Andrea, did you actually read my post?I will agree...

2007-12-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

Andrea, did you actually read my post?

I will agree that many, possibly even all "the great thinkers" include some spiritual dimension to their thought.

Even as I include Nitche, Socrates, Lau Tse and Alestair Crowley amoung the great thinkers, along with Augustine, Aristotle and Kung Fu Tse.

I will dispute the assertion that any great number of them were religious in a way that most religious contemporaries would have approved of.

Consider the death of Socrates.

There's a little Jesuit in-joke, that there is no theologian nor theology worth consideration that has not been excommunicated or proscribed at one point or another.

I've long known Ron Paul claimed to be a Christian. I parted ways the moment I found out that he was actually a Pharisee, a person to whom faith is a public performance art. You may be familiar with what Jesus had to say about such people:

"Behold, they HAVE their reward." And it may be valid and worthwhile, but it's a social, secular and political virtue, not a spiritual one.

I do not "hate Christians." My faith derives from the words of Christ, which is what I would think to be Christianity by definition.

The fact that those words seem to put me at odds with most cultural Christians these says makes me reluctant to use the term "Christians," much less attend church. But I don't hate Christians; I dispise and deride hypocrits and social bunnies who belong to a church in order to belong to a socially acceptable group.

After reading the bible, and especially the Words Printed In Red, it seems to me that at the very least, if your religion becomes socially acceptable and encourages behavior that everyone approves of - you should reform immediately.

My standard is "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." A President must be president for all, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Atheist, Deist, Agnostic, Pagan and Satanist alike.

It is the job of the President to enforce the secular law, not any particular religious doctrine or moral standard. Aside from the obvious issues that exist with Theocracy from a civil libertarian view, there's an issue with theocracy that should trouble the most rigid and doctrinaire person of faith:

A Govenrment, in order to function, must demand the lowest minimum standard compatible with a viable society with many and variable constituants of various backgrounds, religions and understandings.

A religion must arguably demand more, for it is an exclusive thing, requiring some degree of faith in the value of uncompelled virtue - at least within the broad tradition of western religious arguement, there is a general consensus that a virtue required by law is no virue at all. It's merely mute compliance, social conformity or the lack of enough guts to disagree with doctrine enforced by law. It brings the faith of the faithful into disrepute.

By claiming Universality and temporal dominion, it must turn a blind eye to cases where conformity exists in public even when derision and noncompliance is widely known to exist in confidence.

Soon enough, even officials of the faith are corrupt, for in making themselves the path to power, they invite the vices common to those who seek power for it's own sake. Consider Ted Haggard. Is he not the poster child for this very phenomonon? The Very leader of the Very church that is attempting, by means of very questionable tactics of evangelism, create an Evangilist officer corps for the Air Force, one primarily loyal to God - as embodied, of course, by some person of evangelical faith, who may or may not also hold political office.

It must expect a minimum conformity to law, rather than demanding a high standard of behavior even when it's a matter that is not reasonably possible to monitor or prosecute.

Whenever religion and government become entangled, the result is a bastard crossbreed that performs neither function to the standards that either a citizen or a congregation has every right to expect. One only need Google "Richelieu" to see what might occur in one direction - and of course Bastille Day celebrates the ultimate backlash to such cynical regulation and exploitation of the "inferior classes."

Neither is a good outcome, and both are the more or less direct result of confusing moral and legal authority.

I cannot tolerate any president who seems at all unclear on this critical issue. The Federalist Papers are brutally clear as to the necessity for the separation of Church and State, a position I believe to be informed by the faith of our forefathers, not in oppositon to it. The Salem witch trials and a huge number of other exclusions, persecutions and injustices in the name of religion of all sorts had been suffered by many in the colonies up to the day the Revolution became possible, and none had suffered worse than members of one sincere Christian community at the hands of another, equally sincere Christian community.

I find Ron Paul's essay disputing the concept of separation of Church and State to be bizarre at the very least.

It calls into question the legitimacy of his entire Constitutional stance; it's quite possible to view many of his "constitutional" stands as being in service to social conservatism.

His flip-flop on impeachment is particularly troubling in this light.

When questioned about his stances on drug laws and abortion, while he immediately and appropriately states that it's inappropriate and unconstitutional for the Federal government to regulate such matters, he then immediately asserts that it is the right of the state.

Perhaps - but it would be far more constitutionally defensible to assert that unless there is a "compelling and narrowly defined state interest," it's an individual right. Both the ninth and tenth amendments seem to me to underline that, - that ANY government must demonstrate an overwhelming and compelling necessity to regulate any individual activity, and that necessity must go quite a ways beyond religious or secular distaste.

I am personally rather conservative socially. There are many things that I will hotly defend in principle that I will never practice. I believe passionately that people have the right to do things that I think are wrong - so long as the consequences are primarily limited to themselves, and I'll willingly abide with a degree of minor inconvenience and even a slight risk or to in order to maximize individual liberty and minimize collective intrusion into our lives.

Aside from my Libertarian and Invividualist views, there is a pragmatic validity to my views, learned from the martial arts and confirmed by most of the rest of life:

"Bruises teach best."

That's not to be taken as a justification for inflicting bruises, indeed, I think artificially inflated consequences get in the way of learning from cause and effect.

But society as a whole benefits by seeing the consequences, positive and negative, of those who find their nature compels them to ski out of bounds.

Wow..wonderfully put. I can not add to this. Thank...

2007-12-25T23:22:00.000-08:00

Wow..wonderfully put. I can not add to this. Thank you for posting your thoughts so eloquently.

You just noticed that Ron Paul is a Christian? The...

2007-12-24T15:02:00.000-08:00

You just noticed that Ron Paul is a Christian? Then he must be the kind of christian I am ok with - the kind that keeps it to themselves.

LIke it or not, all the great thinkers have had some sort of spirituality attached to them.

Hating Christians is no less repulsive than Christian hate.

Comments on Graphictruth: The Official Graphictruth Unendorsement of Ron Pau...

Andrea, did you actually read my post?I will agree...

Wow..wonderfully put. I can not add to this. Thank...

You just noticed that Ron Paul is a Christian? The...