IS IT TRUE September 6, 2012 “NATIONAL”

1. Where is Lloyd Bentsen when we need him? “Barack Obama, YOU ARE NO BILL CLINTON”.

   • Lord Bentsen is no doubt at room temperature by now. By the way, did you know that there is an ICBM silo on his family’s ranch near Mission, Texas?

2. We are not and should never be a theocracy, but we are not religiously sterile, especially concerning Christianity as a nation. When we become so sensitive that even the statement, “…God-given potential…” (a statement reminiscent to one in our Declaration of independence) becomes an offense to the point of being booed, then the party has lost touch with our roots. Any party’s platform is a guide for the party, not legislation. Even a law written to say that all should be able to work to the extent of their God given ability would fall short of establishing a religion.

3. Most likely what happened was the removal of God and the reinstatement in the Dem platform was a PR stunt. It was meant to bolster Obama’s godly credentials and defuse some of the religious people’s objections of him.

   It might actually work with a certain set of people.

   • My impression of events in formulating both national platfors is that young policy wonks are retained to write the platforms to reflect the dogmas most radical elements in each party.

     In the Democrat Party, that means the wonks cranked out a platform with God and Jerusalem deleted from mention. This did not align with Obama’s philosophy, and either he or his staff ordered amendments to align with Obama’s views. Leadership in action.

     In the Republican Party, the wonks cranked out a platform that denies a woman’s right to decide on her own reproductive future even in cases of rape, incest, or medical endangerment of the woman herself. Although this plank did not agree with Romney’s previously stated stance on abortion rights, he simply flip flopped once again, caved in to the most radical elements of his party, and embraced fanatacism.

     • All you just did was repeat the very narrative I said they are trying to manufacture – that Obama is not as bad as the religious zealots say he is. You pretty much just reiterated my point.

       One thing you should have learned from the Republican Convention, the national Conventions are very carefully scripted. This incident is no different. Sooner you figure that out, the better off you’ll be.

       • You sure assume a lot about a person whom you’ve never met and never spoken to in person. You also come off rather haughty. As far as me being better off, whether in political knowledge or whatever else you may be implying, I’m doing just fine.

         • Well you have the advantage over me since you don’t reveal your real name, but what I was saying wasn’t meant to be a personal affront. If I came off that way, I apologize.

         • Well, it sounded personal, and I took it that way maybe because of the time of day and a few tasty adult beverages.

           After posting my remark, I finished watching the DNC, and I agree with you 100%. It was scripted most excellently. Unbelievably good job of scripting the entire 3-day event! Blew the RNC completely out of the water.

           Look, I know I have the advantage of “anonymity,” but your Uncle Joe knows my contact info if it ever happens you want to chat.

         • Same to you. Friend me sometime on FB. I seem to get into some humdinger debates over there too. 😀

4. This online newspaper seems to be in denial of the fact that there cannot ever be a Theocracy in this country because our constitution does not allow for the adoption of a State Religion. It does however provide for religious freedom for all.

   What part of “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” do you not understand?

   If you take The Creator (GOD) out of the document, then to what entity will you attribute your “Unalienable Rights”?

   The democrats attending the convention yesterday afternoon voted three times by voice vote to remove any mention of GOD from their party platform, and if you wish to join that group of individuals it is certainly your right to do so. As for me, I KNOW where my rights come from and I can tell you it is not a Washington politician

   Why does anyone perceive what took place yesterday on the floor of the convention as any surprise. Have you not payed any attention too what has been happening to the democrat party over the last 40 years?

   I can imagine what a field day the media would have if the republican party ever brought an impeached former president to their convention to speak, but we have been trained to passively accept the double standard of the media and the democrat party.

   Well they can do whatever they wish with their party, I could not care less. But when they try to convince Americans that their “unalienable rights” come from any place other than GOD, then I draw the line!

   I am so sorry, and disappointed, that you have fallen for their rhetoric.

   ___

   • The fallacy in your argument is in your equating “The Creator” with God. Some religions do not call it “God”. Some don’t believe in a Creator at all.

     The point of that passage in the Declaration of Independence is that our rights are unalienable and have come to us by virtue of our very existence, not because they are bestowed upon us by other men or allowed to exercise them because some Law of Man has dictated it. Whether you believe in a “Creator” or not is completely and utterly immaterial to whether your free will and your unalienable rights exist.

     The reality is you shouldn’t care either way what either party puts in its platform. Those party platforms are not representative of you as an individual. Even if Congress passed a law revoking the First Amendment, you STILL would have the rights codified in the First Amendment by virtue of your birth upon this planet, whether by act of a Creator or accident of a cold, unfeeling Universe. The wording of United States Law is essentially meaningless. The only thing meaningful is your willingness or unwillingness to protect your own rights against those who would seek to limit them and follow the guidance of your own heart regardless of the dictates of man’s pathetic “Law”.

     In my opinion, you are not free. You and I are slaves to our respective political and religious dogmas. I am trying to break free from mine. Are you?

     • The God thing is just a distraction from this: http://m.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/09/democrats-retreat-civil-liberties-2012-platform

       Look at all the stuff about civil liberties removed from the Dem platform… To me, that is far more telling than the removal and reinstatement of God.

       • “The God thing is just a distraction. . . .”

         * * * * * * *

         You are just a distraction.

         ___

         • That was just an unnecessary, childish reply.

   • “If you take The Creator (GOD) out of the document, then to what entity will you attribute your “Unalienable Rights”?”

     That is a very important point. It is the difference between having an ethical absolute or relevant morality. Dietrich Bonhoffer recognized that phrase as what differentiates our revolution from France’s Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

     I find it interesting in Article I that the “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government” are all conjoined to the main clause “Congress shall make no laws” in the same way as “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (religion) is. How do we consider hindering free speech or the press to be a grievous violation of our rights, but not consider the restricting the free expression of religion with in our government a violation?

     The CCO spoke against a free speech zone at USI, but does it support a free religious expression zone outside of our political activities?

     • Why do unalienable rights have to have any attribution beyond the moment of your conception or birth? This is all so much grasping at dogmatic straws.

       • Because they are said to be endowed by a Creator not created by our conception and birth. That places them beyond our traditions and influences. Although these rights might be denied for a time, they could not be alienated.

         The wording was certainly a plea to the King’s religious convictions in that these rights superseded the king’s authority. Therefore, the Creator is the ethical absolute rather than any man.

         If that is grasping at dogmatic straws, then they are straws our founders believed to be crucial to the formation of our republic.

         • Allow me to pose to you a hypothetical question then… If atheists reject the concept of a Creator, do they then have no rights?

         • What we believe about something does not make it true or false. Even an atheist can conceptualize moral laws that transcend them and that for an ethical absolute to be an absolute it must be external.

           Without an ethical absolute, how does one argue that anything is right or wrong past “what is right for me?” Does what a robber believe about bank robbery negate the laws against it? Does one’s needs compared to another’s surplus negate the law? The concept of deity might fall dead on atheist, but not the principle.

           One of the rights defined in our Declaration was liberty,but liberty means free to do as we please. That freedom therefore must also be tempered to prevent my liberty from violating another’s happiness. I feel an atheist is fully capable of understanding that he did not create these rights, is not the one who endows them to others, but he must live in harmony with them. An atheist might argue that there is no ethical absolute to which I ask “Are you absolutely sure?”

           Lastly, congress cannot establish a religion, but an atheist must also recognize that the constitution secures religious expression to the same extent it secures freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Religious expression can not be asked to stand outside during the due process of our government any more than free speech or the press can be asked to wait outside.

         • There is a lot to respond to there, but I’ll try to keep it brief lest I am accused again of living on this website…

           My whole point is this: the operative phrase in the Declaration has to do with our rights being unalienable. The Founders could have just as easily said, “Our rights are unalienable by virtue of our birth and they are derived from the simple fact of our existence.” The “Creator” concept isn’t really necessary here as far as the results in Law are concerned.

           I find it interesting that the atheist, who doesn’t share that same Creator concept, nonetheless has the same rights as the rest of us under our system of Laws. This inherent contradiction points out the fundamental flaw such a Creator concept introduces. That’s probably why it was left out of the Constitution. It adds nothing of real substance to the Law. If anything, it serves to exclude from the Law those who do not believe in such a Creator.

           However, I’m not blind to history and I do realize how this document was revolutionary PR as much as it was a line in the sand. It was important because it threw the Divine Rights of Kings concept on its head, and it was easier to do that poignantly by incorporating the concept of a Creator.

           You misunderstood the other part of my argument when I said “…science has neither proven or disproven the existence of a Creator,” then later said “– which IS a man-made concept, after all.” These are not contradictory statements. The man-made concept I was referring to was the concept of the origin of man’s rights being a Creator and not a King. That wasn’t meant to suggest the “Creator” could be proved to be solely a man-made concept.

           In my honest view, all our philosophies are just constructs designed by people to make our world make sense. They are in essence crutches. A “Creator” certainly is a concept that exists in the minds of men. Whether it is solely a construct of the minds of men or a real existential entity none of us can really prove or disprove; however, the concept so provocatively articulated by Jefferson that our rights come DIRECTLY to us via a Creator, bypassing popes and kings, IS most certainly a concept of man. It was designed to supercede the “Divine Right of Kings” (also a concept of man in my view) which held that rights are granted to subjects by the Creator through a King who acts as the Creator’s intermediary.

           Now, men can quibble and bicker and point to this or that passage in the Bible, but the reality is, none can prove either that the Bible isn’t just itself a work of man. It is no secret men had a hand in it at all stages, from recording the disparate Books to scrolls, to translating it over and over again, to collecting what is recognized as “The Bible” together in it’s current compilation. That was done most certainly by men at the First Council of Nicaea.

           Then you have the myriad other sacred religious texts with gods of many different names, many of which are far older than the New Testament and some older than the Books of Moses – The Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Tao Te Ching, The Dhammapada, the I Ching – all of which I have read at one time or another. I see no valid reason why I should call any of these books “works of man” and the Judeo-Christian Bible the sole exempt “work of God”.

           This is the premise upon which your entire argument rests. If the Bible is a work of man, then its philosophies and concepts are the works of men. Then all systems derived from it are also works of men, including the foundation of this country and its codification of our rights as unalienable.

           The cruel fact is, we CAN be alienated from our “rights”. We have been in the past and we are being now. We only have those “rights” we assert to other human beings who would seek to infringe upon them. If a law is established by men to strip us of those “rights”, we can either lie down and take it, fight back against them, or simply ignore their authority over us.

       • Do you have a life outside of this web site? It doesn’t seem as if you do.

         • IndianaEnoch: I think you’re wrong. What we believe about something absolutely can make it true or false. Perception is a large part of our experience. The discovery of absolutes which exist outside our subjective perception is the mission of the scientific method. Last I checked, science has neither provven or disproven the existence of a Creator. You didn’t answer my question. If rights are derived from a Creator, and atheists don’t accept there is a Creator, then by that reasoning they have no rights. However, if you admit they still have rights despite their disbelief, then the concept of rights derived from a Creator – which IS a man-made concept, after all – is pretty meaningless. The “Creator” is not necessary in that equation.

         • Do you? What would give you that impression unless you, yourself, have no life and are here to see me posting?

           From what I can tell, I’m one of the few people here with the balls to actually post every reply with my real name and not skip from username to username. It usually takes me all of one minute to post an average reply, so in a typical week I probably spend 30 minutes on this website.

         • Brad, I answered your question, but it is rather complex. You’re more than welcome to think I’m wrong, as I think you are wrong, but again, thinking that does not make it either of us right. I do not understand how one’s perception can change that.

           I again find your reasoning on the atheist flawed in that you are putting what they believe over what the declaration says. The whole idea of an ethical absolute is that it transcends what we believe to be true. An atheist might disagree with the idea of a deistic creator, but has that negated their believe that they are created (through evolution) or that the rights do not apply to them?

           Further more, the whole point is moot because our Declaration is based on what our founders believed not what an atheist believes. Therefore an atheist is not alienated from the rights because the Declaration is based on what the founders believed to be true.

           Lastly, in the first part of your response you say “…science has neither provven or disproven the existence of a Creator,” but in the last you emphatically state “– which IS a man-made concept, after all.” Which is it? No matter which ever it is, the principle that a moral law exist and is given by virtue of creation is an undeniable ethical absolute.

           As was originally asked, if our rights are not endowed and secure in a moral lawgiver, creator,than what makes them unalienable?

       • BTW Bard, I find ethics to be an interesting topic. It does us good to wrestle with the difficult questions.

     • We advocated inclusion of the US Constitution into both party platforms. We are comfortable with the term “creator” and with the concept of rights for just being human. People may call their creator whatever they wish and a creator is much bigger than any government. We fully support free speech in all places including outside of political events. Free speech of course includes people of religious faith.

       • +1

         • Thank You!

         • No problem. You hit the nail squarely on the head.

5. Religious exercise is numerated “with” free speech in Amendment I not included “in” freedom of speech. Freedom of speech, and freedom of religious exercise are not one and the same. There seems to a misconception today that one must check one’s faith along with his hat in public arena. I do not want a theocracy, and I want orderly debate of issues in the public forum, but you can not secure freedom of religious exercise by checking it at the door.

   If the Democrats had written “Jesus given ability” I would feel that they are over a line of common respect. Likewise, when I hear they booed the inclusion of God in such a generic statement, I feel they are also over a line of common respect.

   I am also perplexed by some of the antisemitic expressions I have heard expressed by some democrats.

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