[clue-talk] How do CLUEbies vote?

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 09-27 23:31, Michael Fierro wrote:
 
> Where in the Constitution does it say that one has to pledge allegiance to
> the government to be an American? Wouldn't that violate the concept of our
> freedoms? We are free to dislike the government if we so choose. We are free
> to want to change our form of government via constitutional amendments. The
> entire concept of our great nation is that no one has to pledge allegiance to
> anything to be an American. We are free to believe whatever it is that we
> choose to believe in.

Yes, by that metric, Jehovah's Witnesses and at least some Quakers would be
un-American. I'm sure there are other religious groups that might have
problem with pledging allegiance to a secular organization. 
 
> Government and Religion are not the same thing, and should not be equated.
> Being of one particular religion (or not belonging to one particular
> religion) is also not a requirement to be an American.

To be fair, I'm not entirely sure that the Koran has something parallel to
the render unto Caesar bit...thus providing for the government to be secular
and the private life religious but that doesn't mean some Muslims
won't/don't do the same thing as Christians do: use morality to cherry-pick
what to believe is literal and what is not. If Christians actually followed
the Bible to the letter, it'd sure be a different world...and not in a good
way. No one gets stoned for adultery in America, for example. People eat
lobster and wear mixed fabrics.

That doesn't say that some Christians wouldn't also be fine with a theocracy
in America, as long as it was "theirs".  If you watch The God That Wasn't
There, there are some mighty alarming words coming out of the mouth of
Christians. One guy advocates a community getting together to stone gays, if
they lived under a Christian nation. Terrifying stuff. Virtually everything
Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson said/say also confirm that the guys talked
to/quoted in TGTWT were hardly alone. I don't think they are the majority,
but at least some rise to prominence.

I think what Falwell said after 9/11 was hate speech against America. How is
that different than what some imams do? 


I sometimes find it very alarming just how similar some far-right religious
people here in America and fundamentalists of other faiths are. I don't like
it when the left seem to sidle up to Muslim fundamentalists. It's
disingenous - they can see the threat that far right religious Christians
pose to freedom, but not fundamentalist Muslims? 

I make a distinction here between acknowledging that America was inviting
such blowback, and people that turn their back on people that are known
terrorists, or funded/verbally support it.  There is a major difference,
although conservatives often try to conflate the two, calling both sets
"blame America first" crowd. The first I totally agree with, the second I
condemn.
 
> I don't disagree that the violence was unnecessary. But you are also talking
> about a very small percentage of Muslims who did this. This is the equivalent
> of saying that teenage girls shave off their hair and drive drunk because
> Britney Spears has done so. It is never valid to ascribe behavior of a small
> part of a population to the entire population. 

Just as it isn't fair to classify ALL Christians as murderous zealots
because a handful take part in terrorism like bombing abortion clinics or
bombing OKC. Generalizations are logical fallacies.

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at comcast.net  
http://sean-leblanc.blogspot.com/
A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, 
or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away. 
-Dr. Boyce, "The Menagerie" ("The Cage"), stardate unknown