Re: My ideas on the "crisis"

On Mar 31, 8:19 pm, Les Cargill <lcarg...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
WillStG wrote:
On Mar 30, 7:10 pm, Les Cargill <lcarg...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
WillStG wrote:
On Mar 30, 1:31 pm, "DGDevin" <dgde...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes, America is a nation founded on the concept of knowing what
God wants. God wants to end the excesses of the rule of tyrants and
wants to end man's inhumanity to man. Sorry to _so_ totally surprise
and blindside you with that. And the right to "Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness" is our birthright as Americans, and beyond that
as God's creations. The founders believed "We rise and fall by his
Providence".
America is founded on the principle of *removing the Divine Right of
Kings' authority*. Some Founders were Deists; some were outright
believers, we compromise on this. None wrestled as hard
as two of the great minds of the Revolution - John Adams and
Thomas Jefferson. They might be *the* two great minds, but...
it's a very august body.

We don't get any easy answers. And ....

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the
law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil
turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being
flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast,
Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man
to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that
would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own
safety's sake!

And that is *Sanctus* Thomas More - a martyr - who said that. We
have hearts, and we have minds, and are expected to use them both. This
whether it's a personal $DEITY or not that does the "expecting"...

And see, Will... when I phrase things this way, I completely leave it
to the other person to choose his/her own conscience, the
very thing for which Thomas More died.

Really the ignorance of history - American History - is your own.
Will Miho
NY TV/Audio Post/Music/Live Sound Guy
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away..." Tom Waits
--
Les Cargill

Well - the American Revolution and Constitution was certainly
based on more than merely rejecting the Divine Rights Of Kings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Treatises_of_Government

If more, not much more. Take British Constitutional monarchy,
reengineer all powers ascribed to the King to be ascribed to
the People, and you have our Revolution - with the odd
other difference.


Puuting aside that you consider that somewhat trivial a
difference, you do acknowledge then the Divine Rights of Man were
substituted, and the Right to remove Tyrants. In the American
political ideology, the rights of man originate in our Creator, as did
the King's rights.

Do you
intend to imply the ideals the Founders preached were a mere rhetoric
created as a justification for rebellion?

Since I did not say that...


It could clearly be implied though, so I thought I'd let you
reject the notion yourself. Will you? Reject that cynical view?


That is an extremely
cynical view. Clearly Deists believed that the rights of man were in
fact God given, the Deist's Faith easily accomodates a Creator God who
set into motion Universal Truth which includes Moral Law, not only
mathematics and physics.

"Moral Law" is neither universal nor "true". And civil law has little
or no obligation to be particularly moral. If you are claiming an
inarguable, unassailable universal morality...


I am hardly a Deist Les, I believe in a personal God as per my
experience. But you do have Franklin and Einstein and a whole lot of
Deists with widely varying interpretations of how that kind of thing
operates. It is really not worth arguing with you over whether there
is Universal Moral Law or not - or Universal Truth. That you
categorically state here, you do not beleive there is, this makes your
position sufficiently clear. But let me say, if mathematics are
universally true, why not some kind of morality? The Major Religions
of the World share very common teachings, in practice.


As for Sir Thomas More, when I defend the Constitution and
Declaration of Independence you then imply I advocate breaking
American law? What's up with that Les? Nothing I have said comes even
close to that.

It is not reasonably possibles to twist what I said into "advocating
breaking moral law."

The "Moral law" you just stated could not exist as a Universal
Truth?

I am saying that Tomas More still stands as one
of the great intellects of all time on the subject of where the Church
and Secular aspects of state are to be divided, and that he was executed
because of it.

You quoted More and Roper discussing whether it is right to
violate the Law in order to get at a guilty party. Your quote had
zero references to Church and State. What implication am I supposed
to take from that?


He did so not so much to save his body, but to save his *soul*.

We arrive at the concepts like "All men are created equal" and
are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" because
it assumes we are all Creayed as Children of a loving God.

No. Those are legal principles which are designed to eliminate
any privileged legal status. "Endowed by the Creator" is about
as good as they could do at the time to be religion-neutral.


Again - this sounds like the extremely cynical view I asked you
about earlier. The words not meaning what they actually say, but
rather being a mere rhetoric device, and even less a social
compromise. It appears you are trying to put words into the mouths of
the Founders they did not speak. And remember, you have already ceded
the point that the rights of Kings - "Divine Rights" - were replaced
by all Men having their own set of Divine Rights.


Are you arguing that the greatest empires and states were not those
which allowed each freedom of conscience? Even the Mongols allowed that.

Even the *Romans* allowed much of it.


You cannot get anything other than a healthy respect for
pluralism - including non-belief as well - from anything I have said.
So why do you wish to imply it? Religious Faith that is coerced is
not genuine, progressive theologies recognize this. In that regard,
Christianity put itself out of the business of Government, and even in
Iran you have progressive Ayatollahs quietly teaching that faith must
be freely chosen or it is not a real faith.


That, and
not a Union card is what truly makes us "Brothers and Sisters".

That's a nice metaphor, but that is all that it is. Of course,
"six degrees of separation" and all that.

You really don't get it, do you Les?


Some
here have mocked such concepts as hubris, arrogance and presumption.

Isn't it wonderful that they have the freedom to do so.

I can understand how some, lacking an experience with a personal God -
or being truly loved maybe - might have difficulty accepting the
concept.

That has little to do with it. I learned of the value of the separation
of secular and holy *from (wo)men of a church*. They understood it.

We have no State religion, nor any official Temple or Church.
For the Founder's, that constituted separation of Church and State,
pluralism was enough. That some today - for their political motives -
would claim all acknowledgement of Deity in the public sphere is a
violation of our Founder's principles is hogwash. It shows a lack
the same kind of tolerance and respect you would wish others to show
you.


Those who oppose it do not. It is that simple.

But it is nevertheless American History and tradition,

No, it's not. It is a subset of American history and
tradition.

Ok Les, I get it. you consider the Declaration of Independence a
"Subset of American History".

Will Miho
NY TV/Audio Post/Music/Live Sound Guy
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away..." Tom Waits
.

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