Steve said to all:
... Jeffrey Stout agrees with Sam Harris that theocracy is a threat to
democracy, but he sees secularism, the notion that religion needs to be stamped
out and has no place in political discourse, as equally anti-democratic as are
any imposed limits on the sorts of justifications that are permissable in
politics.
dmb says;
I have to stop you right there. Secularism is the notion that religion needs to
be stamped out? According to my dictionary, that's just not what the word
means. "secular, adjective 1 denoting attitudes, activities, or other things
that have no religious or spiritual basis : secular buildings | secular moral
theory. Contrasted with sacred .2 Christian Church (of clergy) not subject to
or bound by religious rule; not belonging to or living in a monastic or other
order. Contrasted with regular." The definition you've used as a premise for
all that follows is actually quite biased. It is not really a definition so
much as a paranoid distortion and a slanderous attack. I'm guessing Jeffery
Stout is a religious man and you're getting this distorted view from him.
Further, democracy is portrayed as the reasonable middle ground between
theocrats and secularist. But take a look at the obvious similarity between the
actual definition of "secularism" and your description of democracy: Y
ou said that "democracy holds that political power ought to be shared equally
among all citizens and not denied based on religious affilitiation or the lack
of religious affiliation" and my dictionary says secularism denotes activities
"that have no religious or spiritual basis" and are "not subject to or bound by
religious rule".
In other words, in politics secularism simply means the separation of church
and state, NOT the view that religion needs to be stamped out. In fact, the
notion that secularism is somehow at odds with democracy will seem fairly
ridiculous the moment you recall the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the government for a redress of grievances." Notice how nicely that basic right
comports with the actual definition of secularism? For all practical purposes
the first amendment defines our government as a secular government.
Steve said:
... But there has certainly been an upsurge in the sentiment (or at least
public awareness of the sentiment) that Christians ought to dominate
non-Christians. ...It seems to me then that the way to attack theocracy is by
promoting liberal democracy rather than secularism. We Pirsigian anti-theists
have to be wary of the appearance that we represent a threat to religious ways
of life in general and seek to impose a secular worldview on all. Since we are
anti-essentialists we don't think that religion is _essentially_ anything. It
isn't essentially good or bad any more than technology is. Both can certainly
be used for evil as well as for good.
dmb says:
Since secularism and liberal democracy both mean freedom of religion, it
doesn't really make much sense to say secularism is a "threat" to religion. In
effect, the claim would be that freedom of religion is a threat to religion.
That could only be perceived as threat to a theocrat, who doesn't agree with
such freedom, who thinks church and state ought not be separate. By definition,
the theocrat wants "a system of government in which priests rule in the name of
God or a god". That's not consistent with democracy or religious freedom.
Steve said:
When religious traditionalist complain that they are being handicapped by the
demand that they restructure their political arguments in secular terms before
they can be aired in the public square, they blame secularism while it is in
fact religious liberty that requires this restructuring. ... Atheists have
never had such political power and numbers to be able to enforce a moratorium
of religious language in political arguments. It is not because an external
imposition by secularists that religious traditionalists must do such
restructuring of their arguments. ...
dmb says:
Handicapped by the demand that they make their political arguments in secular
terms? Are you kidding? The opposite has always been true, actually. Instead of
there being anything like "a moratorium on religious language", American
politicians can never talk like an atheist. Never. Politicians, for all
practical purposes, have to pay some kind of lip service at the very least.
Hell, go on Youtube and listen to a couple of George Bush's speeches. He stood
on the Capitol steps and defined freedom as a gift from God and told a national
TV audience that Jesus is his favorite philosopher. What President ever failed
to end a speech without saying "God Bless America"? The USA is by far the most
religious nation in the West. Can you think of a single atheist who was ever
elected in this country? I can't. If there ever was such a creature, he was
real good at keeping it under wraps. I think the notion that the vast Christian
majority is somehow being persecuted by secularists is quite
a grotesque distortion of our political reality. The religious right has
totally dominated American politics for as long as I can remember. In that
context, the demand has always been FOR religious language.
Steve said:
... I have become convinced by Stout that atheists and Pirsigian anti-theists
should not identify as secularists, since imposing any limits on what sorts of
arguments can made in the public sphere is as anti-democratic as the theocratic
vision that secularists seek to oppose. While we should see the process of
secularization as a positive consequence of religious liberty toward a more
inclusive society, we should not justify the bigotry we experience by posing as
though we are somehow responsible for the secularization of political
discourse. Also, by lumping all religion as a theocratic threat to democracy
we lose the allies we need among the American religious people who are
committed to democratic ideals and identify more with the democratic reform of
Martin Luther King than with the theocratic vision of Pat Robertson.
dmb says:
I think there is no call for the change you're calling for (secularization as a
positive consequence of religious liberty), not least of all because that's
already what secularism means. The first amendment separated church and state
and established religious freedom a couple of centuries ago. Secularism doesn't
mean imposing limits on speech. Quite the opposite. It says any such limits are
illegal. Again, I think the idea that secularism means anti-democratic
constraints on speech or religion (or the imposition of a vision) is not much
more than a paranoid delusion and it amount to baseless slander. Being opposed
to theocracy is to oppose bigotry and oppression and yet you're construing the
secularist as the bigoted oppressor. That's pretty warped, my friend.
Steve said:
What do you think? Do you see a theocratic movement gaining momentum in the US?
How is it manifested? How can it best be opposed? Hasn't anyone noticed that
while the politics of difference, identity, recognition of the disenfranchised
has dominated public debates in recent decades the plutocrats have seized the
opportunity to consolidate even more wealth and power? Don't the friends of
democracy whether religious or secular need to enlist one another's help to
confront the plutocrats? If so, an agenda of secularism is not at all what is
needed in the US.
dmb says:
Actually, this whole long period of conservatism is predicated on getting
people to vote against their interests and for the Plutocrats and this is very
much a part of the rise of the religious right. This has been widely
documented. As Wiki says:
"What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America"
(2004) is a book written by American journalist and historian Thomas Frank,
which explores the rise of conservative populism in the United States through
the lens of his native state of Kansas. Once a hotbed of the left-wing Populist
movement of the late nineteenth century, it has become overwhelmingly
conservative in recent decades. The book was published in the United Kingdom
and Australia as What's the Matter with America?.
According to his analysis, the political discourse of recent decades has
dramatically shifted from the class animus of traditional leftism to one in
which "explosive" cultural issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, are used
to redirect anger towards "liberal elites."Against this backdrop, Frank
describes the rise of conservatism and the so-called far right in the social
and political landscape of Kansas. He finds it difficult to understand the
overwhelming support for Republican party politicians, given his belief that
the economic policies of the Republican party do not benefit the majority of
people in the State. He also claimed that the party fails to deliver on the
"moral" issues (such as abortion and gay rights) which brought the support of
cultural conservatives in the first place -- in his view deepening a cycle of
frustration aimed at cultural liberalism.
The notion that American politics has been transformed because of defection
from the Democratic ranks of working-class social conservatives is not a new
idea:As far back as Richard Nixon's first year in the White House, Kevin
Phillips published The Emerging Republican Majority (1969).Everett Carll Ladd
Jr., with Charles D. Hadley in Transformations of the American Party System:
Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s. (1975) proclaimed "an
inversion of the old class relationship in voting" due to "the transformations
of conflict characteristic of post-industrialism."Robert Huckfeldt and Carol
Weitzel Kohfeld in Race and the Decline of Class in American Politics (1989)
argued that "race served to splinter the Democratic coalition" because the
policy commitments of the Civil Rights era provoked "[r]acial hostility,
particularly on the part of lower-status whites."Thomas Byrne and Mary D.
Edsall in Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Pol
itics (1991) argued that "[w]orking-class whites and corporate CEOs, once
adversaries at the bargaining table, found common ideological ground in their
shared hostility to expanding government intervention."All of these works, and
many others, suggested that the class basis of New Deal voting patterns had
given way to a new structure in which conservative ideology and cultural issues
brought large numbers of working-class whites into the Republican camp.[2]
dmb continues:
As I see it, the Plutocrats and the bible-thumpers have been in bed together
for a long time now. Even here in our little MOQ world, the people who defend
free-market capitalism and the people who defend theism are mostly the same
people. Actually, I'm a bit stunned that you, Steve, would buy into this
nonsense. I's not saying Stout is a slack-jawed hick but jeez. This whole
picture is seriously warped and the central points turn historical facts on
their heads. What planet does this guy live on?
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