How many times have I said I don't condone killing civilians? No, I don't. I don't condone what the leadership on either side is doing. You are the one that is giving one side a free pass to murder.
How do you deal with Islam?
- Thread starter JamieDimonsBalls
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If you think Israel has treated the Palestinians well, then you have not educated yourself. You are incredibly biased in favor of Israel.
Once again, I was responding to somebody else.
Wrong. I don’t think Israel ever came clean about the USS Liberty. I Was a 2 stater for years. October 7 was game changer. Supporting Hamas now is the same as supporting the KKK on Civil Rights. If you can’t see that, you have a problem.
Once again, what the terrorists did was murder (also rape, kidnapping, and mutilation of bodies). What the IDF is doing is legitimate warfare in self-defense. These things are NOT equivalent.
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No, you have given Israel a free pass to do whatever they want to, including murder civilians. Morally, we disagree. Nobody supports Hamas. If you equate Hamas to all Palestinians, then that would be incorrect. Israel is very close to becoming the Nazis: be careful.
Same as CO Hoosier: you have given Israel a free pass to do whatever they want to, including murder civilians. Morally, we disagree, and it is impossible to have a logical, rational debate with you.
It’s impossible while you use incorrect definitions of words.
Very nice and welcomed post. This deserves a thoughtful response but I’ve already been pounding Wassails for a few hours, so I’m not in the right state of mind.
Liberals have a real fetish for totalitarian societies. Weird.
What concessions? To suicide their entire population?
No, that’s rubbish. Christianity is better and it’s the greatest social construct in human history. Also, the 1A exists so that people can freely worship.
Perhaps I have. But I also know that “whatever they want to” will never include senseless slaughter of civilians only because they hate victims. Do you know why Hamas hides their rocket launchers and fighters in the civilian homes , school, and hospitals? It’s so people like you could show your indignation when Israel fights back. You wanna stop the killing? Stop being Hamas’ useful idiot. Anti -Israeli demonstrators have no effect on Israel, but they egg on Hamas.
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"It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.” - UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
Israel's apartheid against Palestinians
Palestinians are systematically subjected to home demolitions and forced evictions, and live in constant fear of losing their homes. For more than 73 years, Israel has been forcibly displacing entire Palestinian communities. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians’ homes have been demolished...
www.amnesty.org
Do you even know what “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” means? It means Israel must cease to exist. People who shout that probably have no idea what they are saying, they are just following Palestinian propaganda, or if they do know they are calling for the elimination of Israel, they should be shunned, cancelled, and kicked out of our universities just as if they wear white sheets and burn crosses.
Anybody who believes in total victory for either side is wrong. I'm for a 2 state, peaceful solution: don't lump me in with others.
If you want to be one of those old nut jobs that lectures at kids on college campuses, knock yourself out.
Indeed. The Iranians have fomented hate and trained and weaponized Palestinians against Israel. The destruction of WB facilities are all ones associated with ongoing Iranian/Palestinians terror. The Palestinians have it within their power to live and work in peace. They don’t want that because they hate Jews.
If you really believe Hamas is a cancer on peaceful Palestinians, you should applaud Israeli efforts to break the brutal grip Hamas has on Palestinians.
Did you educate yourself about the Israeli apartheid yet? If you haven't or don't care, then you can't fully understand the conflict or offer an informed opinion.
You are just being willfully ignorant at this point. The Jews probably hated the Nazis for treating them like crap, not because they were Germans.
Jews were literally turned away from the United States by the boatload before the beginning and after the end of world war II. The United Nations was created in 1948. Israel was recognized by the United Nations in 1949.
The 1st Amendment was drafted by Madison and Jefferson and built upon the principles of the Jefferson from the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. The preamble to the statute states that: “provide religious freedom to “the Jew, the Gentile, the Christian, the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and [the] infidel of every denomination.”“. The word infidel was to mean any nonbelievers in religion.
That statute provides “Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
The Virginia statute was a result of several Protestant groups demanding religious freedom and a separation of church and state—which is to say, they sought governmental protection from state sponsored religion, which the very large Episcopal church that had aligned itself with the state sponsored Church of England. ‘
The Virginia statute is one of the finest pieces of law that has ever been enacted. Jefferson (and Madison who supported the law), knew full well the dangers of state (or nation) sponsored and endorsed religion. We have Jefferson and Madison to thank for giving us the freedom from a government intruding upon our religious (or non-religious beliefs) affairs.
That was a long winded way of saying what he summed up in one sentence.
Not quite. Religious freedom is one thing the state involved actions in religion is quite another. The separation of church and state as expressed in the first amendment is far more than the right to practice religion freely
I interpret "freely" as the government cannot interfere. Making a law to "respect the establishment of" a religion is interfering with an individuals right to freely practice.
I understand the history behind it, but the summation given in one sentence covered it.
It means that the government may also not respect, or otherwise favor religion. The backdrop of course is that theocracies don't work. So the right to practice religion freely isn't the whole equation. The whole equation is to keep religion out of government plus allowing people to practice freely. These are not two sides of the same coin.
Both Jefferson and Madison wrote extensively on this.
Whoever New Mark is is right. The 1A covers religion with two clauses, free exercise and establishment. You are interpreting them to mean the same thing. This is a gross violation of basic constitutional interpretation, which requires us to assume no words are redundant. The establishment clause cannot be and is not merely a restatement of the free exercise clause. At it's minimum, it means the state cannot favor one religion over another, regardless of how free everyone is to practice their beliefs.
New is old Mark who simply cannot watch any more Indiana Football......
I am alright with my gross violation. 😉
Looking back through the thread we got here on the claim that religion would ruin Democracy when actually it is the other way around. Government ruins religion, which is where the reply about freedom came in. Then we got a multiple paragraph "Well actually" from Mark, which pedantry, yippee!...but for the point being made the one sentence was fine.
You are correct but for simplicity sake most people aren't that pedantic, not when shooting the shit on an internet forum. Point conceded. Hopefully derailment averted.
Better to be pedantic over constitutional issues than be blindly pithy
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The 1A was written to apply only to the newly created federal government. The states were still free to establish and or regulate free exercise, unless restrictions were included in state constitutions.
Virginia did a lot of things right. It’s no accident that so many Virginians became President in the beginning of the Republic. .
No. I think “apartheid” as it applies to Israel is a product of Iran/Hamas/Palestinian misinformation and propaganda. . It’s a useful pejorative and is nothing like real apartheid. If anything, it’s the Palestinians, spurred on by Iran who practice apartheid, and they practice it in a heinous fashion as we learned on October 7.
Please tell me you wear flat bills.
When you write "backdrop," what do you mean? Did Jefferson and Madison write about theocracy or use that as a justification for the rule?
From my shoddy memory, I thought the roots of the free exercise and establishment clauses came from the English Civil War over Charles II and the flip-flop of state-sanctioned Catholicism to Protestantism and the repression of divergent sects in the 1600s. The English Bill of Rights were clearly a model, too.
I bring this up because I'm not sure I'd call the British a theocracy in the 1600-1700s. Sure, they had religion intermixed with the state (most European nations did, see the French Revolution) but I think that's a far cry from a system where the clergy actually rule the government, too. (True, the King of England is the titular head of the church, but no one in England was accepting the King's rule because of that at the time.)
I guess this turns on your definition of a theocracy. I've always thought it meant the priests control the government and create law tied to the religion. Just having some prayers or creating a state-sponsored church (while I consider that bad, for other reasons) doesn't seem to meet the (strong) definition. Nor would it seem to implicate a notion of efficient or effective govt. as between elected (perhaps secular) officials vs. religious leaders, which is what I'm interpreting your statement "theocracies don't work" as.
ETA: So I guess I have a few questions: (1) Were Jefferson and Madison thinking of societies/govts with state-sponsored religions as weaker than those without (what historical examples could they even refer to?) as contrasted with thinking about individuals and their "rights" to live a certain way, governmental/societal strength be damned; (2) what is a good, functional definition of theocracy here; and (3) historically, were theocracies actually weaker/didn't work? If your answer to (3) is yes, you have to distinguish Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, etc. from "theocracies" since they seemed to work for a very long time.
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Not since t-ball in 1977. Too old and fat for that look anymore
I understand their are two clauses. I responded directly to Jimbo's claim that Christianity would ruin Democracy and calling all religions equal. Where was Mr. Pedantic when I needed him?
Also, @HoosierJimbo89 the founders weren't scared that "Christianity was going to ruin Democracy". They were scared of the government's power and wanted to limit the government from using religion. One is not the other.
I hope so. My top 3 social constructs are individual sovernity of money, Christianity, and Democracy. Until you have individual sovereignty of money, you really are just a slave to the state. Some are obviously better than others, but nevertheless were still not free. Always, remember, I love Bitcoin, because I love the people! Feel free to vote for me in 2024🤣Greatest social construct??
You disappoint me. We all know #1 on the list is:
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