Wall Street Opinion Journal | Wndy Kaminer | May 23, 2007
The ACLU is becoming very selective about what it considers “free” speech.
“ACLU Defends Nazi’s Right to Burn Down ACLU Headquarters,” the humor magazine The Onion announced in 1999. Those of us who loved the ACLU, and celebrated its willingness to defend the rights of Nazis and others who had no regard for our rights, considered the joke a compliment. Today it’s more like a reproach. Once the nation’s leading civil liberties group and a reliable defender of everyone’s speech rights, the ACLU is being transformed into just another liberal human-rights group that reliably defends the rights of liberal speakers.
This transformation is gradual, unacknowledged and not readily apparent, since evidence of it lies mainly in cases the ACLU does not take. It’s naturally easier to know what an organization is doing (and advertising) than what it is not doing. But a review of recent free-speech press releases turns up only a handful of cases in which ACLU state affiliates defended the rights of conservative, antigay or otherwise politically incorrect speakers. And lately the national organization has been remarkably quiet in several important free-speech cases and controversies.
One of the clearest indications of a retreat from defending all speech regardless of content is the ACLU’s virtual silence in Harper v. Poway, an important federal case involving a high-school student’s right to wear a T-shirt condemning homosexuality. Of course, the ACLU doesn’t speak out on every case, but historically it has vigorously defended student speech rights, as its Web site stresses. It is currently representing a student in a speech case before the Supreme Court, Morse v. Frederick (involving the right of a student to carry a nonsensical “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner at an off-campus event). The ACLU pays particular attention to the right to wear T-shirts with pro-gay messages in school, proudly citing cases in which it represented students wearing pro-gay (as well as anti-Bush) T-shirts. This year, the ACLU awarded a Youth Activist Scholarship to a student who fought the efforts of her school to bar students from wearing T-shirts that said “Gay, Fine by me.”
. . . more
“[P]eople should no longer depend on the ACLU to defend what they preach (especially at a cost), if it disapproves of what they practice”
This is true, but it isn’t this also true of organizations like the Alliance Defense Fund and Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ)? All three groups are highly selective about the types of cases they take on and the clients they represent.
Can one fairly critique the ACLU for being “one-sided” when there are other organizations that file suit almost exclusively on behalf of conservative religious interests?
It would be nice if all organizations were consistent in their approach, but if they can’t, so long as there are organizations willing to represent either side of these issues, I don’t see the problem.
The difference being JamesK is that The Alliance Defense Fund and the ACLJ were founded percisely as a counter weight to the attacks on religious freedom that the ACLU was either initiating or remaining silent on. The ADF and the ACLJ have never claimed to defend all free speech like the ACLU.
Sounds reasonable, Michael, but the ACLU has represented evangelicals and Christians on many occasions.
– The ACLU of Utah (1990s) represented an evangelical Christian ministry that had been evicted and denied future access as a vendor at a state fair because fair-goers objected to the religious content of the message.
– The ACLU of Eastern Missouri (1999) secured a favorable settlement for a nurse, Miki M. Cain, who was fired for wearing a cross-shaped lapel pin on her uniform.
Are you suggesting these are just cynical attempts to avoid criticism or simply that the number of cases defending Christians’ rights are disproportionately low (which may be the case .. I don’t know)?
JamesK, I don’t know if the cases you mention are cynical or real. As the article suggests, however, there are chapters which still hold to the old way of thinking–defending all free speech.
However, it was the ACLU who led the charge in LA to remove the cross from the city seal. Here in Kansas several years ago they sponsored a man to complain against a high school Christmas concert. The man who complained did not even live in the town. They didn’t have to sue, just the mere threat and the school district captiulated. They did not have the resources or the will to defend even a threaten suit. This was a concert that had been part of the fabric of the town for decades, it was not just a school function.
Again, here in Kansas they are part of the cabal seeking to protect George Tiller, one of the worst abortionists in the country.
I have to ask, in all honesty.. How do you define “Free Speech” if not including “defending all free speech”? I admit I have love/hate feelings about the ACLU but, how exactly is Speech Free if it is filtered and censored by some authority?
If you are from Kansas, then surely you are familiar with Fred Phelps of the “God hates Fags”, “God Hates America”. http://www.godhatesamerica.com/ Westboro Baptist Church. How are these clowns any different than Nazis? I don’t agree with WBC’s advocation that God hates anything, but I think it should be protected.
These spawn of man-made protestantism do more to harm to christianity in the eyes of reasonable non-christian people than any atheist group ever could.
Unpopular or personally objectionable ideas, art, speech, expression are not subject to personal bias, if it is to remain truely “free”. What does a cross in a public city symbol do but alianate people who do not share reverance for what it symbolizes? Mixing religion and government only makes it ripe for takeover by an opposing religion.
The ACLU will defend a Nurse’s right to wear a cross pendent on her lapel at work but, not a 10 foot stone “10 commandment” statue outside a public courthouse or other official public building. Why can people not understand the difference?
Ten Commandments are a source of Anglo-American law
The intellectual sources of Anglo-American common law are the Old and New Testaments, the Roman Code of Law and the English common law. As recently as 1970 the criminal code of many American states used language drawn directly from the King James Version of the Bible to define criminal acts.
The Constitution forbids the “establishment” of religion, a term understood very well from hundreds of years of political debate in the U.K., it did not mandate the eradication of the source culture that gave birth to our country and all of its ideas about law, ethics, morals and justice.
bob, The cross on the LA city seal was in to way religious, merely an expression of the historical reality of the founders of the city. If such an expression is really un-Constitutional then most of the cities in California should be forced to change their names, the U.S. Supreme Court building demolished and a whole host of other things. In fact such is the goal of many of the sanitizers.
You cannot sanitize governement of religion unless you have a non-religious test for governemnt office holders either civil service employees or elected officials. Those who believe in God and actually try to live their life in accord with Him cannot serve.
Faith is not just mental agreement to a set of vague ideas. It is a way of life.
It seems that the anti-establishment folks always do violence to the free expression clause of the first amendment. Obviously, the authors of the 1st amendment saw no conflict between free expression and non-establishment,yet the modern day proponents insist on supressing the free expression of faith in order to serve their idea of non-establishment. They are simply wrong and and are doing great violence to both our culture and our governement in the process.
A cross on public property is the corporate free expression of the people of that city, county, whatever. The federal governement certainly does not mandate that a cross be displayed on any builidng, that would be establishment. Just because someone’s feelings are hurt does not mean that there is any establishment.
Not articulating and defending the Judeo-Christian foundation of our law is leaving us wide open to a take over by Sharia, or the hedonistic anarchists that have no respect for any law except what suits their immediate agenda.
Bob writes: “The ACLU will defend a Nurse’s right to wear a cross pendent on her lapel at work but, not a 10 foot stone “10 commandment” statue outside a public courthouse or other official public building. Why can people not understand the difference?”
Yes, it is an obvious difference.
Missourian writes: “Ten Commandments are a source of Anglo-American law . . . [the Constitution] did not mandate the eradication of the source culture that gave birth to our country and all of its ideas about law, ethics, morals and justice.”
In recent years the impetus behind the placement of Ten Commandments monuments is overtly religious, not civil. In other words, people who want these monuments typically want them not for their historical import, but for their religious import.
For example, the Foundation for Moral Law is an organization whose mission involves, as they see it, the defense of religious freedom and “represents individuals involved in religious liberties cases and files amicus curiae briefs in state and federal courts.” Roy Moore, of the Alabama monument case, is the foundation’s chairman.
The foundation explains it’s view of “acknowledging God” in the public square through things such as Ten Commandments monuments:
An acknowledgment of God is an action someone takes while in the public arena, i.e., on public property, holding public office, etc., that recognizes God’s sovereignty over the affairs of men. . . . The Ten Commandments are the succinct summary of God’s law given to humanity for righteous living.
The motivation and intent are clearly religious. Often, the “history and tradition” argument is used to defend the monument. But when the monument is removed, the accusation is that “God is being kicked out of the public square,” and the actual religious intent of the proponents is revealed.
Note 8. Jim writes:
So what is the point? – That the public spaces need to be desymbolized (invalidated) of any reference to the moral ground of American law and culture if the defenders of the symbol uphold its religious character?
This is foolishness. Christianity and American history cannot be separated. Christianity is the moral ground of American law and culture. That’s how the symbols entered the public spaces in the first place.
Further, since religion is always the ground of culture, the public square cannot remain naked. It’s a cultural impossibility. Persist in this foolishness and you will lose your culture by capitulating to another religion, as we see in Europe in the capitulation to Islam.
The distinction between religion and history you draw is false. In one sweep you invalidate the religious/moral claimant with no apparent comprehension that in so doing you desacrilize the history as well. Islam, here we come.
Secularism is proving to be the historical space between the abandonment of Christianity and the conquest of Islam.
“Secularism is proving to be the historical space between the abandonment of Christianity and the conquest of Islam.”
I’ve read this assertion here before, and I’m not sure I understand it.
I do see a correlation between the secularization of Europe and the increase of Islamic fundamentalism, but it seems that the Muslim population is also not integrating into the culture there as successfully as they are here. We don’t seem to be having the pockets of uprising and strife that, say, Paris did.
I just don’t see how secularization directlyencourages Islam if the purpose of secularization is to avoid the enshrining of any particularly religious code into law (whether that code is Christian or Islamic sharia).
Do you have a deeper analysis of this anywhere?
Note 10. Where do I begin? Have you read any Chesterton or Lewis? Have you read “For the Life of the World” by Fr. Alexander Schmemann?
I’m stuck here. I can’t tell exactly what you need to read, but I think you see religion as a Rotary Club meeting except that people talk about God and sing a few songs. This is not meant as a put-down. I just don’t think you grasp how religious ideas (secular — yes, they have a religious character; Christian; Muslim; whatever) inform, shape, and direct culture.
Try this: Civilization Without Religion?
Christopher, any suggestions?
Fr. Hans asks: “So what is the point? – That the public spaces need to be desymbolized (invalidated) of any reference to the moral ground of American law and culture if the defenders of the symbol uphold its religious character?”
Based on the actual statements and voiced concerns of people such as Judge Moore and his affiliates, I believe their intention is to place religious symbols on public property — property that everyone pays for regardless of religious belief — as a statement that this is ultimately Christian turf. It’s like walking into a biker bar. Anyone can go into the bar, but you know whose bar it really is.
I see this as similar to the Confederate flag. Certainly some people see the Confederate flag as nothing more than a part of the history of the South. But the Confederate flag has other connotations, and some see the flag as an assertion of the rightness of a time when whites were in control and blacks were “in their place.” For some, the flag is a way of saying “we may have lost the war, but we were right and we are still here, and don’t you forget it.”
Fr. Hans: “Christianity and American history cannot be separated. Christianity is the moral ground of American law and culture. That’s how the symbols entered the public spaces in the first place.”
It’s one thing to assert that the Christian narrative informed and infused American history. It’s quite another thing to erect a monument that functions as a “gang tag” for modern conservative Christians. Ultimately, the dispute over the Ten Commandment monuments is not about who we were, but who we are now. And if the modern-day United States is primarily a conservative Christian nation, then everyone else is basically living in someone else’s house.
Note 12. Put Judge Roy Moore aside for the moment and take the crosses on the symbol of Los Angeles. Does that qualify for disqualification as well? Or is the implied principle still in force, i.e. we must judge the defender’s intention to determine whether or not a religious symbol should be removed from a public space?
Does this hold true for the Confederate flag as well? Should the flag fly when it flies only as a symbol of the Southern past? Or should it be taken down if a defender of the Confederacy defends the symbol?
Fr. Hans writes: “Put Judge Roy Moore aside for the moment and take the crosses on the symbol of Los Angeles. Does that qualify for disqualification as well? Or is the implied principle still in force, i.e. we must judge the defender’s intention to determine whether or not a religious symbol should be removed from a public space?”
I don’t have any problem at all with the cross on the Los Angeles seal. It was there for what, several decades. It is one of several items, and not the most prominent item. The name of the city is literally “The Angels.” I think it is a huge stretch, beyond reason actually, to assert that the cross in that context is somehow an endorsement of religion. There’s a cow and a fish also on the symbol. Does that mean that seal is somehow an endorsement of fish and cattle at the expense of pigs? The whole thing makes no sense to me.
In other words, not all religious symbols or artifacts constitute an endorsement of religion. The context and history and intention behind the symbol are critical factors.
Change the situation slightly, and imagine that the seal had no cross for decades. Then, Christian fundamentalists demand the addition of a cross as a statement that the Christian god is in charge and that Christianity is the true religion. Thus, because of the different context and history the cross would constitute an endorsement of religion. Same cross, same seal, entirely different context and history.
Some years ago there was a small controversy in Portland, Oregon over the public installation of some kind of a Buddhist ceremonial bell that was given to Portland by a Japanese sister city. Conservative Christians claimed that that constituted an endorsement of Buddhism. But the average person would have no idea that the bell had any religious connotation at all. It was a gift from a Japanese sister city given to an American city that has an historical Japanese influence, including the famous Japanese Gardens of Portland.
Fr. Hans: “Does this hold true for the Confederate flag as well? Should the flag fly when it flies only as a symbol of the Southern past? Or should it be taken down if a defender of the Confederacy defends the symbol?”
Some symbols are harder to rehabilitate than others. The confederate flag is one of those. Having a confederate flag flying over the state capital would be quite different from having a confederate flag as part of a larger historical display in the state capital.
But back to the Ten Commandments monuments. In recent years virtually all of these have been advocated for by conservative Christians seeking to assert their power and influence and worldview. In that context such a monument would not be a simple reminder in the public square of the historical influence of Christianity or Judaism on American law. It would be more like an attempt to to stake a theological claim to the public square as an assertion of the special status of a particular religion. In that sense the monument would clearly be an endorsement of religion.
So there is no simple formula that we can apply. Instead we have to look at the totality of factors present in the situation. And certainly it is possible for those on both sides of the issue to go too far.
There are two extreme positions. There is the position that any and all religious symbols are always primarily religious symbols, and that the public display of such a symbol is necessarily an endorsement of religion. And there is the position that any religious symbol that has an historical connection to the society has a right to be displayed on public property, regardless of any other factors, and that refusing to display it is necessarily an infringement of religious freedom and a denial of history. I reject both of those positions.
Ten Commandments are a source of Anglo-American law
True, and so is English Law – a source, which is based on Roman Law. Roman Law is Pagan. So what is the point here? I see no state or national laws to ban working on Sabbath, nor is there any law for us to worship only one God, or any God at all. What do you have left? Do not Kill or Steal? This hardly justifies placing the Ten commandments in official government public buildings.
You cannot sanitize government of religion unless you have a non-religious test
Also true and many offices will not allow atheists to serve. I do not advocate sanitizing government of religion, I just think it is a BAD IDEA to pick one religion officially. What will happen if it ever becomes majority muslim? Christians who think America should be a Christian theocracy should look to Iran to see how well a Theocracy works.
Christianity and American history cannot be separated.
Following your statement, Deism and religious opposition in America can never be separated either. From Wikipedia: Lambert (2003) has examined the religious affiliations and beliefs of the Founders. Some of the 1787 delegates had no affiliation. The others were Protestants except for three Roman Catholics, C. Carroll, D. Carroll, and Fitzsimons. Among the Protestants Constitutional Convention delegates, 28 were Episcopalian, 8 were Presbyterians, 7 were Congregationalists, 2 were Lutherans, 2 were Dutch Reformed, and 2 were Methodists. Many of the more prominent Founding Fathers were vocal about their opposition to organized religion or anti-clerical, such as Jefferson. Some of them often related their anti-organized church leanings in their speeches and correspondence, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson (who created the “Jefferson’s Bible”), Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, and Thomas Paine. However, a few of the more notable founders, such as Patrick Henry, were strong proponents of traditional religion. Several of the Founding Fathers considered themselves to be deists or held beliefs very similar to that of traditional Deists, including Jefferson, Paine and Ethan Allen.
Secularism is proving to be the historical space between the abandonment of Christianity and the conquest of Islam.
This is crazy talk! A Secular Government with religious freedom is the only protection against the conquest of Islam. You can site populations or popularity of Islam over Christianity in Europe, but you cannot show me where those governments are making laws based on the Qu’ran. Their laws are based on collectivist ideals, which is also an enemy – of a different kind but, clearly not muslim.
This whole dialog would make more sense if some other religious group tried to force their symbols into the public government. Try placing a giant stone monument with the Wiccan Rede or the Five pillars of Islam at a courthouse and see how well you like that. It could be argued, like above that a few of our laws share the same concept with other religions or the 10 commandments. So what?
Let us pretend there were no groups like the ACLU preventing a Christian Theocracy becoming reality in America, which of the 9000 Christian denominations should run the show? Baptists, Pentecostal, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics? No thanks, guys – I think I will pass on that. My Christian Faith is not a religion or a set of legal documents, stone statues or praying in school. It is a way of life and by the bounds of freewill, should not be forced on others by making a spectacle of it publically.
Like the Protestants who pushed and pushed for the Bible to be used in public schools. Look how is it taught – With the same passe and careless reference as Roman or Greek mythology. How is that better now to make the Bible equivalent to stories about Zeus, Hera, Hercules or Poseidon?
Growing up in the south, I have never once looked at Lee’s battle flag and thought about slavery. It reminds me of the fight against what is now a bloated, overstepping, Government run by tyrants with very little or no respect for the original concept of states’ or individual rights.
As to free speech. For many liberals free speech is the right to say anything you want and be free from any critque or consequences. I actually heard Alan Combs on TV the other night express that sentiment. To me that sums up the entire liberal mind set. Do what you want there are no consequences to your behavior and if there are the benign and gracious Oz (government) will make sure you don’t suffer them.
Note 15, Bob, 90% of American law is English Common and is expressly based on Christian moral philosophy
Bob, your ill-informed assumption that the contribution of Christian moral philosophy to America law is limited to the text of the Ten Commandments demonstrates your utter lack of knowledge of the topic and explains your erroneous reasoning and conclusions.
In Note 15, Bob questions the significance of the Christian tradition of moral philosophy in American law. Therefore exposing his vast, Grand Canyon of ignorance on legal matters. To refresh the readers memory, a snippet from Note 15
At the very creation of our country, we expressly accepted the authority of English common law on those topics not directly addressed by the new Constitution. Most (90%) of American law is English common law, civil and criminal, even to this day. As Bob knows I am sure, Britain had (and has) an established Church, therefore, traces of Roman law concepts were and are only of minor import within the grand intellectual structure which is the English common law. The administration of the Court system was a major duty of that Established Church because the Church created, staffed, developed and controlled the Courts of Equity. I am sure that Bob knew that the Courts of Equity were Court of secondary resort and that they constituted virtually half of the English legal system. The voluminous body of law that they developed called “equity” in America is still in force and it effects virtually every civil case in America. Equitable principles have an impact on criminal law through the exclusionary doctrine and the Miranda rule.
So what is the true impact of Christian moral philosophy on American law? Torts, real property, contracts, equity, probate, wills and trusts and every single other topic of civil law is from English Common law (except in Lousisiana which is based on the Napoleonic Code) The very important distinction between law and equity is based on the difference between civil and ecclesiastical Courts in Britain prior to the American Revolution.
On the criminal side ( all law is classified as either civil or criminal ) every single word in the state criminal codes was derived word for word from English common law, long before the American revolution. American criminal law was not changed by the American revolution. The very words used to define a criminal act in the English common law were taken from the King James Version of the Old and New Testament. All of the criminal law on theft, murder, burglary and other major crimes was taken from Leviticus and other parts of the Torah and the New Testament.
The moral code embodied in every shred of American law is taken from the English common law which was developed in a country in which Christianity was the established religion and in which a Christian Church employed Christian judges to rule on cases and develop Christian standards of equity and justice.
Try reading some legal history, before you spout off.
Note 17: A bit of trivia: The Mosaic Law was supposedly established around 1200 BC. What’s interesting is how similar the laws are to the much earlier Code of Hammurabi, which dates to around 1700 BC and seem to be more extensive in scope.
– If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death.
– If while in a foreign country a man buy a male or female slave belonging to another of his own country; if when he return home the owner of the male or female slave recognize it: if the male or female slave be a native of the country, he shall give them back without any money.
– If a judge try a case, reach a decision, and present his judgment in writing; if later error shall appear in his decision, and it be through his own fault, then he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case, and he shall be publicly removed from the judge’s bench, and never again shall he sit there to render judgement.
– If the wife of one man on account of another man has their mates (her husband and the other man’s wife) murdered, both of them shall be impaled.
I’m not sure if there’s anything else that pre-dates this, but it’s interesting to see the similarities across centuries and cultures.
Bob, wake up. There are neighborhoods in London already under Sharia Law. Rotterdam is 40% Muslim. What happens when they form the majority? Do you really think the liberalism of the Christian heritage will survive? There won’t even need to be a war. They will vote themselves in.
Honor killings happen in England all the time. The police are powerless to stop them. Look at the Muslim slums in Paris. French police have lost all control of those areas. Why do you think a Conservative won the French election? If current population rates continue their decline, Western Europe will have a Muslim majority by the end of the century.
Europe is showing that a nation of secularists will lose control of their own nation. Like Toynbee said, nations don’t die by conquest, but by suicide. Extinguish Christianity, and the Muslim will be your master.
There are neighborhoods in London already under Sharia Law. Rotterdam is 40% Muslim.
You can site populations or popularity of Islam over Christianity in Europe, but you cannot show me where those governments are making laws based on the Qu’ran. Pretending that “forcing Christianity on non-christians” will not solve our problems is a farce. Theocracy is not the correct answer. Try again…
Major crimes was taken from Leviticus and other parts of the Torah and the New Testament.
Really? Where is it in our law that we cannot work on Sunday? Where does it say we can only worship one God and have none before God? Where is it law that we must honor our parents? We are a nation of Graven Images. Adultery is the grounds of civil divorce, where is it illegal? Our Politicans bear false witness, where is the law to punish them? You have essentially “Do not Murder” and “Do Not Steal” left – 2 out of 10 does not make it a source for all criminal law. Get over yourself.
90% of American law is English Common and is expressly based on Christian moral philosophy
You are clearly making stuff up and trying to get away with it. I would conclude that 20% of English common law is based on christian moral philosophy read the above paragraph and see if you can figure it out.
Note 20. Bob, your secularism will give exactly what you don’t want — theocracy, but from the Muslim side.
Poll reveals 40% of Muslims want sharia law in UK
Life under sharia, in Canada?
Sharia Goes Global
I am sure that some of English common law was based on Christian Moral philosophy. Certainly, religions have had major impacts on the countries and cultures in which they flourished.
But I’m curious about the notion that English common law, or our modern American laws, are based directly, on, say, the ten commandments, particularly the two you mention. Is it really a widely held notion that the Hebrews were such ignorant savages prior to the story of Exodus that they hadn’t worked out societal prohibitions on theft and murder? And if so, wasn’t the revelation from God really just highlighting some already existing social norms?
Jacobse,
The second link you provided tells the story of a woman named Homa Arjomand who fights sharia law in Canada.
One section of the article quotes her.
“We must separate religion from the state,” she says emotionally. “We’re living in Canada. We want Canadian secular law.”
The article goes on to detail how the sharia arbitration system was preceded by similar religion-based Jewish courts.
If you read it, the article provides a pretty powerful argument for secular governance.
Note 20, The Return of the “Bobster” and the sources of American law
If I have been “making stuff up” I have been earning a good
living at it for 30 years. I have been licensed to practice law in one state since 1979 and in a second state since 1994. I have provided Fr. Jacobse with the particulars quite some time ago, although I do not choose to reveal my identity now.
Let us review my comments, slowly:
Comment 1: The definition of major crimes were taken from the Old and New Testament.
The crimes involved are murder, involuntary manslaughter, burglary and other crimes. The Old Testament distinguishes between different degrees of guilt for these various crimes. I did not assert that everything made unlawful in the Old Tesatment was made unlawful in the English common law. However, despite your mocking comment, adultery was a criminal offense in quite a few states in the 19th century. Until WWII most communities had laws which forced businesses to close on Sundays. Public officials who lie under oath are subject to perjury laws and removal from office.
Comment 2: Again, Bobster, 90% of American law is based on Christian moral philosophy because 90% of American law is the same English common law that the colonies operated under prior to the American Revolution. You aware that the original thirteen colonies were British were you not? You remember that the original thirteen colonies fought a war of independence from Britain. Well check your encyclopedia and it will tell you that Britain had (and now has) what is called an “established church.” The British established Church is the Church of England, sometimes called Anglicanism. The British had ecclesiastical courts as a secondary court of resort from the courts of law from about 800 A.D. onward. But, posh, you knew all of this, you British history buff, you. The British legal system, and hence the American colonial legal system, consisted of courts of law and courts of equity. The courts of equity followed principles developed and established originally by Christian clerics. We inherited all of that from Britain. Equitable principles are applied today even in American criminal law, such as the exclusionary rule developed in the Miranda and related cases.
Now print this explanation so that you have it when you need it next time.
Note 23. Why is it so difficult for Westerners to see that freedom of religion and freedom from state tyranny could only arise in a Christian culture? Why is it so difficult for Westerners to see that when the moral foundation is forcibly ripped from their culture that tyranny is the result, as it was with Nazism and Marxism? Doesn’t anyone ask why the last century was the bloodiest century in the history of the West? Do most people even know that it was?
And why is it so difficult to understand that when the Christian influence over culture fades, whether through neglect or aggression, enemies are enboldened? Is it an accident of history that the assault against Christianity over the last two centuries weakened the moral resolve of the West to the point where some are ready to capitulate to Moslem medievalism, or that the threats are so ill perceived that national policy gets skewed to the point where a Muslim state got established in the heart of Europe, as Clinton did with Bosnia, to name one example?
Bob warns ‘beware of theocracy!’ as if hordes from Lynchburg are ready to descend on Washington. He’s blind to what is happening in Europe. You vaunt a secularism you don’t really understand, because if you did you would grasp that the gay marriage you champion ultimately dims the moral clarity a culture must possess to progress and survive.
Don’t be fooled. The next decades will require a moral resolve as great as that called for during World War II, or the kind martyrs exhibited languishing in Stalin’s gulags, Hitler’s death camps, or Castro’s prisons. Those who think the dangers come from Lynchburg or the critics of gay marriage have got to shake off their slumber.
Homa Arjomand isn’t really a Westerner in the strictest sense, is she?
Who’s talking about forcibly ripping? Why is it so difficult to see that the only way to protect religions, including Christianity, is to keep the government out of them? Neither the Nazis nor the Marxist advocated that.
Phil, a proponent of gay marriage on the one hand, now a defender of Western classical liberalism on the other?
Look, Homa Arjomand’s defense of (classical) liberal precepts is rooted in Christian, not Muslim ideals. My comment that Westerner’s have difficulty seeing that freedom of religion and freedom from state tyranny could only arise in a Christian culture is directed towards Westerners — not Muslims.
Arjomand’s comments will get her branded as an apostate by radical Muslims because they know that the radical freedom of man posited by Judeo/Christian anthropology and enculturated in the West, threatens the authority of Islam.
It’s a moral orientation, Phil. This means that the ideas and beliefs that have informed the ideals that shaped the respective cultures are religious in nature. The Islamic radicals know this. They hate Christianity and Judaism because within it lies the dynamite that challenges their authority. For this same reason, Western radical secularists such as Marxists, or the neo-pagans such as Nazis (the Teutonic myth reborn) attacked Christians and Jews with such vengeance. Religion was the enemy, because religion revealed their illegitimacy.
Persons holding your ideas are what Lenin called useful idiots. Undermining the moral ideals that allow the enculturation of freedom in the name of freedom leads to tyranny. How else do we explain the West’s increasing spiritual impotence in the face of Islam?
Bob, you, others, see Christianity as the threat and want to regulate it through government fiat. In reality, you rebel against the moral precepts that condemn behaviors such as homosexuality because they call man to an ideal higher than his appetite. “I feel, therefore I am” — or in its contemporary manifestation “I am what I feel” — is repudiated in the Judeo/Christian vision of man which posits that all people are created in the image and likeness of God; a terrifying reality in its own way because it proclaims: 1) freedom is inextricably bound with moral responsibility; and 2) only the God of Abraham is the final judge of human affairs.
Radical Muslims know this. That’s why they hate Christianity and Judaism. They despise the inherent freedom granted by the God of Abraham. Secularists dismiss the religious dimension altogether; considered an enlightened view just a century or so ago but increasingly evident today as spiritually impoverished.
Missourian writes: “The definition of major crimes were taken from the Old and New Testament. . . . 90% of American law is based on Christian moral philosophy because 90% of American law is the same English common law that the colonies operated under prior to the American Revolution.”
Well, I suppose you could say that every single thing in America comes from Christianity, because 99 percent of the early Americans were Christians of one sort or another, and 100 percent of everyone was influenced in some way by Christianity. So, for example, we could say that science is Christian because the early scientists were all Christian, and even for the ones who weren’t, they worked in Christian countries and were inspired by the Christian and Jewish idea of a non-random universe. Early educators were Christian, so the idea of education is Christian. So let’s just cut to the chase and say that everything here is Christian in some significant sense.
That said, I don’t know what all of that is supposed to imply as far as the extent to which public property should be decorated with Christian and Jewish symbols, or have some other kind of religious identification. Should city vehicles all have the little “fish” symbols on them? Should every school have the Sermon on the Mount posted prominently? Should Main Street be renamed Jesus Street? (The local Christian coffee shop offers a “Jesus latte,” and no, I’m not kidding.) If not, why not?
Note 28, Jim
Jim, law is the codication of morality. Law is the set of rules that society chooses to govern itself. By defintion law is the way that a culture defines itself. Anthropologists will tell you that family structure is the foundation of every society. Anglo-American law defined a Christian family structure.
Why is this so difficult for you to accept?
The only officially secular society that I am aware of are Communist. Every other culture has had a religion that attempted to answer questions about the meaning and purpose of life and the proper way to live it.
As to the decoration of public property with Christian symbols, the issue was ” does the display of the Ten Commandments represent an unconstitutional Establishment of Religion.” My answer is no, because the Ten Commandment merely reflect our legal and social history which we are not required to deny to avoid offending non-Christians.
Jacobse, I don’t mean to offend you, but it’s kind of unseemly that you keep bringing up the gay thing.
I’m sure you think it’s valid and in-context, but I think your tone could be misinterpreted by a casual reader.
I don’t think anyone here has seriously advocated “regulating” Christianity. In fact, I think I’d support (I can’t speak for Bob) a statement along the lines of “The U.S. federal and state governments should, when possible, treat all religions equally.” Is that a statement you’d agree with? Or do you advocate special treatment for Christianity?
Similar language appears in the Constitution, of course. But I don’t see Christianity as a bigger threat to America than Islam, and although Wicca is sort of a fringe religion, gosh I think we’d start to see problems if we began passing laws that favored Wicca over other religions and belief systems.
You suggest that the notion of freedom of religion could only have arisen in a Christian culture, but I think it’s a leap of logic to suggest that the only way to protect freedom of religion is to enshrine Christianity in our laws, or to make laws that favor Christianity over all other religions.
Note 30. Phil writes:
Note 31. Phil writes:
Let’s try it again. Maybe you will catch it on the second round.
I wrote:
The key here is moral responsibility. Freedom and moral responsibility are inextricably bound. You don’t like the fact I bring up the “gay thing”, yet your insistence that homosexuals should marry overturns the moral framework upon which civil freedom was crafted (often at great cost). Now you expect no response to your moral deconstruction while asserting the right to wag your finger when it is brought up.
No moral reflection occurs in a vacuum. Morality always has a touchstone. Your advocacy of gay marriage therefore, is highly relevant because it reveals where your touchstone rests.
Ideas have consequences Phil. And your idea that homosexual marriage should be morally sanctioned destablizes the culture. The widespread acceptance of homosexual behavior has always been a benchmark of civilizational decline, and ours is no different no matter how confused some may be concerning the question. We don’t put guns in the hands of children. We shouldn’t give the moral narrative to homosexual activists.
You need to look beyond your own experience for wisdom. Try to comprehend some of Missourian’s cogent responses about the moral foundation of American law. Read some history. Come to grips with the fact that even the law and morality you misapply draws from sources other than yourself.
So, no, we don’t need to “enshrine Christianity into our laws” just as we don’t need to enshrine the union of two homosexuals into our laws. What we need is more sobriety of the kind that recognizes the moral foundations of law and culture, and sees that the redefinition of human relationships you champion posits a new man, one driven by appetite rather than reason.
Fr. Hans asks: “How else do we explain the West’s increasing spiritual impotence in the face of Islam?”
Could it not be in part due to its Judeo-Christian influences and its reluctance to embrace fanaticism as an appropriate response to fanaticism of another stripe?
You seem to think that by a widespread return to our Christian roots we shall suddenly become more unwilling to make certain concessions to the Islamic world. Yet, atheist Christopher Hitchens (who has been raked over the coals here) has been quite outspoken in his criticism of Islamic fascism (and rightfully so), something that our “born again” President has been reluctant in doing.
I just don’t see how you reach the conclusions that you do. You’ve implied that gays, for example, lack the type of moral understanding that is needed to resist the threats to our society, yet there they are, serving bravely in the military while some of our Republican war cheerleaders stay home and sit on their hands.
Moral clarity does not necessarily come with strength or intensity of the will. There are plenty of religious-minded cowards.
This is going to sound strange, but I think what really may be the danger for us is simply contentment and comfort, and this need not necessarily be of the financial kind. When one is satisfied with this life, they are less likely to stick their necks out for the good of some cause, noble or not. I may have mentioned this book before, but you might check out War is the Force That Gives Us Meaning (which is not, I might note, a plea for pacifism).
It’s not so much that I don’t like it, it just reflects poorly on you. If we were engaged in dinner conversation with a group of people about political issues, and whatever the subject was, after I spoke you prefaced your comments with “By the way, he supports gay marriage!” that might be construed as a little unseemly.
I’m not accusing you of saying, “Who cares what the homo thinks!”, but it’s a public forum (in some ways analagous to a conversation) and you really harp on the gay issue even when we’re talking about something else. On another thread, you asked me why I keep bringing it up, and yet…
Note 33. James, let me answer these one by one.
I’m not too clear by what you mean here but by “impotence” I mean Europe’s passivity to the disappearance of its cultural heritage, one manifestation being the paralysis in the face of Muslim terror, (think of Spain), others include the killing of Theo Van Gogh, the inability to enforce the law in the Muslim enclaves of Paris, etc.
When Christian churches are closing and mosques opening, when the abortion rate in some countries is higher than the birth rates needed to sustain a stable population, when over half a population is dependent on some kind of government largess with this decreasing population base to support it, etc., a momentus cultural shift is occuring. What you have to ask yourself is what is the nature of that shift? Well, we know the answer: Christian civilization is in decline, Muslim civilization is in ascendency.
Now, barring any return to the cultural heritage (which would require a spiritual/religious renewal), Europe will become Muslim by the end of this century if current population and thus economic trends continue.
Yes, and Hitchens is correct about the Muslim threat. No one argues this point. Where Hitchens fails is that he denies that a return to cultural heritage, which is to say a reversal of increasing Muslim dominance and the extinguishing of the Christian light of Europe, requires a spritual/religious renewal. He leaves unanswered how Europe will recover it’s heritage because, frankly, he jumps from Ancient Greece where the seeds of a nascent democracy were first sown to the late nineteenth century, where philosophical materialism supplanted Christianity in some quarters and Marxism was born. The last century has proven however, that Hitchens’ faith in Marx is misplaced (even in its Troskyite variant which he follows). It’s a very deep contradiction in his thinking.
Now, forget President Bush, forget that he is a self-professed “born again” Christian. This is not about personalities, it’s about ideas — how people think, how ideas shape and direct culture. Who holds the idea is not as important as the ideas themselves.
For that reason, your characterization that Hitchen was “raked over the coals” is not accurate either. His ideas were severely critiqued, but no personal assault was ever inflicted on the man’s character.
Shake free of the idea that this blog operates like People magazine. I have not “implied that gays lack the type of moral understanding that is needed to resist the threats to our society.” What I have said is that ideas like homosexual marriage undermine cultural stability. It’s the morality, the ideas underlying these positions that are of concern to me.
So sure, gays serve in the military and I am sure many probably do an admirable job. Some might even do heroic work, who knows? But here their homosexuality is functionally irrelevant. If the hero came home and started advocating for gay marriage however, his homosexuality moves to the foreground and his good work as a soldier becomes irrelevant. Again, it’s not about people, it’s about ideas.
If you judge the value of an idea solely by the person holding it, you will slip into a fog. We see it in our culture all time, particularly with the cult of celebrity. For example, people think that, say, actors, have important things to say just because they are actors. But think this way and you can always find someone else who contradicts what the first said. You bounce around looking for some standard to judge one remark over another and in the end all you might muster is some kind of structure you offered above: gay soldier vs. Republican war cheerleaders. Well, maybe Republican war cheerleaders exist that have less moral credibility than the gay soldier. But so what? What does this really say about the ideas they hold? Not much.
Of course there are. Nothing new here. But look how you reframed my conclusion in light of what I wrote immediately preceeding. I make a point, you offer a personality as counter-example, that in effect misses completely what I said.
Further, I need to clarify a misconception. Moral clarity contributes to moral resolve. If a person knows what is right, action toward the right is possible.
**(Hold that thought! I know what you are thinking! I will address it!)**
But that action requires deliberation. Not all actions are just, even if the cause is right. However, where moral confusion rules, passivity and impotence are the result. Sometimes it is a whole lot better to something than nothing at all.
Now, to address that thought that I know interposed itself while you were reading. You thought (a bit presumptious, and risky, I know) something along the order of: “But what about Jim Jones? He thought he was doing right and look where it led him.”
Well, what of it? I can’t go inside his head but I sure a lot of delusion functioned there, as it does in every idealogue of any stripe.
But if personalities are important (and sometimes they are), think instead of those who got it right; Martin Luther King, Thomas Clarkson, St. Katherine of Sinai, etc. etc. etc. Moral clarity, in other words, is a real quantity, and the fact that delusionals exist who claim their thinking is clear has no bearing on this fact. Again, look at the meaning of what is said and not only at the person who said it.
Well, sure, no one likes the discomfort that moral challenges bring. I have not read the book.
I am in no way advocating the regulation of Christianity by any government or authority. If every single American citizen, without exception proclaimed that they are Christian and personally strive to follow God’s teaching in their life – I could not be happier.
In reality, The Ideas of providing free exercise of religion, or liberty to practice no faith, is what this country was founded upon. If I could just snap my fingers and instantly “convert them: the unbelieving to true faith and piety, and the believing that they may turn away from evil and do good” I would not do it. Still, I pray to God for it without ceasing.
It is not genuine to just force Christianity on non-believers. It subverts freewill, which even our creator does not do. In the absence of a declared “state religion” with the continued freedoms of religious expression that we enjoy – How can our government be overcome by the conquest of Islam?
If we establish government based on any particular religion – it is easy to change everything simply by changing the religion it is based on. If a secular government rejects any state religion, is it not our best defense? Is Turkey not a good example of what I am talking about here? What is keeping them from being another Islamic Republic, but their secular stance.
Also, being jeered at for my opinions and given cute nicknames like ‘bobster’ is amusing. Missouridude, Please don’t confuse my reluctance to don jack boots and goosestep around the yard with me being a liberal – or left-wing for that matter. I am neither Right or Left but, an advocate of Liberty and personal responsibility. I abhor a government based on religion equally as a socialist or communist one (for pretty much the same reasons) It is a bad idea that history proves does not work well.
I don’t think I could make my view on this – however “un-Christian” to some, any clearer than that.
Who jeered first?
If you don’t like “jeering” why did you post this?
Under the title Catholic Priest Invite 18 to Leave Church Bob posted the following:
“all law forces beliefs on other persons”
I didn’t you the Bobster, rather harmless I would say, until you referred to my entire post with an ad feminin attack and hyperbole. Sorry, Bob, from now on you are an ignored troll in my book. Best wishes
Missourian,
Just because I don’t agree with your Evangelical Protestant views does not make me a troll. Frightening as it is for you – There are people on the Internet who are able to form their own opinions. Sticking your head in the sand will protect your fragile sensibilities as well as perserve your narrow mind, if that is what you truely desire.
Good Luck with that and God Bless you.