Public Prayer Ruling a Gnat Bite for Liberties in ICU

Current Events
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The last thing we want is an increasing belief that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation. 

 

 

I don’t believe any of the justices have said anything to that effect. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

 

Finally, there is the anti-immigration stance, which is mostly a restriction on economic freedom, but is motivated by both economic-based statism and social/nationalistic/xenophobic statism. 

 

 

“Anti-immigration” is a progressive meme and I think it’s fundamentally dishonest. In my experience, those who strongly oppose illegal immigration tend to be very explicit on the point that they welcome legal immigration. Those aren’t even close to my own reasons for opposing illegal immigration. I just don’t want them getting free public benefits, and it’s as simple as that. Remove the welfare state and I’d be all for open borders. Xenophobia doesn’t even enter into the picture for me. We’re all descendants of immigrants - whatevs.

 

That’s a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison though. Zero tax is a huge step. Turning the tables: would you choose to pay zero taxes if you had to be a fully-functioning and publicly-enthusiastic member of a intensely religious where the songs you sing, the books you read, the pictures you can see, the food you eat, the clothes you can wear, are all strictly governed by a group of priests.

 

 

My entire point was that economic liberties have already been eroded further than religious liberties, so the purpose of the thought experiment was to underscore that people implicitly, if not explicitly, recognize that they have been hurt more by economic policies than religious policies, and even the “religiously influenced” social policies Nicky listed.

 

I think your counterexample is apples-to-oranges because it moves the conversation into abstractions and things that have not happened and probably never will. I don’t dispute that there “could” be social policies enacted more damaging than current economic policies, but that’s not the situation before us.

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I don’t believe any of the justices have said anything to that effect. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Of the SCOTUS justices, Scalia is the most religious. Of course, he says explicitly that he does not let his religious views enter into his judgments. I suggest you look into his views on religion and tradition. The danger lies in the fact that more die-hard religiously-leaning republicans consider him the best SCOTUS justice there: a prototype for new ones.

“Anti-immigration” is a progressive meme and I think it’s fundamentally dishonest. In my experience, those who strongly oppose illegal immigration tend to be very explicit on the point that they welcome legal immigration. Those aren’t even close to my own reasons for opposing illegal immigration. I just don’t want them getting free public benefits, and it’s as simple as that. Remove the welfare state and I’d be all for open borders. Xenophobia doesn’t even enter into the picture for me. We’re all descendants of immigrants - whatevs.

While I disagree about the welfare-immigration link, I empathize with the argument and can see where people are coming from. However, that is very different from the “illegal vs legal” immigration argument. That is really a GOP meme: an anti-intellectual approach wherein they are arguing for rule-of-law regardless of how good or bad the law is. But, this topic has been gone over elsewhere on the forum, over and over.

More generally: do not under-estimate the evil ideas held as truths by ordinary-seeming voters from both parties. Huge masses of them, who are not very politically active, still hold ideas that they absorb uncritically from partisan sources. There are millions of such Republicans who think the U.S. was founded as a Christian country; more, that it was actually a God-sent promised land give in covenant to those who wanted to escape the evils of Europe and move to a place they can practice their religion. A rational person would find it difficult to believe in the existence of such folk, but they’re all around you, and normal in most ways. [Dems too, but not talking about them now.]

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I think there is an implicit standard used by those who rate economic violations worse. It is something like a “rational man” standard (in the eyes of the person making the judgement). Thus, some types of religion-based violations – drugs and prostitution – can be seen as “a rational person is not losing important values if those are disallowed”. So, while millions might be in jail for drug-dealing, the attitude is: “They had enough rational choices within what is permitted”.

Saying that “the government isn’t to blame for drug dealers/users being in jail” is the logical equivalent of saying “it is not immoral for the government to ban drugs”.

If one accepts that doing drugs is a right, then one cannot blame the victims of drug laws for their imprisonment. One has to blame the people who initiate force: the government. It’s the same exact reasoning as when you blame the rapist for the rape of a scantily clad drunk girl taking a stroll through a bad neighborhood, at night.

So, whether the victims’ choice to trade/do drugs was rational or not, makes no difference: the government, as the initiator of force, is still morally responsible for their imprisonment. Even if “they should’ve known better”.

On the other hand, if one rejects the suggestion that individual rights are the primary guiding principle of politics, then the argument, for all liberties, becomes utilitarian/based in personal morality. Just as a right winger can argue that drugs are bad for you so whatever we do to you for using them is your fault, a leftist can say that 1. some economic controls, in some situations, will lead to a better end result or 2. being altruistic is the rational thing to do, therefor there’s nothing wrong with rights violating regulations or wealth redistribution, and, even if anything goes wrong, it’s the industrialists who are to blame for being stupid/selfish, and refusing to work for the common good.

The standard I used wasn’t a utilitarian standard. It was an individual rights based standard, which attempted to compare the consequences of violating individual rights objectively, by treating each person as an individual of equal worth, with a right to choose his own values. This other standard circumvents rights (and individualism) altogether, and just uses “morality from the perspective of the speaker”. That’s a rejection of the fundamentals of Objectivist philosophy. Even if the speaker is rationally selfish.

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The fact is, give someone the option of not paying any taxes for the rest of their life and there is no amount of drug laws, prostitution laws, or prayers in public meetings that will ever stack up against that opportunity.

If the standard of value, for EVERYONE, is YOUR personal opinion, then sure, you’re right.

On the other hand, if the standard of value for each individual is THEIR personal opinion, then you couldn’t be more wrong: millions more risk jailtime for drugs, than they do for tax evasion. That’s because they value the freedom to deal or do drugs more than they value the freedom to keep all their money.

So, what’s it gonna be: are you an Objectivist, willing to allow each person to choose their values (and judge the harm done by public policy accordingly: meaning that when their choices clash with rights violating public policy, the government is to blame for the consequences, not the individual making the illegal choice), or are you a right wing totalitarian, looking to impose your own values on everyone?

It’s also worth mentioning that my post had little to do with “religious influence” in America, which is a far broader (and more vague) topic. I spoke specifically and only about “religious freedom” in America

No, you spoke about liberty in general. You made the false assumption that the only way in which this ruling affects liberty is through its effect on religious liberty, and then proceeded to claim that therefor, this ruling’s effect on liberty is the equivalent of a gnat bite, while other rulings, promoted by Democrats, put liberty into the ICU.

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That’s not necessarily inconsistent with my point. It can be at the same time true that 1) many conservatives are hypocrites on religious liberties, and 2) the encroachment on our liberties is extremely minimal in this case.

 

I don’t personally like this ruling or the town council’s actions, but at the end of the day, nobody is being forced to do anything against their will and all New York citizens remain fully free to practice their own religions.

 

Ok, If I read you correctly, you are claiming that no rights are violated by this action.  Is that what you are saying?  Does that mean this action is justified within the context of Objectivism?

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I am not saying no rights are violated. The right violated is to not have one’s government pushing religion in a public space. But this encroachment is extremely minimal in this case considering it doesn’t limit one’s behavior or free practice of one’s own religion in any way. It’s just an annoyance to hear it. Theoretically, government-sponsored religion could become a huge affront to liberty, and it has historically been a problem. But in the U.S., people remain very free religion-wise. This was my point.