Yours is a reasonable assessment, but I don't think it succeeds at your apparent attempt to claim communism is not atheistic. The "religion of the state" concept can be extended to the "religion of [insert your obsession here]." So I guess I'm a follower of the Internet gods.
I still think there is little correlation between religion -- or lack thereof -- and total support for liberty. The religious right wants restrictions on sexual and other "immoral" behavior, while the secular left wants restrictions on economic behavior. Choose your poison. Libertarians of both left and right want personal freedom. It's more the political philosophy than religion that guides one's support for individual liberty. A friend of mine sent the following, which shows the Catholic Church (I am not a member) engaging in some rather libertarian activities: The Catholic Church educates 2.6 million students every day at the cost to your Church of 10 billion dollars, and a savings on the other hand to the American taxpayer of 18 billion dollars. Your graduates go on to graduate studies at the rate of 92%, all at a cost to you. To the rest of the Americans it's free. The Catholic Church has a non-profit hospital system of 637 hospitals, which account for hospital treatment of 1 out of every 5 people - not just Catholics - in the United States today. From: Steve Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2008 4:01 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Libertarian] Stop the War FOR Terror Bob Giramma wrote: > The big nanny state advocates in the US come from the secular left, not > the religious right. Note that communism -- the mother of all nanny > state systems -- is an atheistic movement. The religious right is open to any behavior consenting adults wish to participate in, any drug/supplement a consenting adult wishes to ingest, smoke, or inject? The religious, right or left, are the drivers behind nanny state limits in personal behavior. Communisms is no different than religion except in how they name their gods. In communism god is the collective and in religion god or gods are the fiction. In both cases individuals are supposed to serve something other than their own interests, an attempt to impose behavior by external means. -- Steve - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Take World's Smallest Political Quiz at http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html "If a thousand old beliefs were ruined on our march to truth we must still march on." --Stopford Brooke [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
