That is the position of the paragon of “small government” we are currently discussing, Bryan Fischer. Technically, I think he allows as how, out of the goodness of their hearts, Christians in America should maybe allow “cults” like Mormonism. But he believes that the government has the power to outlaw non-Christian religions. This would be a major expansion of the power of government over what it has now–not only the power to outlaw non-Christian religions, but also therefore the power to define what is and is not “Christian”.
Sheer Orwellian doubletalk. Freedom Is Slavery! The protection of individual liberty is not an expansion of government power, because what individual liberty is being protected against is the government. (A private individual can always kick all the heathens and cultists out of his own home.) The expansion of the protection of religious liberty from “all Protestants” to “all Trinitarian Christians” to “all persons” is a progressive reduction in government power over religion and conscience.
So is any member of this message board going to step up and admit that they think LDS is a cult?
I’m pretty anti-Mormon as far as mildly anti-religious agnostics go. There does seem to be something that promotes cultlife behavior or offshoots that are cults. But nevertheless, mainstream LDS is not a cult.
“Cult” is just a pejorative word for “small religion that I don’t like”, anyway. Labelling a small religion a cult if they hold abhorrent beliefs doesn’t add to the informational content, since I don’t like most religions, anyway
Well, so what? He wants to expand the power in some spheres, and diminish it in others. Unless you can show that he is aiming for a net increase in power, then he can still be advocating for a net smaller government. You’r just perpetuating the meme I mentioned above.
No, there is no attempt to define something as it’s opposite.
You’re just making shit up to make this guy seem worse than he actually is, and I can’t for the life of me see why that is necessary.
I agree that “cult” is a loaded word. It conjures up the image of some small group with a crazy, charismatic leader which kidnaps gullible people, “brainwashes” them, and keeps them isolated form their former lives.
As someone who was raise Catholic, but now has absolutely no religious inclination, I have to admit that any thoughts on my part that Mormonism is somehow nuttier than other religions is just a result of my own internal biases based on what seems like “normal” religion to me. Mormons just believe in more recent nutty stuff than other Christians. But not nuttier in an objective sense.
Actually, John, I wasn’t saying Bryan Fischer is engaging in Orwellian doublespeak. (Well, OK, he is–like you said yourself “Liberty means freedom, and there is nothing about banning homosexual relationships that is compatible with advocating liberty.”)
But YOU are the one engaging in Orwellian doublespeak:
This is just pure bullshit. I already explained how. There is simply no way to argue that eliminating the religious freedom of non-Christians–giving government greater power to control the practice and expression of religious belief–somehow equates to making government smaller.
If an actual libertarian wants to use the “Big Government” rhetoric to beat me up with, well, that’s fair. I do believe in a bigger government than those guys. But I am sick and tired of the beady-eyed moralizers appropriating the “Oh, we’re in favor of small government, not like you Big Goverment Liberals” rhetoric in order to advocate the state sticking its nose into people’s bedrooms or for Christ’s sake advocating that the goverment have the power to define an official religion.
The best way that I’ve heard this guys viewpoint explained is that liberty includes his freedom to discriminate against other people. Your taking away his liberty to deny people of their liberty, if that makes sense. I think it’s absolutely stupid, but it certainly describes the way some of these people seem to think.
Sure there is, as I already explained. As long as he argues for a net smaller government by advocating larger cuts in government in other areas, then he can still say is for smaller government.
If I say I want 4 more of X and 7 less of Y, then I’m -3 net.
Well, the fact that you are tired of something is not an argument as to whether it is correct or not.
“Well, if the 1st amendment only applied to Christians, but we got rid of all those pesky laws about minimum wages and dumping toxic substances in the river and child labor and not padlocking the doors of your garment factory from the outside, then the net effect would be smaller government.”
You said:
“Well, if the 1st amendment only applied to Christians, that would make the government smaller, since it wouldn’t have to defend other religions.”
Which makes no fucking sense. It betrays a basic misunderstanding of how law and government work.
I still think there’s some dishonesty involved. When someone says they’re in favor of “small government” it implies that their priority is just that, small government. But these people are advocating for policies that would increase government involvement in certain areas. Now, it may be true that if all their policies were enacted that the net result would be a smaller government than we have now, but that is incidental. It is the policies that are the priority. Making calls for “small government” conceals their true agenda and lets them recruit people who are dissatisfied with other aspects of government as if they all shared the same priorities.
Are any of those topics at all related to or inconsistent with abortion or birth control? I don’t understand the parallel you’re trying to draw to explain the people who claim to want limited government except when they want big brother to save them from homos, dissidents, or to subsidize big business.
For the life of me, I cannot take the words “small government” seriously. Its a total shuck, it has no practical meaning. By what possible fantasy could the government of a nation, with borders, armies, currency, etc. ever be “small”. A dainty, petite Marine Corps for invading unpopulated islands? A taxation system that sometimes drops by your house, see if you’re in the mood to chip in? National Pledge Week? C’mon.
The government of the United States simply cannot be small, that ship has sailed, and its a big mother. The only worthwhile question is whether that government is responsive to its citizens. So long as the government is of, by, and for the people, it is of no real consequence whether it is “small”, whatever the hell that means.
'Luci, I don’t think anyone for one second believe you’re confused by what small (or limited, if you prefer) government means. I do agree it’s a phantasm though. As soon as you hand over the coercive power of the state there’s no turning back because they’re the guys with the guns and the laws, not you. It’ll grow as powerful as it can manage in order to look after domestic interests.
I think these guys who advocate for “small government” have some idea that things were better some time in the past, and that government was smaller then. For example, before we had a federal Dept. of Education. These guys are backward looking, and generally speaking, government has gotten bigger as time has progressed. I mean, all you have to do is look at the federal budget as compared to inflation and you might notice a trend.
I don’t want to give these guys too much credit for thinking this all the way through, but I’m not so sure they care that much about the power of state government. What they care about is the power of the federal government. So, if you look at something like Lawrence, that’s the feds expanding their power into an area once controlled by the states. To most of us, that looks like an expansion of freedom. To these guys, it’s an overreach of federal authority.
Actually, that analogy fails. The argument being made isn’t that fiscal conservatives must always speak about fiscal conservative policies or else they’re being hypocritical.
The argument is that in this case in particular, and in many cases in general, social conservativism and fiscal conservativism is diametrically at odds with one another and no one within the conservative movement ever points out the hypocritical nature of that stance.
To take it back to your analogy, it would be like a Planned Parenthood convention where they said “we need abortions for everyone! Let’s lobby Congress to tax the bottom 50% of Americans to pay for it!” and everyone saying “hmm…well, I like abortions so this sounds like an awesome idea.”
