I can't really quarrel with this but am trying to keep the discussion on a philosophical level and as non combative as possible here.
Of course Christians can be just as wrong and intrusive on the rights of others as anybody else, and I certainly know groups that have done so by demanding that their preferences be observed at the expense of the unalienable rights of others. Back in Kansas, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of joining with the "Atheists" and a few other liberty minded Christians to protest a drive by the religious community to get some books removed from the school library because the content was not 'acceptable'.
We did prevail in stopping those religious groups from dictating what was and was not acceptable to be included in the school library. I had no problem with them petitioning to have certain books included. That was certainly their right to do as tax payers, citizens of the community, and parents. But I was certainly opposed to them trying to prevent my children from reading certain books that I thought were perfectly okay for my kids' reading list.
That is why this thread is intended to focus on the principles that should guide us as a society and try to avoid judging each other and pointing out each others' sins and error in the process.
Fox, I'm not trying to be combative. I'm trying to focus our attention on the pertinent distinctions of the philosophical issue:
(1) the distinction between inalienable rights/unabridgible civil liberties afforded by nature
and the civil rights/protections afforded by the state, and
(2) the distinction between the private sector
and the public sector. If one doesn't keep the ramifications of these distinctions straight in one's mind, one's going to confound the matter.
You must bear with me here. You're overlooking something very important.
For example, the Christians you're complaining about weren't trying to trammel on your inalienable rights/unabridgible civil liberties.
First, you're talking about a dispute within the public sector, not the private sector.
Second, those Christians weren't trying to impose something on you, but preclude something that you wanted, something those Christians regarded to be an ideological imposition on their children within a forum they could not practically monitor otherwise. It's not unreasonable for any parent to insist that the impressionable minds of his children not be exposed to any number of works on any number of topics outside the context of his immediate purview and exegesis. With all due respect, the charge that your political opponents in this instance were not "liberty minded Christians" is disputable, not necessarily a fact at all relative to the pertinent distinctions of the philosophical issue.
They were defending their constitutionally inviolable parental authority against strangers, and it was the prevailing majority that trammeled on
their inalienable rights and
on their constitutionally unabridgible civil liberties . . . just like the government continues to violate the inalienable rights/unabridgible civil liberties of some by allowing evolutionists to impose
their metaphysics of ontological naturalism in the schools, for example, as if the metaphysics of methodological naturalism were not equally valid . . . as if the government weren't violating the principle of the separation of church and state.
The Court deified the state, effectively and unconstitutionally declaring that ontological naturalism is true and that methodological naturalism is not, and that the latter, given its implications, constitutes an imposition of one man's religion on another man in the public schools. Well, if that's true, what does the former constitute given that neither one of these metaphysical presuppositions for science are scientifically falsifiable?
Hocus Pocus.
Also, the government allows secular progressives to impose their sexual morality on others in the schools as the latter absurdly claim that they are upholding the principle of the separation of church and state . . . not self-servingly lying. It's very strange how the secular progressive seems to grasp the imperative when the Christian demands that the former get his filthy boot off the Christian's neck and instead teach the Christian's sexual values in the same.
That's the problem with the collectivistic, one-size-fits-all configuration of the public education system imposed on us all by the Warren Court in accordance with a bastardized rendition of the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state!
From my blog:
Apparently, the First Amendment's new meaning imbued federal judges with the omniscience to discern for the rest us the difference between those ideas that were religious and those ideas that were not. In other words, judges would direct the schools' curriculum, not the people. By this, however, the Court did not mean to suggest that it was legal for public school teachers to invade American homes and scream obscenities at children; they would just whisper them into children's ears in the public schools.
Hence, the Warren Court resolved a serious problem by further exacerbating it.
After correctly observing that it was unconstitutional for state schools to impose the teachings of Judeo-Christianity on other-religious and non-religious persons, the Court decided to settle the matter by imposing a similar violation on all of us. Instead of simply recognizing that the people who pay the education system's bills should be free to educate their children as they see fit, at home or in a school of their choice, the Court opted to ignore original intent altogether, especially as it pertained to parental consent and authority.
Instead of allowing that a culturally diverse and changing society would require a new means of allocating funds for education in order to satisfy the requirements of the First Amendment for all, the Court elected to enshrine a one-size-fits-all scheme. Instead of requiring the nation's schools to honor the constitutional rights of all their students or close their doors, the Court chose to expel the "Miscreant," known as "God" to many, who had instigated all the hullabaloo in the first place. Hence, it would not be the state schools that would have to change their ways or go, it would be the people, millions of Americans, who would have to compromise their most cherished convictions under the new hegemony or take their convictions and get out.
The Court effectively and quite consciously established secular humanism as the official religion of the state and established the public education system as the state's "church".
But the Warren Court did not so much overthrow the First Amendment as much as it turned it on its head and, thereby, created a whole new legal conundrum, one that constantly pits faction against faction in an unending battle in which no one's rights or concerns can ever be fully realized. It is for this very reason that the increasingly heated and bitter debate over the content of our schools' academics continues to rage right up to this day. This fiasco is the direct result of the Court elevating what had only been up to that time a homegrown and locally operated system of education, one that was mostly non-existent before the 20th Century, to a federally mandated and administered regime. This "nationalization" of the education system subsequently alienated an even greater number of Americans from their rights and needlessly instigated a vicious cultural civil war.
But the irresponsible behavior of the Warren Court should not surprise anyone. Being that the leftist does not grasp the truth about human nature and about the nature of things, he's the consummate meddler who's forever jumping into the private affairs of others, never merely encouraging, but ever obnoxiously insisting upon their participation in the next, great utopian love fest. He does not have the good sense to allow that Americans should decide for themselves with whom they would sleep.
It is readily self-evident that no institution exists in an ideological vacuum. Thus, if the underlying ideology governing the academic fair offered in today's public schools is no longer Judeo-Christianity, what is it? Where in the Constitution is the federal government delegated the power to define for you or me what does or does not constitute religious training? How could such a power not effectively render the First Amendment meaningless?
Does the First Amendment protect the individual's perspective or that of the state? —Rawlings,
Revisions and Divisions
(The whole article is instructive.)
In short, those Christians had every right in the world to defend their parental rights; they were not obliged to accommodate you. It was not the exertion of their prerogatives of ideological free-association and parental authority that were contrary to the spirit of individual liberty. That
was unbridgeable individual liberty pushing back against a majority in a collectivistic, one-size-fits-all system of education. It's the education system as currently configured in absence of universal school choice that is contrary to the imperatives of individual liberty and would be flat-out unconstitutional but for the Court's duplicity.
As I wrote in the above:
Some folks need illustrations, or they're never see what the actual nuts and bolts of tyranny are in the hands of those bent on subverting our constitutional Republic . . . of live and let live. Some folks think the problem is the natural behavior or expressions or associations of some as opposed to those of others.
No!
. . . Some people get sucked into that Orwellian jive as the just, live-and-let-live solution flies right over their heads; and they start imagining that what is in fact the politically legitimate behavior of some in the face of tyranny is evil, that those who tell the government to go to hell are baaaad people.
I don't accept anything less than unfettered individual liberty, and neither should anyone else. I thought that's what we we're talking about. I don't mistake the natural exertions of individual liberty for tyranny. I know who the culprits of tyranny are, just like I know that nonessential political rights and collectivist, ideological/cultural institutions of government are abominations.
There's no point in talking about the ontology of unfettered individual liberty if we don't grasp the ramifications of the distinction between inalienable rights/unabridgible civil liberties afforded by nature on the one hand
and the civil rights/protections afforded by government on the other, and the ramifications of the distinction between the private sector
and the public sector.
