Facebook Doodlings - really, Christian Shariah? - Granite Grok

Facebook Doodlings – really, Christian Shariah?

There’s a whole lot of yakking going on in the Right side of politics – what went wrong and “what went wrong” but really different.  And of course, the various nostrums of what to fix and what to leave alone will be as numerous (at the least) as the number of folks yakking (EVERYbody’s got to get their two cents in, dontcha know?).  For me, the standard of “never less speech but MORE speech always applies.  Especially when this popped up from a Libertarian:

There also needs to be a question of “which conservative”? Conservatism as in “God hates Gays” and Christian Shiara law, or Conservatism as in small government and leaving the people alone. There is a huge difference between Westboro Conservatism and actual Conservatism.

Now, did you really think I’d leave that hanging in mid-metaphysical space?  Hah!

My response (combining a few posts, a bit of updated to be more bloggish as well):

As a social conservative and an Evangelical Christian, I think that calling me a “Christian shariah-ist” is going way too far,and even attempting to make the moral equivalence of most Christians and Westboro/Islamists is plain wrong headed. I have often defended Libertarians to other Conservatives but when you say that kinda thing, you continue the reason why many Conservatives and even Establishment Rs think

“I should be supporting Libertarians…..why”?

In that one statement, you are basically making common cause with Obama in redefining the First Amendment to merely be “Freedom to worship within the 4 walls of the building that Govt says is a church” instead of the true meaning of “free exercise of religion”.  In other words, I mean that I should be free to live by my precepts – and that includes helping to shape our public morality which are our Laws. Or is it your contention, that religion should play NO role in the public square?

The comeback retort was that he believes in socialized morality as much as he does socialized medicine – not at all.  I’m good with the latter stance but he misses the entire point of the first – we do have a common morality as laws define what is good or bad:

…Whether you like it or not, our Laws ARE our socialized morality – and depending on the severity of the “sin” in breaking them either has you paying an indulgence to atone for that sin (if I may borrow from Catholic theology for a moment) or for worse, does land you in a Socialized Purgatory that may get you three squares a day but may also get you a roommate named Bubba who doesn’t care much about what sin is.

…You are correct; the “free exercise” clause is what I am discussing (not the Establishment clause) as I am NOT for the State instituting a religion – even that of “no religion” which seems to be the fad today from all sides…the laws are the sum of our morality, stated or unstated, from where ever they spring from. Why is it that we who are pro-traditional marriage must be silent and not be allowed to speak and vote our minds because they differ from you? Does that mean you should shut up and not advocate for other issues just because you differ from my viewpoint? Where is the freedom in that?

… and that is why the Obama Administration is being handed its hat and being the butt end of injunctions against the HHS mandate over contraceptives. Imagine, Tyndale, a publisher of Bibles and religious materials (and owned by a Foundation that is explicitly religious in outlook), being told by Obama that they are not a religious organization, or that Catholic or Baptist hospitals are secular entities and not outreaches of the religious groups that started them? THAT is an “establishment of religion” by backing into it (“this is not a religion anymore”).  It is right and just that the courts have told Obama’s legal henchmen to bug off.

I would make the claim that the movement to eliminate religion from the public square IS an establishment of religion – that of “no religion”.  Again, go back to the roots of Progressivism and Marxism – the progenatures of such realized that in order for their philosophy to succeed, the populace had to first be unmoored from all others as well as from long held traditions.  I posit that the last hundered years has been nothing except for the tearing down of those walls of American tradition that have held against the pernicious nature of collectivism.

Will they finally fall?

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