Lib:
Who on Earth does?
ElJeffe:
Could you be a little more specific as to precisely which ‘Christian principles’ were siezed upon by the FFs? After all, Jesus didn’t invent democracy.
“The founding fathers wanted the US to be a nation founded on the moral principles inherent in Christianity…”
El Jeffe, as sqweels has already indicated, this is a rather arguable assertion. It is much more accurate to say that the FFs wanted the US to be a nation founded on the moral principles of the Enlightenment, and Enlightenment thought is not exactly a paean to Christianity (though it is not necessarily antithetical to Christian morality). The FFs knew Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau very well indeed. I think if you look closely into the matter you’ll discover that these thinkers, none of whom regarded himself as a Christian theologian, exerted a major influence on the US constitution.
Separation of powers, the pursuit of happiness, equality under the law, adult male franchise, separation of church and state, freedom of speech: none of these key principles strikes me as “inherent in Christianity.”
—The intention of the Establishment Clause wasn’t to keep religion out of the government.—
This is what Madison and Jefferson seem to think it was (though Jefferson wasn’t involved in the drafitng). It’s important to note that some members DID want to include religious praise in the Constitution, but their suggestions were rejected, for precisely the rationale I noted. It’s not a matter of not wanting the U.S. to be religious, it is rather that the government should not be ceded the AUTHORITY to make them. It was supposed to be a government of limited powers, and it was not given the power to have or enforce religious opinions. That authority was reserved to the people and the states, and later just the people.
—It was to keep the government out of the church - a subtle difference.—
No, it really was both. The feared corruption works both ways.
—The founding fathers wanted the US to be a nation founded on the moral principles inherent in Christianity, and using the Ten Commandments as a basis for its laws, but they didn’t want the state establishing and running a church.—
The Ten Commandments? Not all of the founders were even Christian. The Constitution is the work both Christians and Deists to create a government that not enroach on people’s beliefs (which, accoriding to Englightenment thinking was both pointless and led inevitably to other sorts of tyrrany).
Many people agree on moral values, but the fact that Christians share those values doesn’t make them specifically “Christian.” Indeed, they were the end point of a long long development of justice and law in the West that drew elements from thinkers both Christian and non.
Possibly because fundamentalism has more to do with the personnality of the individual than with his brand of religion. Fundamentalists are usually very conservative (actually reactionnary) people. They cling on the old values and traditions. Catholicism in a catholic country, protestantism in a protestant country.
Steve Wright said:
*So… we have religious tolerance in this country because we needed to legislate for it. In the US, of course, you have separation of Church and State, which in theory means that anyone can believe whatever they like… and in practice means that religion is subject to the blind tyranny of social conformity. *
The complicating factor is that social conformity must encompass Protestantism’s various sects as well as Catholicism and (for the past couple of decades, depending on the region of the country) Judaism.
So perhaps you might say, “the blind tyranny of monotheistic ecumenicalism”. Though even that is challenged at the edges by shifting demographics, Wicca, etc.
Gratuitous slam: I’ll take my constitutional protections, thanks. (Interesting post though, Steve).
If they wanted the United States to be a nation where the worship of “false gods” is forbidden, why did they explicitly contradict this ideal by forbidding any religious test for holding office in Article VI, and by protecting the free exercise of religion in the First Amendment?
Do you have a cite?
I always wondered how Japan, China, and India got by without the 10 commandments to tell them that murder and robbery were wrong.
I’m not sure that I would include China in that list. No one knows for sure just how many millions died during Mao’s purge of art and intellectualism.
According to this citation approximately 25% of the US is Catholic. Catholics are considered by most people to be a fairly mainstream Christian oriented denomination. Except for the more die hard Fundamentalists where do you get this “sect member” stigmatization of Catholics?
Thanks astro for clarifying that. I exaggerated in the first place but the statistics you show for the US are much closer to the 50%/50% distribution between Catholics and Protestants that you usually find in European countries (generalizing).
I guess my misperception came from the fact that Catholics are not very well represented in the government?! I remember a news item about the chaplain of the House that has always been protestant and the fact that very few presidents have been catholic.
Enlighten me if I got this wrong as well.
—I’m not sure that I would include China in that list. No one knows for sure just how many millions died during Mao’s purge of art and intellectualism.—
Well, we know the purges themselves killed at least hundreds of thousands: that’s probably good enough to justify any level of horror.
However, your response is a little disingenuous. While sure, powerful leaders did and do horrible things in China, what’s relevant to Dan’s sarcastic quip is the conduct of the ordinary people in their normal societies, without the widespread belief in the Ten Commandments. And they seem to do as fine in the not killing/stealing/etc. department as anyone else.
Well, according to Catholicism, that would be natural law. Man, they have an answer for everything.
Correct. Kennedy is the only Catholic president in history. In fact, prior to Kennedy, Catholics were seen as mostly unelectable because it was commonly held that their main allegiance was to the Pope and that if a Catholic was President, it might as well be the Pope, since that is who he would be taking orders from. Kennedy ended that.
Read a book called Wingman: The Lucifer Crusade that I picked up in a second-hand shop one day. Real basic summary:
Post WWIII setting. The US has been split in two by a massive sneak attack by the Russians. All the Russian nukes were aimed at the center of the country, from Texas up the great lakes there is a corridor of nuclear wasteland. This came about because the chief villan of the book persuaded the Russians to fire and the Vice President of the US betrayed the deactivation codes for our missile defense systems. This happened on the eve of what should have been world peace. WWIII had just “ended”. WWIII had been fought with conventional weapons and the peace treaty was due to be signed by the US and Russians when the sneak attack was launched just before the signing ceremony.
A ragged band of freedom fighters are fighting back, led by some British officers and the hero of the book, an ace American fighter pilot. At one point the American and one of the British Commanders are reminiscing about the start of WWIII and the sneak attack. The American was lamenting the treachery of his Vice President and the Brit said that they had continued to fight for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons may be applicable to this situation, or at least put the “I guess we’re[British are] just more cynical” feeling that popped up a couple of times in this thread in a different light. I’ll quote to the best of my memory, but it’s been years since I read the book.
“We aren’t as trusting as you Yanks. I don’t blame you, but we’ve had a much longer, and I’m sad to say bloodier, history. Because of the position of our island, much of the bloodshed has happened on our own soil. Not much fazes us these days. Your VP turning traitor and the Russian attack was just another page in what has been a long and bloody history for us.”
So, what about it. Do you think it’s possible for a culture to simply be more Cynical as a whole than another culture? Would this be attributable to the history of the UK(and most other old-world countries actually) of fighting and dying on their own soil that Americans don’t have? Is the American Dream, the ideal that anyone can become a great achiever due to the opportunities and freedom America offers, the true expression of our naievate as a culture?
Or do American religious fundamentalists simply have louder mouths/better PA equipment?
Steven
Yes to both questions. In my limited experience, Europeans are more cynical than Americans. No real way to provide a cite for that, though. And obviously the variation within is greater than the variation between, there are plenty of cynical Americans and naive Europeans, but the average I think is skewed one way. Your theory about it being due to war is interesting but as with all historical theories about the development of national personality traits, more than a little hard to prove.
Why is being cynical important? I would say that being adequately skeptical (including skeptical of skeptics) is the laudable characteristic, not cynicism.
What Apos said: Princhester, you seem to be suggesting a world in which there are doe-eyed naives at one pole and hardened cynics at the other. So Americans are like Bambi and Europeans like the hero of Trainspotting? ;).
Jesus H Christ on a bicycle Mandelstam, did you read my fucking post?
Try reading the third sentence again. And then perhaps again. And maybe a third time.
Bloody hell.
Calm down Princhester–I think you missed the point of my post, which wasn’t in the least to grill you on the barbie.
I agreed with what Apos said: the gist of which (at least as I saw it) wasn’t at all that you are a simplistic anti-American jerk-off, but that you seem to portray a bleak world in which people can either not know (a la some Americans) or know and respond with cynicism (a la some Europeans).
Let me assure you that I am not in the least defensive about characterizations of the United States, critical and otherwise. And I have often made generalizations on these boards about Americans and others.
What I am is a bit of an idealist, if a somewhat pragmatic one, and your post really did make me think of a choice between Bambi and the hero of Trainspotting.
My desire to be humorous lead you to believe, I think, that I was taking the piss at your expense.
Not so. 
Mandelstam are you confusing me with someone else? My post did not draw any conclusion about the issue mentioned by Apos (namely the importance or laudableness of cynicism) at all. It was simply a comment on my perception of regional trends in that respect. I assumed that Apos was commenting on someone else’s post for that reason.
I didn’t think that you were taking the piss, I just thought you were reading something into my post that wasn’t there, and your latest post suggests that you still are.
Anyway, sorry I “went off” to such a degree.
Yes Princhester, looking back you are almost certainly right that Apos was responding to Mtgman, rather than to both of you. I only just noticed the timing of Apos’s post. And I should have made clear in my last that I erred in not addressing myself to him as well as to you when the original premise had originated with him. (Only it was your post, rather than his, that made me think of poles.)
More important than that, I meant my post in an offhand, funny way–and without any intent to be hostile to or critical of either of you. And Trainspotting is one of my favorite movies.
(And I kind of like Bambi too.)
In any case, no need to apologize. This is one of those cases, I think, where had we had been having a real-time, face-to-face conversation over a drink, our respective meanings would have been more clear.
Next round’s on me ;).