I couldn't resist you, I'm not deaf dumb and blind

[wombat_socho]

Do people like this student even realize how bigoted they sound? Makes me wonder how long we'll have to wait for a new Test Act that also bars evangelicals -or people who look and sound like evangelicals- from office. Judging from the confirmation hearings for Justice Alito last year, some people evidently think there's one in effect already.

Tonight I'll probably be working on my apazine for this weekend's StippleAPA, which as usual I've done absolutely nothing with in the last six weeks since Arcana. I did a little background work for Blood Red Skies today which should make writing the battle scenes in the middle chapters a lot easier, but I'm dubious about whether I'll actually get any actual writing done.

As for the weekend, aside from the Stipple collation, a stop by the library to pick up the new David Drake novel Some Golden Harbor (one of the Lieutenant Leary series, featuring the most lethal librarian in the universe) and a programming meeting with thaadd sometime Sunday, I don't have any plans, because those usually require money, and that's going to be scarce for a while.

Comments

[nornagest.livejournal.com]

This is a bit of a tangent, but it seems to me that the only real problem w.r.t. conflicting faith and reason occurs when a particular faith lays down religious laws which are not predicated on both parties following that faith. Islam clearly does this. I don't think Judaism does - what I remember of the legalistic sections of the Old Testament seems to apply only to Jews, and in the modern sense presumably only to practicing Jews. Most of the other major faiths I'm reasonably familiar with don't, although I don't know enough about many (e.g. Hinduism) to make the call.

Christianity seems to be kind of a special case. As I understand it, most of its legalistic provisions are inherited from Judaism in a roundabout kind of way, and thus should really only apply to Christians, but there seems to be a Western tradition of assuming anyone in a Christian-dominated country is subject to Christian religious law.

For a long time that didn't really matter, since the only significant non-Christians in Europe were Jewish and thus responsible for a superset of Christians' secular obligations. As you imply, it only really started to change during the Enlightenment, when freethinkers, Deists, and occultists of various stripes started popping up.

What I'm worried about isn't faith superseding reason in private life, as even politicians have a right to believe in Great Cthulhu if that's what suits their fancy. It's a belief in the tradition I've mentioned, that specifically Christian prohibitions (and various Christian philosophical positions) apply to non-Christians -- and chatter about faith in public life, the United States as a Christian country, et cetera often seems to be nothing more than shorthand for the same.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a pretty convincing argument to be made that many of the institutional structures of the country were rooted in Christian (specifically Protestant) attitudes and behaviors; James Webb makes the argument a lot better than I can, but he's not the only one. Now, given that the civil and criminal law of the several states is rooted in English common law (except for Louisiana, of course, where it's the Code Napoleon) you can make the persuasive argument that if, say, Utah is predominantly Mormon with a large Catholic minority, then if there's a consensus between Mormons and Catholics on what behavior should be proscribed, then that's the way it ought to be, and if you have a problem with that then maybe you ought to consider moving to Colorado, Nevada, or some other presumably more liberal state.

That argument tends to give a lot of people hives, but it is one way of doing federalism, and was actually the way things were done for most of the country's history.

[nornagest.livejournal.com]

I'm perfectly willing to believe that the USA's institutional structures have a somewhat Protestant cast; indeed, it makes a lot of sense. But there's a pretty big distinction between acknowledging Protestant influence on our institutions and granting Protestant Christianity a privileged position within them; if we're going to call the United States a Christian country on that account, then we should equally be prepared to call it a Deist country, an Iroquois country, and an Athenian country.

My understanding of the federal system grants a certain amount of weight to your argument regarding the government of the particular states, albeit with caveats stemming from the supremacy of the equal protection clause. On the federal level, however, you can't get much clearer than Washington's comments on the subject in the Treaty of Tripoli (or Madison and Hamilton's in the Federalist Papers, though those don't have any legal force).

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

I guess that depends on what you mean "privileged". Keep in mind that some states had established churches until the 1970s, and if some state government wanted to get really hardcore, they could make a case for doing it again. (Though given what's happened in Europe where this is actually done, they'd be fools to, but that's another debate.)

The real influence of the Christian churches, and to a lesser extent the Jewish congregations, is that they set moral guidelines for their people which are ultimately reflected in the laws passed by legislatures. For example, many Southern and prairie states have large populations of Southern Baptists and other evangelicals who don't hold with liquor. Not coincidentally, booze tends to be restricted in a lot of those places, and in some counties you can't buy so much as a can of 3.2 horse piss. More commonly, most Christian religions are against prostitution, and so in most states it's against the law to trade sex for money. Insofar as any religion is privileged in the US, that's how it works - it's privilege in the sense that the diversity wonks use the word, not privilege in the sense that bishops, rabbis and ministers are entitled to seats in various State Senates on account of being considered our Lords Spiritual.

[digex.livejournal.com]

to one of wombats points, it is a GOOD THING that states are able to for the
most part do what they want - federalism is GOOD. I know that it is a pain
in the ass sometimes when states all have different rules, and that if there was
just a federal rule than it would all be the same... with the states free to do their
own things, then you (the citizen) are free to vore with your feet. Don't like the
way that MA limits your ability to get a permit to carry a conceiled weapon? If it
means that much to you, at least you have the OPTION to vore with your feet - move
to a state that is a SHALL ISSUE state and bingo you have what you wanted.

also, states can be the experimental grounds - you can try something on a pretty big
basis, but not nationwide, like changed to various social services, and if it works then
roll it out to the rest of the country, or if it sucks, kill it quiety. Yes, it would be
"so much better" if the feds would make it uniform, but only if they make what YOU
want uniform. I will go with 50 tries to roll my dave against government interference
rather that one roll for the whole game.

doug

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

This is the way the system was set up, and the further we get away from that (whether by Federal laws or Federal judges' fiat) the more fucked up things get. It took fifty years to even begin reversing some of the crap that came with the New Deal, and it'll probably take until at least 2033 for us to weed out the most pernicious socialist aspects of it.