Comments on: The Public Eye Continues To Glare, Palin Not Serious, and more… http://www.article6blog.com/2010/03/09/the-public-eye-continues-to-glare-palin-not-serious-and-more/ "Religion, Politics, the Presidency: Commentary by a Mormon, an Evangelical, and an Orthodox Christian" Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:15:07 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 By: Romney In A Box | Article VI Blog | John Schroeder http://www.article6blog.com/2010/03/09/the-public-eye-continues-to-glare-palin-not-serious-and-more/comment-page-1/#comment-13639 Romney In A Box | Article VI Blog | John Schroeder Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:46:49 +0000 http://www.article6blog.com/?p=1968#comment-13639 [...] on Telling The Story – Part III – ‘Clowns To The Left Of Me’coltakashi on The Public Eye Continues To Glare, Palin Not Serious, and more…coltakashi on Romney Returns To The Public Eye, Religion and Law – More…CarlH on Romney [...] [...] on Telling The Story – Part III – ‘Clowns To The Left Of Me’coltakashi on The Public Eye Continues To Glare, Palin Not Serious, and more…coltakashi on Romney Returns To The Public Eye, Religion and Law – More…CarlH on Romney [...]

]]> By: coltakashi http://www.article6blog.com/2010/03/09/the-public-eye-continues-to-glare-palin-not-serious-and-more/comment-page-1/#comment-13637 coltakashi Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:54:52 +0000 http://www.article6blog.com/?p=1968#comment-13637 The blogger who objects to a legislator's religious views affecting how they vote on legislation is objecting to the very religiously motivated movement called abolition, that first ended the slave trade across the Atlantic, then ended slavery in Britain and her empire, and then ended slavery in the United States. (And for those who claim that this was not the reason the Union fought against the Confederacy, please explain why 100,000 black men, most of them former slaves, fought for the Union.) Ending slavery was not a matter of economic arguments, it was not a matter of trying to appease a growing black minority of voting citizens, and it was not a matter of foreign policy to please African governments ruled by locals. It was purely a movement of Christians, who called on the better angels of other Christians to join them in legislating limits on slavery, and eventually abolishing it altogether. We need also to remember the distinction between the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government. Each role has a different balance between personal judgment and enacted law. The legislature expresses the will and judgment of the people through their elected representatives. They are constrained only by the fundamental laws governing elections, procedures and voting, and the subject matter entrusted to them, and withheld from them, by the Constitution and the body of common law that articulates our common heritage of civil rights and duties. The executive must execute the law enacted by the legislature, and confine its discretion within the limits set by those laws. The judiciary must be even more constrained, recognizing its sole authority emanates from the laws themselves, not from any inherent authority of their own. the most salient aspect of the Constitution is that the judiciary must defer to the discretion of the Executive and the Legislature unless they are in clear conflict with the more fundamental law of the Constitution. It is the role of the legislature to determine the intent of the people and act as their conscience, not the judiciary, which does not stand for election and is insulated from the full give and take of public discussion by the constraints of the litigative process and has no expertise except in the practice of interpreting the words of laws. In the work of the judiciary, religious views have little room for play because, where law has not spoken, it is the province of the legislature and, secondarily, the executive to express the views of the people. The opportunity to apply religious views to judgments of the executive are limited by enactments of the legislature. In the legislature, the fact that there are many different views on religion and much else allows the full panoply of opinion to be set out, with an opportunity to persuade others to one's own view, not through any coercion but through reason. We do not ask the source of any legislator's views, because it does not matter. No view, no matter how sincerely held by one legislator, can create a law. Specific legislation is a group effort in which a myriad of viewpoints, religious, secular, economic, regional, or what have you, interact and produce the result. If one adopts the principle that policy views that are rooted in religious beliefs must be suppressed, we are still left with policy views that are based in any random notion or fad that comes down the pike. As one sage observed, when people leave religion behind, they do not believe in nothing, but they believe in anything. Marxism and Nazism and Fascism are three varieties of the totalitarian impulse that claimed to leave behind that Christian nonsense about the divine origin, and therefore divine accountability, of mankind, and treated the masses of mankind as fodder to be expended in creating the masters' dreams of heaven on earth. The doctrine that unrestrained sexual activity is the key to happiness, and that any restraint on it must be suppressed and even criminalized, has become the core religion of the progressives of the 21st Century. It is their only path to enlightenment, to transcendance of the mundane. Like their Marxist and Nazi predecessors, they have been willing to kill millions in order to achieve their goal. Anyone who is physically or mentally impaired to the point of being unable to participate in their worship is considered unworthy of life. Their goal is so important to them that they cannot tolerate dissent or nonparticipation. Anyone who would limit sex to the confines of normal marriage between man and wife, or promote any period of celibacy, temporary or permanent, is anathema and a heretic. All must worship at the altar of sex, or at least pay a tithe to support the human sacrifice that energizes its god. No one must be allowed to speak out against their state sponsored church. All who are unorthodox must be hounded out of government or any role in medicine, adoption, or other social services. Their belief system has all the characteristics of a theocracy whose god is the sexual experience. Aldous Huxley envisioned such a future in his novel titled Brave New World, and the progressives of 2010 are doing their darnedest to make it a reality. The blogger who objects to a legislator’s religious views affecting how they vote on legislation is objecting to the very religiously motivated movement called abolition, that first ended the slave trade across the Atlantic, then ended slavery in Britain and her empire, and then ended slavery in the United States. (And for those who claim that this was not the reason the Union fought against the Confederacy, please explain why 100,000 black men, most of them former slaves, fought for the Union.) Ending slavery was not a matter of economic arguments, it was not a matter of trying to appease a growing black minority of voting citizens, and it was not a matter of foreign policy to please African governments ruled by locals. It was purely a movement of Christians, who called on the better angels of other Christians to join them in legislating limits on slavery, and eventually abolishing it altogether.

We need also to remember the distinction between the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government. Each role has a different balance between personal judgment and enacted law. The legislature expresses the will and judgment of the people through their elected representatives. They are constrained only by the fundamental laws governing elections, procedures and voting, and the subject matter entrusted to them, and withheld from them, by the Constitution and the body of common law that articulates our common heritage of civil rights and duties.

The executive must execute the law enacted by the legislature, and confine its discretion within the limits set by those laws.

The judiciary must be even more constrained, recognizing its sole authority emanates from the laws themselves, not from any inherent authority of their own. the most salient aspect of the Constitution is that the judiciary must defer to the discretion of the Executive and the Legislature unless they are in clear conflict with the more fundamental law of the Constitution. It is the role of the legislature to determine the intent of the people and act as their conscience, not the judiciary, which does not stand for election and is insulated from the full give and take of public discussion by the constraints of the litigative process and has no expertise except in the practice of interpreting the words of laws.

In the work of the judiciary, religious views have little room for play because, where law has not spoken, it is the province of the legislature and, secondarily, the executive to express the views of the people. The opportunity to apply religious views to judgments of the executive are limited by enactments of the legislature. In the legislature, the fact that there are many different views on religion and much else allows the full panoply of opinion to be set out, with an opportunity to persuade others to one’s own view, not through any coercion but through reason. We do not ask the source of any legislator’s views, because it does not matter. No view, no matter how sincerely held by one legislator, can create a law. Specific legislation is a group effort in which a myriad of viewpoints, religious, secular, economic, regional, or what have you, interact and produce the result.

If one adopts the principle that policy views that are rooted in religious beliefs must be suppressed, we are still left with policy views that are based in any random notion or fad that comes down the pike. As one sage observed, when people leave religion behind, they do not believe in nothing, but they believe in anything. Marxism and Nazism and Fascism are three varieties of the totalitarian impulse that claimed to leave behind that Christian nonsense about the divine origin, and therefore divine accountability, of mankind, and treated the masses of mankind as fodder to be expended in creating the masters’ dreams of heaven on earth.

The doctrine that unrestrained sexual activity is the key to happiness, and that any restraint on it must be suppressed and even criminalized, has become the core religion of the progressives of the 21st Century. It is their only path to enlightenment, to transcendance of the mundane. Like their Marxist and Nazi predecessors, they have been willing to kill millions in order to achieve their goal. Anyone who is physically or mentally impaired to the point of being unable to participate in their worship is considered unworthy of life. Their goal is so important to them that they cannot tolerate dissent or nonparticipation. Anyone who would limit sex to the confines of normal marriage between man and wife, or promote any period of celibacy, temporary or permanent, is anathema and a heretic. All must worship at the altar of sex, or at least pay a tithe to support the human sacrifice that energizes its god. No one must be allowed to speak out against their state sponsored church. All who are unorthodox must be hounded out of government or any role in medicine, adoption, or other social services. Their belief system has all the characteristics of a theocracy whose god is the sexual experience. Aldous Huxley envisioned such a future in his novel titled Brave New World, and the progressives of 2010 are doing their darnedest to make it a reality.

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