Do we want to keep the America government secular?

The specific question i have posed here is which candidates want to move the American government in the direction of favoring a specific religion ... and would that be a good thing?
Tags
- secular
- 1st ammendment
- religion
- government
- church and state
- anti conception
- anti birth
- birth control
- death control
- rule of law
- rule of the state
- white house shilling
Comments




Please, mark, this is a no RWG, no argue just to argue, and stay on topic item. Let us see if between the two of us we can be civil to each other and think clearly.
The question i have posed here is whether Santorum wants to move the American government in the direction of favoring the Christian religion ... and would that be a good thing?


I'm would not call science a religion ... it uses completely different methods ... it is based upon testable results, whereas religion is based upon faith. Also preservation of the Earth and our environment is a value, but it is not a value that is based upon faith ... there are completely rational and testable reasons to preserve the Earth and our living environment. If we are not just to argue about whether the government can favor anything whatsoever, i think it will be necessary to narrow the discussion to only considering values that require faith alone.




However, as the piece highlights, there are even bigger problems here. The Journal writes, “There is simply no precedent for the government ordering private companies to offer a product for free, even if they do recoup the costs indirectly.”
In other words, even if the Obama administration’s fictional account of the economics involved would actually play out as the administration suggests—even if prices didn't really get passed along to everyone else but were instead simply covered by the insurer as a sort of philanthropic nod to the Obama administration—what would give the federal government the authority to order private companies to offer a products for free? Could such a mandate really be justified under Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce? Is there really no difference between regulating commerce and mandating that it be free?
Moreover, of all the products or services that companies could feasibly be required to provide for free under such an extraordinary conception of federal power, why birth control and abortifacients? Why not bread, or books, or actual medical care for actual diseases?




Firefighters from Brooklyn’s Red Hook station arrived at the Twin Towers before the second plane hit on 9/11. All seven men of Ladder 101 lost their lives that day. This summer, the city renamed part of a neighborhood street in their honor.
But the new name, Seven in Heaven Way, isn’t to everyone’s liking.
Atheist groups have protested the public allusion to religion. “The attacks on 9/11 were an attack on America,” David Silverman, president of American Atheists, told the Brooklyn Paper. “They were an attack on our Constitution, and breaking that Constitution to honor these firefighters is the wrong thing to do.”
What’s wrong, actually, is this kind of sweeping intolerance toward Brooklyn residents expressing the sentiment that seven neighbors made the ultimate sacrifice on their behalf. This is no time for confusion over the meaning of religious freedom.
Freedom for religion





An interesting point raised by an Slate article ... "Whoever paints the darker fantasy has the political advantage" .... bro mark seems to know that by instinct.
An interesting point raised by an Slate article ... "Whoever paints the darker fantasy has the political advantage" .... bro mark seems to know that by instinct.

Snuck.... not today, eh?




I agree, thanks for answering the question.
& having a government conflicting with no particular practices of any religion.

I agree, thanks for answering the question.
& having a government conflicting with no particular practices of any religion.




I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish–where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source–where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials–and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew–or a Quaker–or a Unitarian–or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you–until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end–where all men and all churches are treated as equal–where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice–where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind–and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

"Earlier in my political career I had the opportunity to read the [JFK's ] speech and i almost threw up. You should read the speech.
... because the first substantive line of the speech says I believe I don’t believe in an America where the separation between church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and visions of our country.
This is the First Amendment. The First Amendment says the free exercise of religion. That means bringing everybody, people of faith and no faith, into the public square. Kennedy for the first time articulated the vision saying, no, ‘faith is not allowed in the public square. I will keep it separate.’ Go on and read the speech ‘I will have nothing to do with faith. I won’t with people of faith.’ It was an absolutist doctrine that was foreign at the time of 1960,”"
Well, yeah, i did read it, and i lightened to the whole speech again. At no place in his speech did Kennedy say or imply that "faith is not allowed in the public square".
Rather what he did say was ...
...
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source—where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace
...
I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion.
- Would Santorum either request or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope? Note the word "instruction" is vitally critical here and is not the word "consult".
- Would Santorum allow a religious body to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace?



His faith under attack, his contraception decision savaged on all sides, President Barack Obama could use backup in the religious community right now.
But three years into his presidency, Obama’s marquee council of faith advisers has gone dark — a little-noticed postscript for a panel that he rolled out with fanfare and high expectations during his first weeks in office but ended up playing only a limited role in West Wing deliberations.
announced at the 2009 National Prayer Breakfast, Obama’s decision not only to preserve former President George W. Bush’s faith-based office but also to expand the mission with a new council appeared aimed at dispelling the notion, once and for all, that Democrats are more comfortable turning away from faith than embracing it.
Obama envisioned the council as the conduit for bringing a broader spectrum of ideological and religious voices into an overhauled Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which had been criticized in the Bush administration as too focused on directing money to conservative groups that could turn out voters. Obama’s initial appointees — a former Southern Baptist Convention leader, a Hindu, an Indian-American Muslim, progressive Jewish leaders and an openly gay nonprofit head, among others — gave it the feel of an unusual Washington experiment worth watching



(Yep we pray ... (or is it prey) - but only when he needs US ...

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