re: #946 BLBfootballs

OK…. so be cranky. Whether or not it’s said out loud, it remains a widely held Christian belief (in fact from what I understand it’s a fundamental Christian belief). Your hurt feelings are not reason enough to change it or prevent people from expressing it. Hurt feelings are the small price of a free society. Considering that the belief is totally mainstream and held peacefully and respectfully by millions of decent Americans it’s not even in the same category as racial supremacism or other noxious ideological fumes.

I’m a little amazed that you missed my points so completely. In the bit you quotes of me, you edited the part about mking a statement of reality.

Let me make this a little stronger. Whether or not it is reality that many Christians maintain a certain theology or if it is there right, is not the point.

Nor, is it that the particular set of beliefs is angering and insulting with a really bad history.

From the context of everything I had written previously and the thread I thought it was obvious, so I had hoped the humorous phrase “cranky” would be sufficient. The fact that context was missed means that I have to lay this out more completely.

It goes like this.

This is America. In America we have the right to believe as we will. We have the right to not have someone else’s theology forced upon us. This is enshrined by the notion of separation of Church and state. When Coulter gets up says stuff like that, she is speaking politically and representing politics. Not only that she is representing Conservative politics.

While it is obvious, that there are many in this nation who believe that freedom of religion means freedom to force their religious views on others, this is not the American way. We separate Church and State. This argument applies to fundies of any stripe. It is the same hammer we bring down on groups that try to Islamicize our culture.

Thus, when Coulter gets up and says such clearly inflammatory stuff as a representative of Conservative values, she is not just pissing lots of people off and painting a picture of Conservatives as religiously intolerant, but she is jettisoning American political values.

These political values are a major reason this country is as strong as it is and paradoxically, because there never was any state religion, and we have tried so hard to prevent even the hint of one, those values have kept Religion strong in America. Religion is so strong here because we don’t have a nanny state telling people what to believe. People are free to believe what they will and stand up for it with dignity. As a result, anyone who is into it is voluntarily into it, and the proliferation of non-oppressed views means that someone who is looking, can readily find.

There is also the benefit that no one has secular power to fight over with a religious motivation and this keeps the peace, fosters respect of others and generally makes us a civilized nation.

Coulter and her inflammatory statements miss this major aspect of what America does right.

OK is that clear now?

What also bothers me is that if you read my post a little more carefully, I was actually trying to help you out a little.