Secular folks should worry.

[honorentheos]

I’m sure that folks here are strictly in favor of that. Right?

Regards,
MG

I'm not so sure about you, to be honest.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I’m sure that folks here are strictly in favor of that. Right?

Regards,
MG

I'm not so sure about you, to be honest.

It’s interesting MG never openly worries about moving toward fascism or right-wing authoritarianism.

- Doc

[honorentheos]

I'm not so sure about you, to be honest.

It’s interesting MG never openly worries about moving toward fascism or right-wing authoritarianism.

- Doc

Yeah. This quote, for example, was eyebrow raising:

And you don’t have to be a supporter of Donald Trump to look at the future with a healthy sense of foreboding.

Implying supporters of Donald Trump are justified in having a sense of foreboding about the future, healthy or otherwise? The dude who incited an insurrection and active attack on the very democratic processes enshrined in the Constitution?

Wow.

[malkie]

honor, you might add to the list of things going wrong currently in the US that life expectancy is lower than many (perhaps most) comparably wealthy countries, and that the US suffers from higher maternal and infant mortality rates, especially in the south and the mid-west. This is a multi-faceted problem, of course, but for a country that boasts of its wonderful health care system (and the system is truly good), the difference between services offered to some and services offered to the rest is stark. The relatively rich get a huge benefit from the system that is denied to the relatively poor.

MG, many of us, including non-Americans, are in favour of religious liberty. Where you and I differ is that I'm more interested in liberty from religion, whereas you appear to favour ever more privilege for laws based on the religious preferences of a specific subset of religions. When you talk about "God", are you referring to whatever god people may believe in, and "religion" likewise, or are you more interested in the Christian god and his religion, or, more specifically, the Mormon god and his religion. As you are aware, not even all Christian religions accept anything close to the Mormon god or his religion.

[Res Ipsa]

MG, you keep getting your political chocolate mixed in your religious peanut butter. You tell the board we should be concerned about threats to civil society in the OP. Then it turned out you were really concerned about preserving religion. You see government in conflict with religion apparently yet offer no actual discussion points to explain why an increased government role in ??? should concern everyone unless they happen to have a "progressive leftest (sic) agenda".

You claimed I wasn't reading your posts with comprehension when I describe them as thoughtless rightwing propoganda points. Then you post almost nothing but rightwing propoganda.

Try, just try, to make a coherent argument that pulls together your claim everyone should be concerned about the direction society is going and confirms you are in favor of the division between church and state.

I appreciate your response. At this point I think I’ve expressed my thoughts/sentiments as concisely and clearly as I am able to do so. As with so many things the truth usually lies somewhere in between extremes. The two extremes in this instance are those who speak from a secularist non theistic worldview and those that speak from a theistic view of the world and man’s place in it.

Interesting that you would describe being a theist as an “extreme.” I don’t think being a theist as being extreme at all. Likewise, I don’t see being a not-theist as extreme at all. I see this as confirmatory evidence that, despite the image you have of yourself, you use religion to divide, not unite. I’ll repeat — it’s you who views religious belief as a wide divide, not me.

At the end of the day it becomes a compromise between folks that see the world and man’s place in it as a result of only man’s genius or whether one is responsible to God also in respect to natural law.

Well, yes. Civil society is pluralistic — it requires compromise among people with all sorts of different values. Some of them will be humble enough to realize that they don’t have all the answers, while others will arrogantly claim that their personal beliefs are endorsed by a supernatural supervening.

Personally I am more comfortable in the imprint on our coinage:

In God We Trust

Well, bless your heart. Of course you are. The Cold War addition of God to all currency and to the pledge forts perfectly with your Cold War vintage Paranoia.

Putting God (the sacred) on money (the profane) is one of many absurdities of modern Christianity. Despite what the money says, you don’t trust in God. If you did, you wouldn’t need to trivialize God by using them as a talisman on filthy lucre. Rather than follow Christ’s teachings on money, you profane your God by using his name in a way that secularizes them. Good work!

What that compromise will look like going into the future is anyone’s guess at this point. But again, let it be said, there are valid concerns that many reasonable people have as we see current trends in ethical/moral behavior and what that may look like/mean in the future.

I agree. The movement toward authoritarian Christian government is something that should concern anyone who is committed to the Constitution.

[MG 2.0]

It’s interesting MG never openly worries about moving toward fascism or right-wing authoritarianism.

- Doc

Yeah. This quote, for example, was eyebrow raising:

And you don’t have to be a supporter of Donald Trump to look at the future with a healthy sense of foreboding.

Implying supporters of Donald Trump are justified in having a sense of foreboding about the future, healthy or otherwise? The dude who incited an insurrection and active attack on the very democratic processes enshrined in the Constitution?

Wow.

As is par for the course I am being misunderstood…to put it kindly. January 6 was a dark day in American history. Donald Trump was a major player in the unfortunate series of events. His supporters may have a sense of foreboding. But others who are not his acolytes may also have concerns about the future of the Republic. Including moderate Republicans such as myself.

Trump has trampled on our Constitution. It took someone like Mitt Romney to call him out.

I get tired of these false accusations folks.

Others, including lurkers, can see right through it.

And Doc’s comment, as usual, was off the rails.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

When you talk about "God", are you referring to whatever god people may believe in, and "religion" likewise, or are you more interested in the Christian god and his religion, or, more specifically, the Mormon god and his religion. As you are aware, not even all Christian religions accept anything close to the Mormon god or his religion.

You ought to know better than to even ask this question.

As I’ve already said, my main worry/concern is the durability of the First Amendment.

You don’t know me as well as I may have hoped.

Regards,
MG

[honorentheos]

Yeah. This quote, for example, was eyebrow raising:


Implying supporters of Donald Trump are justified in having a sense of foreboding about the future, healthy or otherwise? The dude who incited an insurrection and active attack on the very democratic processes enshrined in the Constitution?

Wow.

As is par for the course I am being misunderstood…to put it kindly. January 6 was a dark day in American history. Donald Trump was a major player in the unfortunate series of events. His supporters may have a sense of foreboding. But others who are not his acolytes may also have concerns about the future of the Republic. Including moderate Republicans such as myself.

Trump has trampled on our Constitution. It took someone like Mitt Romney to call him out.

I get tired of these false accusations folks.

Others, including lurkers, can see right through it.

And Doc’s comment, as usual, was off the rails.

Regards,
MG

Interesting. The quote is your exact words and it isn't ambiguous language. It assumes legitimacy for Trump supporters feeling foreboding and tiers off of it. It's the sort of language common to rightwing media that bends the knee to Trump and his supporters even when claiming distance because at the end of the day they are allies in the crusade.

[honorentheos]

To be explicit, MG, the Republican party invented and propagated a lie that is corrosive to the Constitution. While it's nice a few like Senator Romney spoke out against Trump, and we owe the preservation of the Republic to a handful of judges and attorneys general among whom many were Republicans, the cultural civil war declared by ultraconservative Christians that you are here championing is the core of Trumpism. The centrality of the conspiracy-addled thinking of fear is why Trump leads the party today.

[Gadianton]

The Big Brother effect of government control and/or overreach.

Actually, you were responded to. Your Republican party today is the very definition of maximal government overreach. Nothing else like it.