BULLDOG okay here's my attempt to explain why the left is allowed to be so biased
and contradict its own principles:
The conservatives who believe in following the spirit of the laws, and take equal responsibility, have their churches and other means of enforcing their own free exercise. They are expected to promote their beliefs and practices VOLUNTARILY and in PRIVATE through their churches and religious activities and outreach. They do not need govt to establish their beliefs and rights in order to exercise their ability to practice and enforce these directly themselves.
The left that is secular does not have these advantages.
They depend on govt to act as their central authority to endorse and establish collective identity policy and practice. (And in order to get these through govt, they rely on PARTY and MEDIA the way the right uses their church networks to organize and represent themselves collectively.)
This isn't just another choice to the left "to go through govt".
it is a REQUIREMENT for their equal exercise and equal rights and protections.
many do not feel they have equality WITHOUT laws being established through govt
which is their way of expressing and representing their beliefs and identity collectively.
For the right, if they want to establish their beliefs, it has to be done by education and free choice. They are not allowed to force it through govt. They have their churches to use.
For the left, their beliefs do not count as religious. Since these are secular, they are not barred from establishing through govt (unless a law is passed that specifies this). Currently the First Amendment only cites RELIGIOUS beliefs, but there is no legal precedent for applying "religious freedom" more universally to include POLITICAL beliefs.
Until and unless that happens, the left uses this law as written and interpreted by precedent
to bar RELIGIOUS beliefs from being pushed through govt
while allowing their POLITICAL SECULAR BELIEFS to be mandated as "not religious."
The liberals and secularist may always have this bias in their favor.
It could be that the church laws are meant to be dominated by the rightwing conservative/religious
and the civil govt is meant to be dominated by the leftwing secular bias in beliefs and practice.
As long as the right excludes the left and teaches the church policies to be EXCLUSIVE
the left will seek to balance this power by using the GOVT to be equally biased the other way.
So to change this
the right would have to open up the churches to teach more UNIVERSALLY INCLUSIVE of all faiths,
before the left would no longer depend on govt to protect them equally
and could open up the govt policies to be truly INCLUSIVE instead of biased against the religious right.
I got as far as the right are all god fearing people, and the left are all heathens before I stopped. If you continue to believe all the crap that right wing radio claims about liberals, you will remain just as ignorant as you are today.
Dear
BULLDOG I consider myself equally a secular gentile brought up under natural laws and nontheistic terms.
So that's why I am harder on liberals and Democrats because I am one, and I take responsibility for my peers
and what we do as a group. If we have problems and conflicts within our own ranks, I am going to hold myself
and my colleagues to fix our own problems first, as having the main influence and abìlity to bring about change.
I am also "hearing" in your posts a bias that all the religious right are the cause of oppression
and the left can do no wrong. Forgive me if that's not what you believe or defend.
I have seen fellow Democrats censor and destroy the plans, communities, finances
and efforts of our own constituents by projecting all blame on the right
and taking no responsibility for where we invest in corrections ourselves.
So that's why I am so intent on fixing what problems I have run across among my own party.
That's where I'm coming from.
As for the right, I find the Christians and Conservatives are MORE amenable to
ACCEPTING CORRECTIONS shared by peers BASED on enforcing Constitutional or Biblical principles. I find them better at checking their own. Because they have taken a sacred oath to uphold the Constitution, and/or the Bible, so they can be held to answer to those. If the left doesn't do the same, but tows the party line first as their religion, then we're not using common laws and principles to stay on the same page. We need to enforce a common frame of reference as the rules. But if both sides only follow what their party says, then we're all lost, pulling in opposing directions with no chance of getting back on common track.
With the left, the rise of Sanders supporters is the first major media coverage taken seriously
of the long oppressed progressive voices silenced and hijacked by the liberal elitists running the Party, as well as the Media.
We have an opportunity to show we are trying to correct the problems from within and among our own ranks. It's not just following the same old same old "just to stay in power." But it's a chance to show (1) the real ideals these masses support and (2) that these AREN'T against what the right wants. The goals actually point to the same solutions that are going to satisfy both!
But for too long, the liberal left has been painted as the helpless victims.
With no choice but to "tow the party line" right or wrong, just to organize our numbers and get figureheads elected to office. The focus has not been on investing our own resources and leadership DIRECTLY into solving our own problems ourselves without depending on govt or party to dictate solutions for us.
Only the right has been credited for arguing against govt controls and investing directly in private individuals, businesses, and ownership
to manage policies locally by self-governance and independence from govt.
So whatever "political belief" this is which the party line has been towing,
that we "need to depend on govt" for health care, on govt for establishing rights and protections
against abuses by the religious right and their corporate forces,
I stand with the REAL progressives and even the socialist reform groups
pushing for WORKER owned co-ops and health care, taking BACK control
of resources and districts to manage education and services locally and democratically.
But all I hear in the media is left bashing right and right bashing left.
In reality I found that the Libertarians advocating lìmited govt and maximum liberty of the people,
the Conservatives and Capitalists seeking more local controls and ownership,
ALIGN with the progressive Greens and even Socialists who want workers to own and manage
resources and business WITHOUT the class conflicts and monopoly/abuse of corporate interests interfering.
So we actually have common principles if we can get past the left/right bashing and mutual rejection going on.
BULLDOG I apologize if I misread you as a reactionary against the right.
So many of my fellow liberals and progressives have to fight this battle every day in Texas,
I am used to the defensiveness and attacks on both sides.
I am trying to promote solutions that include the principles on both sides.
The reason I criticize the left is that there is not the same respect for corrections
that I have seen the right use to go after and police their own. I think they've gone too far,
where the far far right was refusing to even work out transitional steps to get to a better place.
but the left has always fallen short in this area, and forgiven too much for the sake of keeping
a unified front, to the point where the damage and losses from corruption are crippling if these are never corrected.
I am pushing for as much correction on the left and the right, to stop abuses,
and go after COLLECTIONS and credit OWED to taxpayers for abuses of govt that have cost us huge debts and damages.
But from my experience, the right has plenty of support to correct themselves, with the Tea Party and Trump
and Cruz and all the conservatives fighting and calling out wherever they find govt BS going on.
The left with the media backing both Clintons and Obama have excused if not covered up for wrongs,
and have yet to hold such leaders to correct the damages done to constituents much less the rest of the nation.
So that's where my focus has been.
The right has gone after their own, and yes there was censorship to silence first Cruz and the Tea Party and then shut down Trump.
They've had to deal with all that, and they are still coming out better than the left.
Sanders and the Green supporters tried to hold Clinton responsible for stopping the BS
and creating real change reform and solutions. So that story and where we are heading
is still in our hands. I hope we speak out as loudly and boldly as Trump, and get the
real voices and solutions out that the grassroots has been fighting for. It seems the left
has been too busy silencing its own members, and doesn't need help from the right to destroy itself.
Others are saying the same about the right, which is suffering similar infighting and obstructing the bigger principles
in the name of politics.
BULLDOG if we can do better to hear each other here, maybe there's hope for both parties to do the same.
Thank you and please keep posting and sharing.
Every bit helps. We have to hear and understand each other
if we are going to get anywhere, past all this right/left paradigm . . .
