2010-09-08 17:58![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineIt's time to put your money where your mouth is if you've ever said, "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Everyone who parrots the "support our troops, because they protect our rights and freedoms," they protect everyone's rights and freedoms, not just the people you agree with.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2010/09/koran-burning-first-amendment-and-right.html
I think the guy in charge of this church is a complete waste of protein and oxygen, but he is also absolutely right: the First Amendment says it is absolutely all right to be a gigantic asshole and offend a whole fucking lot of people.
So, if you're okay with what he wants to do this week, you are also okay with what RP & Co. propose to do in three months. And if you're not okay with the latter, you should be just as vehemently opposed to the former... and the attempts to say who can build a church where, incidentally.
Note: if you are opposed to either book burning demonstration, here is your National Socialist Worker's Party armband. Wear it with pride; you've earned it.
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I'm in favor of people advocating the burning of another faith's religious text taking a step back and recognizing that, if someone burns theirs in turn, it's got the same protections. Incitement to violence - gender-, race-, or identity-based hate, and whatever "fire" in a crowded theater falls under - those are rightfully uncool. However, neither what Pastor Ingram suggests, nor what RP does, are hate speech as far as that goes. Calling attention to the hatefulness of others ought to be lauded.
There are way, way, way too many folks laboring under the misapprehension that the US is a Christian nation. No, it frankly and explicitly *is not.* The US Senate, full of founding fathers, and the Adams government, approved the Treaty with Tripoli (now Libya) of 1797, which included this language:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion...."
That would be pretty bloody unequivocal. Saying otherwise is simply and factually wrong.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1777 Draft of a Bill for Religious Freedom:
"... that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right...."
TJ again (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82):
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Frankly, I have just as many problems with Islam as I do with Christianity; it's just people believing in and listening to a different invisible friend. Whether that invisible friend is more or less of a jerk doesn't really add or detract from my opprobrium.
==============
Welcome to autumn of an election year, people. If you don't like politics, you may want to turn me down to a dull roar until early November. Of course, my intolerance for intolerance and intrusive moralizing is evergreen.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2010/09/koran-burning-first-amendment-and-right.html
I think the guy in charge of this church is a complete waste of protein and oxygen, but he is also absolutely right: the First Amendment says it is absolutely all right to be a gigantic asshole and offend a whole fucking lot of people.
So, if you're okay with what he wants to do this week, you are also okay with what RP & Co. propose to do in three months. And if you're not okay with the latter, you should be just as vehemently opposed to the former... and the attempts to say who can build a church where, incidentally.
Note: if you are opposed to either book burning demonstration, here is your National Socialist Worker's Party armband. Wear it with pride; you've earned it.
==============
I'm in favor of people advocating the burning of another faith's religious text taking a step back and recognizing that, if someone burns theirs in turn, it's got the same protections. Incitement to violence - gender-, race-, or identity-based hate, and whatever "fire" in a crowded theater falls under - those are rightfully uncool. However, neither what Pastor Ingram suggests, nor what RP does, are hate speech as far as that goes. Calling attention to the hatefulness of others ought to be lauded.
There are way, way, way too many folks laboring under the misapprehension that the US is a Christian nation. No, it frankly and explicitly *is not.* The US Senate, full of founding fathers, and the Adams government, approved the Treaty with Tripoli (now Libya) of 1797, which included this language:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion...."
That would be pretty bloody unequivocal. Saying otherwise is simply and factually wrong.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1777 Draft of a Bill for Religious Freedom:
"... that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right...."
TJ again (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82):
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Frankly, I have just as many problems with Islam as I do with Christianity; it's just people believing in and listening to a different invisible friend. Whether that invisible friend is more or less of a jerk doesn't really add or detract from my opprobrium.
==============
Welcome to autumn of an election year, people. If you don't like politics, you may want to turn me down to a dull roar until early November. Of course, my intolerance for intolerance and intrusive moralizing is evergreen.
