Just another reason why I cant stand Liberal lefties

[phlegmaticjay]

Again, die to defend, and get ridiculed for Believing 

Excellent post  PositiveOutlook

[Funder]

Your post is exemplory of the dumbing down of the American populace with regards to it's heritage and history.

If you portray America’s heritage as having been filled with dogmatic Christian vanity, then you misrepresent our true history.

your problem is with Christianity

How true

The point of all these quotes are that America was founded on Christian principles, and our society is replete with many examples... from the Declaration of Independence, to inscriptions on our national buildings and monuments, the Ten Commandments hanging in the Supreme Court, the inscription on our money, our Presidents swearing on a Bible, our Pledge of Allegiance, etc...

I do, of course, acknowledge the pervasive presence of Christianity in our culture.  I believe that most people in America who call themselves Christians would actually fall more appropriately under the description of Deism, described by Benjamin Franklin in my post above.

The vast majority of the art in the supreme court building deals with justice, fairness, and the simultaneous governance and preservation of rights of  the people in a society.  The architecture is obviously  Romanesque and Greek in it’s origins, and most of the art which depicts people, represents the people of Greece and Rome, the civilizations which dramatically furthered the ideology of democracy and representative republic.

“In God We Trust” was not always on our currency, It was initially suggested by a reverend during the Civil War.

The original pledge of allegiance was written in 1892 and read:  “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

The Knights of Columbus campaigned to add the words “under God” to the pledge of allegiance to the American flag, and Congress changed the pledge in 1954.  The Knights of Columbus, by the way, were the largest contributors to the California proposition 8 campaign to ban same sex marriage, having used nearly 1.3 million dollars of the Roman Catholic Church’s money to impose their religious code through the use of  legislative mandate.  Is this separation of church and state?

James Madison drafted the Virginia Plan, and having done so, made himself the primary author and inspiration behind the Constitution of the United States of America.  He believed in a citizens right to own firearms to protect citizens from tyranny and oppression by the government.  He also believed in the abolition of the death penalty.  He was also a strident atheist.  He believed in individual rights, and supported separation of church and state.

The problem with atheism, is that it is a religion, but with YOU as god, with YOU being the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong... If you believe this is the case, you can ultimately do whatever you want (if not, why not?), including the removal of rights of another. Hungry, and don't have any food, TAKE it from someone else... why not? Without God, there is no ultimate accountability to anything, right?

You have to ignore the many miracles that exist in this universe and all around you on a daily basis to be an atheist...

"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." - Psalm 14:1

We all need to develop personal convictions between what is right and what is wrong .  You assume that since a person does not derive his entire moral framework by the man at the front of the church, or by Constantine’s random collection of books, that they have no ethics.  That is both bigoted and insulting.

     You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the
     only way, it does not exist.
                                                                                                        Friedrich Nietzsche

[Funder]

Again, die to defend, and get ridiculed for Believing

Not all American Soldiers are Christians.
Defending the right to free speech and one's spiritual orientation are two things.
I never ridiculed anyone on this thread.

[phlegmaticjay]

That would be to die defending your FREEDOM OF RELIGION or even lack thereof.  The fact is however that our country was in fact based on Christian principles.   And yet, the language is written, to allow all religions to practice their customs and beliefs (within reason).   

[furnishedowner]

Funder,

Very well said. I am 100% in agreement that we need separation of church and state. That may be the most important liberty of all.  Keep religious dogma away from our laws.

Furnishedowner

[Rich_in_CT]

Funder,

Very well said. I am 100% in agreement that we need separation of church and state. That may be the most important liberty of all.  Keep religious dogma away from our laws.

Furnishedowner

If religion changes how laws are written we can never truly be free religiously speaking.

[PositiveOutlook]

Funder,

Buildings, money, etc. - you missed the point entirely... the original Declaration of Indepedance started with the abolition of slavery, but later was changed... it is not the "original", it is the one ultimately decided upon that is pertainent...  These things would not have the "religous markings" as it were, if it were not part of the country's heritage.  It is there throughout government... and if the Ten Commandments were just artwork, the Supreme Court, the halls of Congress, the Presidential Oath, etc. would all not have prayer.  They do, and it is silly to argue that it is not, and continues to be, part of our heritage.

Whether or not Madison was an atheist based on his writings is debateable, but I will just let that stand for now.  That being said, he was the most fiercest defender of free exercise of religion...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123714297334033741.html

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” - [1778 to the General Assembly of the State of Virginia] - James Madison

"Religion is the basis and Foundation of Government." - June 20, 1785 - James Madison

Kind of a wiered thing for an athesit to not only say but defend....

As far atheism goes, when you say Funder - "We all need to develop personal convictions between what is right and what is wrong ", the problem with it is that it relies solely on man's sense of what's right and wrong, and who are you to say what is right or what is wrong?  If I feel it is OK to follolw "nature's law" of the survival of the fittest, and TAKE what ever I want from whomever I want because I can, who are you to say that I can't if I am an atheist? Especially is you are going to quote Nietzsche?

[jfpen]

All this has made me ponder what DO I really believe? So here it is, whether you are interested or not:

NO to the death sentence. It demeans the sentencing society.
YES to 1st Trimester Abortion.  It's between the woman and her physician.  NO to 2nd Trimester Abortion unless to save mother's life, another medico/legal decision. YES to Gay Marriage, Gays did not choose their homosexuality, it's genetic. They deserve spousal rights and responsibilities. This doesn't affect heterosexual marriage one whit. Let's keep the government out of our bedrooms! If you're in love you can get  married! And divorced.

YES to much tighter gun control. It's absolutely crazy to allow any crazy to own and use a gun! They should be regulated, taxed, and licensed to stop our home-grown killing fields. Do what Europe does.

YES to sin taxes (cigarettes, alcohol, gambling) to fund national health programs, and the huge cost to society for the misuse. YES to National Health Care of one kind or another so that people stay healthy and do not get bankrupted by unexpected pancreatic cancer, or a premature baby.

YES to getting our military in there to mop up the 9-11 masterminds at long last, in the right country please.
YES to voucher to put your kid in private school if your local school sucks.

That's it for now. You can gnash your teeth over this liberal mindset while I am off to the big city-- dinner, and the Opera! A once or twice a year treat.

Furnishedowner

Furndishedowner,
             
                  Just a thought- 
 As DNA testing technology advances, should a mother have the right to terminate her pregnancy if a DNA test says the baby will be homosexual?

[jfpen]

All this has made me ponder what DO I really believe? So here it is, whether you are interested or not:

 
YES to much tighter gun control. It's absolutely crazy to allow any crazy to own and use a gun! They should be regulated, taxed, and licensed to stop our home-grown killing fields. Do what Europe does.


Furnishedowner

 

Furnishedowner,
                     You no doubt have good intentions. Here's a good article.


Gun Control Myths: Gun Restrictions and Murder Rates
by Thomas Sowell  (November 27, 2002)

Talking facts to gun control zealots is only likely to make them angry. But the rest of us need to know what the facts are. More than that, we need to know that much of what the gun controllers claim as facts will not stand up under scrutiny.

The grand dogma of the gun controllers is that places with severe restrictions on the ownership of firearms have lower rates of murder and other gun crimes. How do they prove this? Simple. They make comparisons of places where this is true and ignore all comparisons of places where the opposite is true.

Gun control zealots compare the United States and England to show that murder rates are lower where restrictions on ownership of firearms are more severe. But you could just as easily compare Switzerland and Germany, the Swiss having lower murder rates than the Germans, even though gun ownership is three times higher in Switzerland. Other countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates include Israel, New Zealand and Finland.

Within the United States, rural areas have higher rates of gun ownership and lower rates of murder, whites have higher rates of gun ownership than blacks and much lower murder rates. For the country as a whole, handgun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down. But such facts are not mentioned by gun control zealots or by the liberal media.

Another dogma among gun control supporters is that having a gun in the home for self-defense is futile and is only likely to increase the chances of your getting hurt or killed. Your best bet is to offer no resistance to an intruder, according to this dogma.

Actual research tells just the opposite story. People who have not resisted have gotten hurt twice as often as people who resisted with a firearm. Those who resisted without a firearm of course got hurt the most often.

Such facts are simply ignored by gun control zealots. They prefer to cite a study published some years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine and demolished by a number of scholars since then. According to this discredited study, people with guns in their homes were more likely to be murdered.

How did they arrive at this conclusion? By taking people who were murdered in their homes, finding out how many had guns in the house, and then comparing them with people who were not murdered in their homes.

Using similar reasoning, you might be able to show that people who hire bodyguards are more likely to get killed than people who don't. Obviously, people who hire bodyguards already feel at risk, but does that mean that the bodyguards are the reason for the risk?

Similarly illogical reasoning has been used by counting how many intruders were killed by homeowners with guns and comparing that with the number of family members killed with those guns. But this is a nonsense comparison because most people who keep guns in their homes do not do so in hopes of killing intruders.

Most uses of guns in self-defense -- whether in the home or elsewhere -- do not involve actually pulling the trigger. When the intended victim turns out to have a gun in his hand, the attacker usually has enough brains to back off. But the lives saved this way do not get counted.

People killed at home by family members are highly atypical. The great majority of these victims have had to call the police to their homes before, because of domestic violence, and just over half have had the cops out several times. These are not just ordinary people who happened to lose their temper when a gun was at hand.

Neither are most "children" who are killed by guns just toddlers who happened to find a loaded weapon lying around. More of those "children" are members of teenage criminal gangs who kill each other deliberately.

Some small children do in fact get accidentally killed by guns in the home -- but fewer than drown in bathtubs. Is anyone for banning bathtubs? Moreover, the number of fatal gun accidents fell, over the years, while the number of guns was increasing by tens of millions. None of this supports the assumption that more guns mean more fatal accidents.

Most of the gun controllers' arguments are a house of cards.

No wonder they don't want any hard facts coming near them.


Thomas Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college.

Please contact your local newspaper editor if you want to read the THOMAS SOWELL column in your hometown paper.

[phlegmaticjay]

Nailed it.  Forgot to mention that as a rule states that have looser gunlaws have lower violent crime rates.  The exception within those states, is if it has a major metropolitan area( Phoenix, Detroit,)

[furnishedowner]

jfpen,

If homosexuality is a normal variant in human beings, as it appears to be, why would anyone want to terminate that? Would you terminate a left-handed child because your entire family is right-handed?

I lived in Switzerland and I am familiar with their "gun in every house".  The entire male population is basically their National Guard. But it is ONE gun, not the massive amount of armaments that U.S. gun-lovers have on hand. Also it is a country with an excellent health and mental health system. People with mental illness get treated;  they don't go out and buy guns at gun shows to wipe out their local post office, school, or family.

Talk to Europeans about our gun-kill rates...they are horrified. "Why don't you change it?" they keep asking.

Didn't George Bush repeal Clinton's assault rifle ban? Now that's a weapon that belongs ONLY in the hands of military and police.

We need some sanity here. Let's license and control guns and not allow crazies to buy them unhindered.

Furnishedowner

[jfpen]

jfpen,

If homosexuality is a normal variant in human beings, as it appears to be, why would anyone want to terminate that? Would you terminate a left-handed child because your entire family is right-handed?

Now you're thinking!!!

JP

[jfpen]

jfpen,



I lived in Switzerland and I am familiar with their "gun in every house".  The entire male population is basically their National Guard. But it is ONE gun, not the massive amount of armaments that U.S. gun-lovers have on hand. Also it is a country with an excellent health and mental health system. People with mental illness get treated;  they don't go out and buy guns at gun shows to wipe out their local post office, school, or family.

Talk to Europeans about our gun-kill rates...they are horrified. "Why don't you change it?" they keep asking.

Didn't George Bush repeal Clinton's assault rifle ban? Now that's a weapon that belongs ONLY in the hands of military and police.

We need some sanity here. Let's license and control guns and not allow crazies to buy them unhindered.

Furnishedowner

Hitler was for gun control. It didn't work out so well for the Jews.



Here's another good article:

From the WSJ Opinion Archives
BLOWN AWAY
Gun Control Misfires in Europe
What's behind the massacres in Germany, France and Switzerland?

by JOHN R. LOTT JR.
Saturday, May 4, 2002 12:01 A.M. EDT

Sixteen people were killed during last week's school shooting in Germany. This follows the killing of 14 regional legislators in Zug, a Swiss canton, last September, and the massacre of eight city council members in a Paris suburb last month. The three worst public shootings in the Western world during the past year all occurred in Europe, whose gun laws are exactly what gun-control advocates want the U.S. to adopt. Indeed, all three occurred in gun-free "safe zones."

Germans who wish to get hold of a hunting rifle must undergo checks that can last a year, while those wanting a gun for sport must be a member of a club and obtain a license from the police. The French must apply for gun permits, which are granted only after an exhaustive background and medical record check and demonstrated need, with permits only valid for three years. Even Switzerland's once famously liberal laws have become tighter. Swiss federal law now limits gun permits to only those who can demonstrate in advance a need for a weapon to protect themselves or others against a precisely specified danger.

The problem with such laws is that they take away guns from law-abiding citizens, while would-be criminals ignore them, leaving potential victims defenseless. The U.S. has shown that making guns more available is actually a better formula for law and order.

America has seen a major change from 1985, when just eight states had the most liberal right-to-carry laws, which automatically grant permits once applicants pass a criminal background check, pay their fees and in some cases complete a training class. Today the total is 33 states. Deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78% in states that passed such laws.

In Europe, by contrast, violent crime is rising. Many factors are responsible, but it's clear that strict gun control laws aren't helping.

In 1996, Britain banned handguns. The ban was so tight that even shooters training for the Olympics were forced to travel to other countries to practice. In the six years since the ban, gun crimes have risen by an astounding 40%. Britain now leads the U.S. by a wide margin in robberies and aggravated assaults. Although murder and rape rates are still lower than in the U.S., the difference is shrinking quickly. Dave Rogers, vice chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said that despite the ban, "the underground supply of guns does not seem to have dried up at all."

Australia also passed severe gun restrictions in 1996, banning most guns and making it a crime to use a gun defensively. In the subsequent four years, armed robberies rose by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults by 24%, and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter rose by 16%.

And both Britain and Australia have been thought to be ideal places for gun control because they are surrounded by water, making gun smuggling relatively difficult. By contrast smuggling is much easier on the Continent or within the U.S.

Gun-control advocates frequently ignore another inconvenient fact: Many countries with high homicide rates have gun bans. It is hard to think of a much more draconian police state than the former Soviet Union, with a ban on guns that dated back to the communist revolution. Yet newly released data show that from 1976 to 1985 the U.S.S.R.'s homicide rate was between 21% and 41% higher than that of the U.S.

Many French politicians complained during their presidential election that the shooting in Paris meant "it's getting like in America, and we don't want to see that here." Americans may draw a different lesson from the evidence, and hope that they don't become more like the Europeans.

Mr. Lott is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press, 2000).

[PositiveOutlook]

Furnishedowner,

The problem is it "sounds" good, but in reality it is not effectual...

I will say one thing... from what I've read here, you're quite the world traveler, with health care, gun control, etc. all being better everywhere else you lived (which is bogus, IMHO) and yet you chose to live here in the USA, where all these issues are substandard according to your posts...

"Now that's a weapon [assault rifle] that belongs ONLY in the hands of military and police." - Problem is those pesky people who IGNORE the laws called criminals who will get their hands on them whether they are legal or not.

Despite what you see on TV, criminals use these type of weapons very little, as they are hard to conceal.  In fact, more deaths using these types of weapons are from police use rather than the other way around.

If you do a basic search on the subject, you'll find you are just parroting the media speak out there regarding guns in general.  Do you know that you are statistically five times more likely to be stabbed to death vs. being shot by an automatic gun?  Now what?  Do we ban all butcher knives? Or do we continue to allow LAW ABIDING CITIZENS (or mentally stable) to buy WHATEVER type of knife they want?

If someone is going to kill you with a gun, and they can't get one, they will find another way. If they are going to kill themselves via a gun, and they can't get one, they will find another way.

Auto deaths outweigh gun deaths (combined), so why are you not proposing that cars be banned?

You would do yourself more justice and be better informed if you were to research BOTH sides of an issue before coming to a knee-jerk response...  Remember, gun stats are lumped together no matter the cause (i.e. - criminal activity, self-defense, suicide, etc.).

[PositiveOutlook]

With regards to "If homosexuality is a normal variant in human beings, as it appears to be, why would anyone want to terminate that? Would you terminate a left-handed child because your entire family is right-handed?"...

It's as arbitrary a reason as any other reason, ESPECIALLY if you an atheist, and ultimately make you own decisions, right Funder ?...  Families in China routinely abort SOLELY because it's a girl because of LIMITATIONS imposed on them from their government.  If you are going to say that is wrong, my question would be why? 

It's OK to abort because you are not "emotionally" or "financially" ready (which is usually not the case no matter when), but not if it is a lefty or a homosexual?  Would not both those conditions fall under being "emotionally" ready?

Your reasoning for this, and gun control, being that more CARS kill people than GUNS and abortions dwarfs them both... will be interesting...