Posted by
The Interface on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 12:32:16 AM
A relatively recent post over at the Bookworm Room provides us with a good example of critical thinking and historical analysis dissecting out a leftist screed against people of faith, particularly the Christian faith, getting involved in politics and letting biblical considerations form and inform their values and thus their proposed policies. Oh the horror!After a concise discussion of the First Amendment and the letter in which Thomas Jefferson actually coined the phrase “separation of church and state,” (which does not appear in the First Amendment despite you’re your history/sociology/leftist teacher may have told you) including giving the text of both so one can judge the validity of said discussion, the Bookworm succinctly observes (emphasis added):
It is manifestly clear from perusing both the Bill of Rights and Jefferson’s own letter that none of the Founders intended that religious people must be barred from civil participation. They can bring their values to bear in the civic arena, even if those values are religiously inspired. What they cannot do is hijack the government so that the government uses its coercive powers to force people to worship a specific faith, to interfere with a religion’s doctrine, or to punish or ostracize people for practicing a faith that the government does not sanction.
These subtleties — the difference between government controlled religion, which is bad, and a religious people whose religion informs their conduct, which is constitutionally neutral — completely eludes the anti-religious Left. They want people who enter government to check their religion at the door. They are incapable of understanding that the complete absence of religion is a religion in and of itself, with faith in government and its bureaucracy being substituted in place of faith in God and his morality.
In light of this history, i.e., the background facts and data, there follows an interesting critique of Secular Humanism from a former secular humanist, the blog author himself (herself?), using the vehicle of this hysterical (in both the senses of hyperventilating rhetoric and side slapping humor) letter from Barry Lynn, the Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Instructive reading. Go take a look and arm yourself with some rationality and counterarguments should such drivel try to intrude into your sphere of influence.
Since truth is malleable to the point of nonexistence for the liberal, and feelings have been elevated to supremacy in what’s left of the liberal mind, the subtle distinctions on which such judgments are made do, indeed, elude the Leftist. And they hope you and I will be uninformed enough, and stupid enough, to believe them without challenge, especially if their “argument” amounts to emotional hyperventilation and expansive hyperbole.