Here comes the puzzle of religious liberty, at least as it has played out for us. The subtraction of beliefs leaves, as a remainder, “no one’s religious beliefs,” or more accurately, non-belief. Non-belief thereby becomes the established state worldview. Secularism takes the place of an established religion. Secularism is not neutral. It is a quite definite worldview, with its own version of the cosmos and the place of human beings in it, one in which God has been subtracted. The state-sponsored subtraction of religious beliefs in the name of religious freedom ends up establishing a worldview based upon the subtraction of God from the cosmos. -Catholic World Report
Our founding fathers enshrined religious liberty as our first right because while we should render that which is Caesar’s to Caesar, we must render to God that which is God’s. Caesar will never like this, for it implies that Caesar isn’t God—that there are obligations higher than those to the state; that the state is necessarily limited. When we claim to be one nation under God, we’re saying we’re a nation under God’s judgment. Man is not the measure of all things. -Public Discourse
I’ve come to realize after the Sandy Hook shooting that the reason we can’t have a rational gun debate is because the anti-gun side pre-supposes that their pro-gun opponents must first accept that guns are bad in order to have a discussion about guns in the first place. Before we even start the conversation, we’re the bad guys and we have to admit it. Without accepting that guns are bad and supplicating themselves to the anti-gunner, the pro-gunner can’t get a word in edgewise, and is quickly reduced to being called a murderer, or a low, immoral and horrible human being. -Iowa State Daily
“In all 50 states, two people of the same sex can live with each other and love each other, they can go to a liberal church and have a wedding ceremony performed, they can work for a liberal business and have marriage benefits, if the church wants to and if the business wants to,” he said. “It’s very much live and let live.” But that’s not what those who want to redefine marriage are asking for. “What they’re asking is for the Supreme Court to redefine marriage, and then have government use the coercive power of law to force people like you and me and our religious communities and our businesses to recognize a same-sex relationship as if it’s a marriage,” he said. -Heritage
America prides itself in being “the land of the free.” But as it turns out, liberty is not free itself. It comes at a cost. Part of that cost was paid by the precious lives of Americans who sacrificed everything for their country. But in times of peace, citizens must also foot the bill by being responsible and virtuous. A free society does not just magically work. It requires a people who are willing to cooperate with each other and selflessly care for one another. If we love liberty, we must also love justice, kindness, mercy and charity. Otherwise, the liberty that we dearly love will disappear, and the America that we call exceptional may join the ranks of failed experiments in democracy. -Values & Capitalism
Conservatism opposes universal, outsourced collective responsibility with engaged, personal community responsibility. When a liberal claims that as a society we owe each member access to health care, the conservative responds not that we owe each other nothing, but that we all long to belong to communities where we care for each other. The conservative solution is a community fundraiser put on by a sick man’s friends and family, neither bureaucracy nor autonomy. We are born with responsibilities not only to ourselves, but our families. Our families sustain us selflessly for years before we can even pretend to be self-sustaining individuals. The stable social soil of a family and community create the bounded realm of liberty within which one can attempt to grow into a good person. -Intercollegiate Review
I think what has happened here is you can’t explain the opposition of background checks because the NRA is powerful. Essentially what you have here today is a bunch of gun control darwinists, right who just believe natural selection is going to take care of this problem, that if you put guns in the hands good guys and bad guys, then let’s just hope the good guys shoot the bad guys. -Washington Free Beacon
To bring this straw man to light is almost enough to refute it; sunshine is, in this case, the best disinfectant. But which is it? Are gun owners “social darwinists,” who just want to let the fittest survive, or are they really religious freaks who cling to their guns because their religion and their way of life is unable to cope with the real world?
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama said in April 2008, before he was elected to the presidency. “It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” -Barak Obama, quoted by Yahoo News
Rarely in the last ten or fifteen years have we seen so clearly the fruits of relative truth. It’s so easy, when relative truth gains a foothold in a society with a strong tradition of absolute truth, to dismiss any criticism of relative truth as silly — “Oh! It will never come to the President of the United States breaking the law! It will never come to companies and organizations getting favorable treatment for supporting the government! None of this will ever cost lives!”
If any series of events could ever show us the danger relative truth, the direction of our nation, our culture, our society, this last month should have been the first dose of sour milk out of the carton.
The truth is that the liberal left has been telling us they believe the law is relative all along, if we would just listen. This:
“The Constitution is only as alive as we collectively have decided it is today,” Sagal told Gavin, adding, “I’ve been calling it the Tinkerbell of national charters because Tinkerbell only lives if you clap, right? Or if you say, ‘I do believe in fairies, I do!’” -NewsBusters
Inevitably leads to this:
On Monday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the Constitution would have to be reinterpreted in order to curtail civil liberties to prevent terrorism. Bloomberg likened such reinterpretation to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, which he says allowed for greater gun control to preserve public safety. -Big Government
And this:
During her testimony on the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared that she, President Barack Obama and other political officials at the top of this administration have the authority to decide which laws to enforce, and which ones to ignore. -Breitbart
Now we have a choice. Do we stand and watch while our culture falls, grabbing all we can for ourselves on the way down? Or do we stand against the fall of our culture?
If you want to stand against the fall of our culture, the place to begin is with insisting that absolute truth matters — that our lack of agreement over what the truth is doesn’t eliminate the fact that such truth exists. The solid platform on which our entire culture, our very lives themselves, stand, is on the acceptance and pursuit of such truth.
We have come to the point in our national life where what matters is “doing what’s right,” rather than “doing what’s legal.” Isn’t this a good thing? Isn’t it better that we look at each situation, determine what the best outcome is, and then decide for ourselves how to get to what we think the right outcome is?
Think about this: There was a Garden with two people in it. They looked at a particular tree and decided it was good for food. They had a little help in the form of a snake, of course, but after some discussion with the snake, they decided they could determine what was wrong, and what was right — they could decide what the right outcome was, and how to get there.
So they ate.
And then they discovered there were unintended consequences. Suddenly they were ashamed of their bodies. Suddenly their relationship with God, their relationship with one another, and even their relationship with the Earth itself, were all broken.
They faced death.
The problem, you see, is unintended consequences.
We just don’t have brains enough to understand every possible unintended consequence. No matter how much data we collect and process, no matter how many experts we get together, those pesky little unintended consequences come in the back door while we’re not looking.
The question on the surface here is: should we kill a few eagles to get to clean power?
The question underneath is: do we respect the law — even the laws that we’ve made?
The answer to the second question is the important one. Should we govern ourselves through laws that apply to everyone equally, or at the whim of some ruler who thinks he knows better than the rest of us? Who gets to decide that hunting eagles as trophies or to protect livestock is bad, but killing eagles to generate “clean energy” (which isn’t so clean anyway) is okay?
Are we to be ruled by laws, or men? Have we forgotten the meaning of the very question?
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Here comes the puzzle of religious liberty, at least as it has played out for us. The subtraction of beliefs leaves, as a remainder, “no one’s religious beliefs,” or more accurately, non-belief. Non-belief thereby becomes the established state worldview. Secularism takes the place of an established religion. Secularism is not neutral. It is a quite definite worldview, with its own version of the cosmos and the place of human beings in it, one in which God has been subtracted. The state-sponsored subtraction of religious beliefs in the name of religious freedom ends up establishing a worldview based upon the subtraction of God from the cosmos. -Catholic World Report
Rarely in the last ten or fifteen years have we seen so clearly the fruits of relative truth. It’s so easy, when relative truth gains a foothold in a society with a strong tradition of absolute truth, to dismiss any criticism of relative truth as silly — “Oh! It will never come to the President of the United States breaking the law! It will never come to companies and organizations getting favorable treatment for supporting the government! None of this will ever cost lives!”
