joined is DeMolay. The girls’ organizations are the Job’s Daughters and the Rainbow Girls.
Aldeberan: I’ve asked you before of what subject you are a professor and at what university. You failed to answer then. I’m now asking you again. Your assertions in this thread have been roundly refuted and you, yet again, ignore the facts presented to you. If you really are a professor, would you accept that stunt from one of your students?
It sounded as though dal believes that “being founded by freemasons” means “…by christians” or “by fundamentalists” or “by religious fanatics”. (dal, please feel free to explainyour point in more detail.) Were the Freemasons of the late 18th century Christians? Humanists? Deists*? Agnostics? Something else? I don’t know. But I do not have the impression that they were religious fanatics.
*A number of the founders were Diests. Sort of the Unitarian Univeralists of their time.
Well, I knew anyone who bothered to post a factual rebuttal to Aldebaran’s wild assertions was wasting his or her time.
OK, A, you’ve convinced me. As an American, I am a personally responsible for every perceived evil on the planet. I am not only ruled by religious fanatics (in every part of government, right down, presumably, to county clerk, as you so kindly pointed out) I AM in fact a religious fanatic myself. I never realized that having the words “in God we Trust” on the money in my wallet made me so, but now I know. That I haven’t been thrown in jail for not going to (presumably a fundamentalist Christian) church for the past 20 years must be some sort of fluke.
That’s what you want to hear, right? Complete agreement with every single statement you make, even if it happens to be factually wrong, is that correct?
OK, I’ve agreed, and agreed enthusiastically, with every single single silly, unsubstantiated, hyperbolic statement you’ve made in this thread. Can we all go home now?
Monty,
Which “assertions”?
I ask questions and I explain how the US system is perceived outside the USA. That is not an invention of mine and not even reflecting my personal observation only.
That is merely explaining how people I talk with react on the system and habits and rethorics in the USA.
And you feel such reactions also in the media outside the USA.
And about your personal question:
Teaching can be very interesting and it is certainly very productive to attribute to the formation of interested young people. But I shall never become part of the team at any university, which has its cause in private reasons.
I’m Arabist and since about two years also European historian.
Like is the case with others there arrive invitations to contribute to colloquims or congresses and if interested to give a lecture, so that is among collegues and interested students. Locations of course vary. But I prefer to only go and listen if I have the time.
And to keep closely in touch with my studiefields I undertake at the moment a research on the socio-cultural impact of the crusades on both the involved European and Muslim societies.
That is with the intention to throw nonchalant an other doctoral thesis on the table of the jury while deafening them with my oral defence. I guess that it shall take at the very least a year or five to come close to be ready. This not only because I’m by nature suffering of periods of extreme lazyness.
So no, you don’t need to be afraid that I’m indoctrinating students in the USA or elswhere.
Salaam. A.
Oh, I had absolutely no illusions whatsoever about your teaching skills, Aldie.
Your OP was rife with invalid assertions. You stated as fact things which are not fact. Other posters have indicated to you the truth of the matter, and unlike you they actually provided citations. You ignored that.
Why is that now exactly the kind of answer I forsaw coming from you?
I must say that it is a bit less ranting then I expected so I guess you get tired of me.
Salaam. A
Care to translate that into understandable English? At any rate, the only ranting I’ve seen here is your rant in the OP.
Well if you find it such a rant = you ifnd it useless waist of time to even read it… Then why bother to enter the topic in the first place?
?
Are you falling in love with me?
Salaam. A.
Aldebaran, if you have time to make sarcastic comments to Monty, you also have time to respond to some of the factual rebuttals in this thread. In particular, please respond to Walloon’s post, in which he shows that your claim is false that Bush “constantly” refers to God in his public statements.
Now, concerning this line in your latest rant:
Once again you are making a false assumption, which you make repeatedly in your posts: that everyone who has responded in this thread supports Bush and Judge Moore.
I personaly think Judge Moore is an ass, but I do not live in Alabama so his actions have no particular influence on me. I am not comfortable with Bush as president; many of the posters to this likely are not comfortable with him as president either. I did not vote for Bush, and in the next election will vote against him again.
If we disagree with some of the statements you make, it is not because we have a vested intertest in defending a corrupt or inept administration, it is because you repeatedly make statements about the US and its people that are factually wrong. Again, refer to Walloon’s most recent post.
I am sure you will ignore this information just as you ignore anything that conflicts with your preconceived notions about the United States, but I though I’d try one more time anyway.