Posted on 11/27/2004 2:50:54 PM PST by wagglebee
Thanks so much for serving, and be confident that you've chosen a great service. I was AF for a bit over four years, KC-135 Crew chief.
You probably won't hear about Javelina at Basic. The reason I know about her is because I have the old AMT/ERTL model kit of the KC-135A (note the "skinny" old-style original engines) in 1/72 scale. The kit offers decals for "Javelina," a tanker from Castle AFB painted in the "Orca" low visibility camo (example photo here) and "Eeyore," a tanker from Fairchild AFB with the old Strategic Air Command high visibility scheme. I bought the thing back in '93 and never built it. I'm going to do it in the Hi-vis, but substitute aftermarket decals that depict a bird called "Top Off" I worked on while I was at Wurtsmith AFB in Michigan.
Well, that's probably as much as you need to be bored with my hobby activities...Good luck in Basic, and if there's any way I can help, let me know.
Recent history teaches us that secular societies that substitute the state for God as the source of rights almost always ends with the majority slaughtering the minority, eg. Josef Stalin, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao.
It does neither. Rights don't come from the Constitution.
History teaches us that mixing religion and politics almost always ends with the majority taking rights from the minority.
Uh, no. The two were mixed throughout the large part of our history, and it didn't result in the persecution of religious minorities.
Regimes that drive religion from politics - Hitler, Stalin, Mao - well, their examples can speak for themselves.
Religion abhors a vacuum. If one suppresses religious expression (and there is no other word for what O'Hair wanted) then the expression of another religion will occur. People like O'Hair and the FFRF understand this, and they know the religion filling the vacuum will be atheism.
Yep!
Or how he and Madison passed a law in Virginia making the breaking of the Sabbath a criminal offense.
If you had a chance, would you ban headscarves from public schools as they did in France? If I remember correctly, that was the only thing that France has done over the past decade or so that FReepers approved of.
How about the knives that Sikhs (even children) are supposed to carry on them at all times?
Is there no time when the government should intervene to keep religious life and secular life separated?
In answer to your question: For me it's a matter of degree. Do I care if kids wear little necklaces? No. Do I care if they wear shirts that say, "If you don't believe that Jesus is Lord, then you're going to Hell"? Yes. In the former case, the symbol is unobtrusive and denotes a personal faith. In the latter case, the shirt is disruptive and violates the rights of those of different faiths to go about their business without having someone else's religion shoved down their throat.
The Constitution does not ban God or religion from the public square and the sooner the radical atheists understand that, the better we'll all get along.
Both Church and State function more effectively without one meddling in the other. It is not radical to point that out and work to achieve it. As for getting along...well...I suppose that you could just acquiesce to all of my goals. I would feel just fine, but somehow I think that you wouldn't feel satisfied.
Darn! I accidentally clicked private message - TWICE!!
Pick up your mail, Zero.
Actually, your examples prove my point. A dominant philosophy was accepted by the state as the legitimate "Truth" and the majority began to kill the minority. Religion (or Philosophy) and Politics don't mix. There is nothing special about Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism that prevents them from being used and abused in the same way as they have, in fact, been.
Yes, there is a difference, but the Founders realized that state religions had led to religious persecution in every single country in Europe. That's why it was one of the first things they banned.
No, that's not the reason, given the fact that many of the states had official religions. They banned it at the federal level because in such a large country with so many different sects, they feared the consequences to the peace of the community resulting from different sects competing for influence in the federal government.
Not this one. I don't see how headscarves disrupt the school environment so freedom of religion should prevail.
How about the knives that Sikhs (even children) are supposed to carry on them at all times?
I can see how a knife could disrupt the school environment so the Sikh loses.
Is there no time when the government should intervene to keep religious life and secular life separated?
The state should not promote one religion above any other nor should the states or the feds establish relgions. A public school teacher preaching Christianity would violate the 1A, a public school teacher wearing a crucifix would not.
In answer to your question: For me it's a matter of degree. Do I care if kids wear little necklaces? No. Do I care if they wear shirts that say, "If you don't believe that Jesus is Lord, then you're going to Hell"? Yes. In the former case, the symbol is unobtrusive and denotes a personal faith. In the latter case, the shirt is disruptive and violates the rights of those of different faiths to go about their business without having someone else's religion shoved down their throat.
It could be disruptive but it certainly doesn't violate any of you rights. You are not entilted to freedom from religion and if you don't like the shirt or the "little necklaces" don't look at them.
Both Church and State function more effectively without one meddling in the other.
The Constituion prohibits the state from establishing a religion and from meddling in the free exercise of religion. You are a meddler.
It is not radical to point that out and work to achieve it.
It is radical to loby for the exorcisim of religion from the public square. That is what you stated above and that makes you a radical atheist with no Constitutional leg to stand on.
As for getting along...well...I suppose that you could just acquiesce to all of my goals. I would feel just fine, but somehow I think that you wouldn't feel satisfied.
Or you could simply familiarize yourself with the Constitution, the DOI and the history surrounding the founding of the country and then we'd get along just fine.
Additionally, Mauritania, Nicaragua, abandoned the yoke of communism in the past decade.
Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Republican Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Moldova, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Syria, Togo, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Yemen have taken steps to shed the yoke of Communism but remain strapped with socialist economies. (The People's Republic of China, for its part, is a socialist economy and has been so for the past decade, having left the disastrous policies of the genocidal yet still revered Mao Zedong in the past.)
The Communists still control Angola, Belarus, Burma, Burundi, Democratic Congo, Cuba, Iran, Democratic Korea, Libya, Serbia, Sudan, Suriname, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. Communist dictatorships have emerged in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and (more recently) Venezuela. Why don't these leftists move to any of these countries, more accommodating to their worldviews?
Oy vey!
CT had a state established religion well into the 19th century.
Alright, let's try a different tack. I've given you my reasons for believing that religion should not be mixed with public life. Why do you think that it would be better if it was?
Getting offline now, bump for later response.
I wouldn't describe my position in that way.
The founding fathers had two simple goals for this government as reflected in the bill of rights: that it respect inborn rights that they acknowledged were from the Creator, and that legal discourse be rational and logical rather than superstitious or dogmatic.
The founding fathers were more afraid of theocracy than they were of secularism. Today, they would be afraid of both. They knew that the minute religion supplanted rational debate, tyranny would come next.
Unlike the TV evangelists who focus their attention on "acknowledging God," (their representation of their God Jehovah, whom they personally believe they can describe for the rest of the nation), the founding fathers intended those beliefs to be personal. Government would be based on reason, not sectarianism or dogma.
Of course they had no intention of excluding our cultural foundations in Judeo-Christianity from public discourse, class room topics, court proceedings, pageantry, memorials, ceremonies, or the military. However, I think the goal stated or unstated by the Moores, Falwells, and the Robertsons of today is to bypass dialog and debate and enforce their dogmatic beliefs based directly on their own personal interpretations of Biblical text.
This would have the founding fathers rolling in their graves to think of the arguments we're having today. They would scoff at both the secularists and the theocrats. And they would explain to us in great detail why they had left out religion from our government intentionally.
In the case of Roy Moore's 10 commandments, he hadn't violated the first amendment until he spoke up with his official capacity of a judge and said that American constitutional law was directly founded (not just inspired) by the 10 commandments and the Bible. At that point he went much further than the prayers in the Senate, the generic likeness of the 10 commandments on the supreme court building, and the crosses we have in our military cemeteries: he declared that one religion was our founding religion and that its effect was in full force in America. Did he mean to say that? Does everyone agree that he meant to say that? I think he meant to say that. And I disagree with him. That's where I draw the line.
One need only visit Belfast to see why they were worried about sectarian violence; one need only learn the history of the Reformation to come to understand why religious authority in government is a threat to freedom.
I argue that the secular humanists are going about the destruction of our nation by using the very laws we enacted to protect religious freedom. We should find a way to attack them that doesn't undermine the freedoms our founding fathers established. I think there's a way. It is to destroy cultural relativism and political correctness one element at a time -- in the minds of the American people, with advocacy and debate like this.
PC is really the threat we face. The first amendment is anything but PC. The first amendment was intended to rein in Puritans and atheists alike. And oh does it ever.
Check out a copy of Not by Fire, but by Ice. You might amend your selection to a different location. Volcanic activity is on the rise worldwide. If you're going to relocate, why not pick a less hazardous locale? The Taal volcano is getting active again. It is at alert level 1 as of Nov 24, 2004. Not to mention issues of militant Islamic terrorism in the form of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
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