etech:
Thanks for the encouragement. Thank God you don't always agree with me. I am often wrong. If I had more time or something more valuable to say, I would post more often.
jackschmittusa quote:
The McCarthy era is the starting point (more or less) when political news in the U.S. became world news. The U.S. had great influence in the world. TV made exporting news a much easier task. It was wrong for earlier presidents to use Christian references in their speeches too, but it is much worse now with the whole world listening. We bash the Arab world because they mix religion and politics and yet they must see Bush as doing the same thing.
I do not bash the Arab world for mixing religion and politics. Everyone will inevitably mix their values with their politics. I "bash" any political system that suppresses appropriate freedom of religion. In its root meaning, "politics" is simply the realm of citizenship. Every citizen (from Greek: "polites," from which we get "politics") brings his beliefs or value systems to the table.
It sounds lofty and wise to say that we must separate religion and politics, but it is impossible in the real world without squelching the free exercise of religion. In the very moment that one forces an absolute separation of politics and belief, one finds that he has established by politcal might one particular belief: his own. He has summoned the demon he thought he was exorcising. He has been possessed by that which he thought to destroy.
Our founding fathers understood that and that is why they
balanced religion and politics by forbidding government suppression of religion and forbidding the government from establishing one legal religion or denomination.
I think you make a good point is stating that the McCarthy era is the starting point of American globalism from a media perspective. But the faith friendly, free-speech, free-press, pluralistic nature of our government is part of what got us to the point where we became globally pre-eminent.
So what got us there is now to be discarded because some don't view one man's particular statements to be politically correct?
You may sincerely believe that it was "wrong" for previous presidents to use Christian or Deistic references in their speeches. The wonderful thing about this country is that you are free to express that. You could have been a high school student in Iraq who wrote an anti-government statement on the blackboard and henceforth vanished along with his entire senior class (see the Washington Post for confirmation of this story.)
But what is the basis for you saying it is wrong? Since many of the framers of our Constitution freely invoked God, Providence, or the Creator, it is self-evident that the very men who lived in the constitutional era and in some cases helped write the Constituion saw no problem with it.
Here lies the fundamental point of debate. The "enlightened modernist" (say post 1945)feels like he understands the foundation of this nation and the "spirit" of our Constitution better than the previous generations and sometimes better than the men who wrote it.
I consider that a severely flawed system of interpretation. First we must understand what the document meant to those who framed it by seeing how they applied it to their everyday lives. Then we can seek to apply it to our present circumstance. If we judge the Constitution to be flawed, then we ammend it. If we feel like some political leader's actions are unconstitutional or illegal, then we press forward on those grounds and seek his removal from office.
If there is no legal, constitutional issue, then we live and let live. And we argue about it on AT.
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