A point that's gone a little less commented upon is Westmoreland's suggestion that a good way to balance the budget is to eliminate the Department of Education. Frankly, that worries me more than his inability to name the ten commandments, but that's just me.
It does strike me that if you're going to advocate for the public display of the ten commandments, you'd just be intelligent to actually know a few more than three. I know more than three, right off the top of my head, and I'm certifiably a godless secularist. I suspect, for at least some who enjoy this sort of display, that it has something to do with the deep chasm one sees, almost everywhere in American political discourse, between the suggestions being advanced by our leaders and their actual knowledge of the substance of those suggestions. If the ten commandments are so important to this fellow (and most of them strike me as sound social policy, as well...), you'd think he'd have at least half of them committed to memory. I could rattle off five without even stopping to think about it, and I don't want them in our houses of legislature. Why is that?
Granted, this has nothing to do with the merits of the case, but it does expose the man's commitment to the cause as being at least somewhat superficial.
Well, I could recite all 10 of them without any problem, but I started memorizing them in the first grade and had 16 yeats of religious education. As to displaying them publicly - well, actually, there's no law against displaying them publicly. You want to dsipaly them in your front yard, I'm sure you can ahead and do it. The objection has to do with displaying them on government property, and frankly, I'm indifferent on that question. My own practice of my faith has to do more with loving God than with thinking of Him as the Everlasting Cop. I also try my best to be good and kind. That takes up enough time and energy. A juridical approach to religion just doesn't grab me.
What I want to know is why the people who voted for Westmoreland, voted for him. My God, were the men in past congresses this lame? Are there any good histories on the Congress of Harding's and Grant's time? Were they as greedy and out-of-touch as this bunch?
I would like to borrow a line from Gene Justice, "...and most of them strike me as sound social policy..."
If for no other reason, this is the best reason I think they should be displayed...let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater...sound social policy is sound social policy...in any form!
And since I'm a born-again Christian, that explains my point of view! :-)
On the other hand, the jealous god bit might strike some of differing religious persuasions as being a bit exclusionary.
Frank brings up a good point re: it's not illegal to display them--my post was badly worded in that respect. The point is that these are buildings that are representative of a system of governance that proports to value a separation of church and state. Not killing just plain makes sense (though the definition of 'killing' does seem to be somewhat in flux...), but when it comes to not doing work on one day of the week...well, that's very specific to one religion, and I suspect most of the people posting here really wouldn't like it to be part of our laws (though some might).
I came from a very fundamentalist background, broke with it hard. I'm not athiest--I just don't claim to know. I'm very much with David Hume in this respect. That said, the question of human faith is a core concept in how I understand the world, and I think, in the end, belief in something is indespensible to human thought. That said, my own experience with religion has driven me to do more study of the matter than is likely the case for most people, and I don't think we have to reach far, at all, to see how horribly wrong a society can go should they choose to base their laws on Biblical codes (and from the 'Old' testament, no less, which, according to the Bible, was significantly altered by the new covenant brought by Christ). In fact, we really need turn no further than Puritan New England, which sought to literally build God's city on earth. Incredibly, neither that state nor that religion is with us today. Offshoots, yes. But the combination did not prove sustainable then, and I highly doubt it will today.
Again, for me, what's most interesting about this video, and reaction to it, is how discussion of it hinges upon the religious matters, and seems to entirely gloss over the fact that at least one of our congressman, when asked how best to balance the budget, found his thoughts turning immediately to cutting the Department of Education. I'll not belabor any connection I might forge for myself between that and the issue of displaying the ten commandments in the halls of Congress. I just think it's a bit alarming that what plays, in the public imagination, is a fairly cheap display of Westmoreland's faulty memory, while his practical measures for getting spending in line with income entails axing the educational infrastructure. The latter is far, far more worrisome from my perspective.
No, Arthur, I think it tells us more than our location. I think it also tells us that among reasonable people there is a wide area of agreement on these matters. I notice that Gene says he comes from a very fundamentalist background - as does Richard Dawkins. I encounter this again and again: an unappealing presentation of faith in childhood results in a distancing from faith or a downright hostility toward it later on. I happen to have had a very pleasant, intellectually upscale presentation. But I do know that the "god" many declare does not exist in fact ... does not exist. I know that I do not belive in the god that Richard Dawkins doesn't believe in. I actually think that people who want to use the Old Testament or Sharia as the basis for jurisprudence have a very crude (not primitive - primitive religion can be very sophisticated) grasp of religion - just as rationalists tend to have a crude grasp of reason. Let us never forgot that the French Revolution's Religion of Reason lost no time in matching the old time religion with a death count of its own. And then there are the 20th-century's totalitarian faiths. Creeds do nothing in and of themselves. It's what individuals do with the creeds that counts.
A point that's gone a little less commented upon is Westmoreland's suggestion that a good way to balance the budget is to eliminate the Department of Education. Frankly, that worries me more than his inability to name the ten commandments, but that's just me.
ReplyDeleteIt does strike me that if you're going to advocate for the public display of the ten commandments, you'd just be intelligent to actually know a few more than three. I know more than three, right off the top of my head, and I'm certifiably a godless secularist. I suspect, for at least some who enjoy this sort of display, that it has something to do with the deep chasm one sees, almost everywhere in American political discourse, between the suggestions being advanced by our leaders and their actual knowledge of the substance of those suggestions. If the ten commandments are so important to this fellow (and most of them strike me as sound social policy, as well...), you'd think he'd have at least half of them committed to memory. I could rattle off five without even stopping to think about it, and I don't want them in our houses of legislature. Why is that?
Granted, this has nothing to do with the merits of the case, but it does expose the man's commitment to the cause as being at least somewhat superficial.
Well, I could recite all 10 of them without any problem, but I started memorizing them in the first grade and had 16 yeats of religious education. As to displaying them publicly - well, actually, there's no law against displaying them publicly. You want to dsipaly them in your front yard, I'm sure you can ahead and do it. The objection has to do with displaying them on government property, and frankly, I'm indifferent on that question. My own practice of my faith has to do more with loving God than with thinking of Him as the Everlasting Cop. I also try my best to be good and kind. That takes up enough time and energy. A juridical approach to religion just doesn't grab me.
ReplyDeleteWhat I want to know is why the people who voted for Westmoreland, voted for him. My God, were the men in past congresses this lame? Are there any good histories on the Congress of Harding's and Grant's time? Were they as greedy and out-of-touch as this bunch?
ReplyDelete-blue
I would like to borrow a line from Gene Justice, "...and most of them strike me as sound social policy..."
ReplyDeleteIf for no other reason, this is the best reason I think they should be displayed...let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater...sound social policy is sound social policy...in any form!
And since I'm a born-again Christian, that explains my point of view! :-)
So here we have two secularists, a Catholic, and a born-again Christian - and we're all pretty much on the same page. Does this tell us anything?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the jealous god bit might strike some of differing religious persuasions as being a bit exclusionary.
ReplyDeleteFrank brings up a good point re: it's not illegal to display them--my post was badly worded in that respect. The point is that these are buildings that are representative of a system of governance that proports to value a separation of church and state. Not killing just plain makes sense (though the definition of 'killing' does seem to be somewhat in flux...), but when it comes to not doing work on one day of the week...well, that's very specific to one religion, and I suspect most of the people posting here really wouldn't like it to be part of our laws (though some might).
I came from a very fundamentalist background, broke with it hard. I'm not athiest--I just don't claim to know. I'm very much with David Hume in this respect. That said, the question of human faith is a core concept in how I understand the world, and I think, in the end, belief in something is indespensible to human thought. That said, my own experience with religion has driven me to do more study of the matter than is likely the case for most people, and I don't think we have to reach far, at all, to see how horribly wrong a society can go should they choose to base their laws on Biblical codes (and from the 'Old' testament, no less, which, according to the Bible, was significantly altered by the new covenant brought by Christ). In fact, we really need turn no further than Puritan New England, which sought to literally build God's city on earth. Incredibly, neither that state nor that religion is with us today. Offshoots, yes. But the combination did not prove sustainable then, and I highly doubt it will today.
Again, for me, what's most interesting about this video, and reaction to it, is how discussion of it hinges upon the religious matters, and seems to entirely gloss over the fact that at least one of our congressman, when asked how best to balance the budget, found his thoughts turning immediately to cutting the Department of Education. I'll not belabor any connection I might forge for myself between that and the issue of displaying the ten commandments in the halls of Congress. I just think it's a bit alarming that what plays, in the public imagination, is a fairly cheap display of Westmoreland's faulty memory, while his practical measures for getting spending in line with income entails axing the educational infrastructure. The latter is far, far more worrisome from my perspective.
No, Arthur, I think it tells us more than our location. I think it also tells us that among reasonable people there is a wide area of agreement on these matters.
ReplyDeleteI notice that Gene says he comes from a very fundamentalist background - as does Richard Dawkins. I encounter this again and again: an unappealing presentation of faith in childhood results in a distancing from faith or a downright hostility toward it later on. I happen to have had a very pleasant, intellectually upscale presentation. But I do know that the "god" many declare does not exist in fact ... does not exist. I know that I do not belive in the god that Richard Dawkins doesn't believe in.
I actually think that people who want to use the Old Testament or Sharia as the basis for jurisprudence have a very crude (not primitive - primitive religion can be very sophisticated) grasp of religion - just as rationalists tend to have a crude grasp of reason. Let us never forgot that the French Revolution's Religion of Reason lost no time in matching the old time religion with a death count of its own. And then there are the 20th-century's totalitarian faiths. Creeds do nothing in and of themselves. It's what individuals do with the creeds that counts.