grr. excommunicate them?

I pointed this out a couple days ago in a debate over gay marriage and its appeal to religion (since I've yet to see a successful attempt to appeal to reason on this matter). The problem at its core is that once one appeals to belief, then their position becomes immobile, and all who claim to share in those beliefs then are become bound to either uphold this belief or be banished in their acceptability within that community of believers, making disagreement and discourse practically impossible. But since this guy is a noted "conservative" leader in history, I felt an appeal to such figures might be more noteworthy the effort than purging my own frustration with this subject. Particularly since there's at least a hint of suggestion that there are religious arguments in favor of tolerance and freedom.

"There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism"

- Barry Goldwater. 1981.

I end up in this boat a lot as a libertarian. I have to explain economics to people who claim this ideological "free market" mantle as "conservatives". And that gets annoying, walking people through the distinctions between regulations ("laws") and socialism or taxes and slavery, banking and deficits, etc. But then I am reminded of a much larger problem and cease my annoyance. I have to battle usually these very same people on the mantle of "limited government" and somehow them not making the connection that this means you don't get to impose, even by democratic fiat, the views of some religious sect upon the populace and still call this "limited government". You would call that theocracy.

It means instead that you, the prospective "conservative" base, are an asshole for usurping and altering the meaning of a phrase so blatantly and without any pretense for actually practicing the nature of your professed beliefs. That "limited government" concept requires that you tolerate dissent, something that most conservatives do not demonstrate a healthy ability to do. That you tolerate difference, a more obvious flaw given the general uniformity of "conservative" as a label for evangelical European-descendants (whites) and not inclusive of virtually any other groups of Americans (there was even an editorial in a DC paper the other day which essentially said that Obama's support base among blacks basically shouldn't count, only white support should). Indeed that you must embrace both of these as healthy, nature, and necessary for your OWN defence. The very idea that one can impose by fiat a religious decree as a law implies that others could impose their own interpretations (including those of other religions). Meaning ideas that will very likely go against these "populist" mandates of the present. It is a prescription for continuous religious war, conducted through the full force of rule of law. It is necessary to protect the ability of a person to be a religious zealot or fundamentalist, or a merely observant religious person or not at all, that we not permit the imposition of any pure religious law as binding force in our legal system. Muslims have a word for it: Sharia. But it's only different in the name and form from the version that many Christian fundamentalists here want.

I hope one day enough people wake up and realize that. Maybe we can start usurping religious terms in the meantime and start "excommunicating" people from America who don't grasp this idea of freedom as essential to living here. But to be fair, they're already forming their own shriveling political party and becoming further marginalized in society. If they could manage to express some ideas once in a while, then I'll listen. But as of today, I'm putting any religious right voter on notice that you should probably shut it. You're not adding anything to the debate. Reflect. Think before you speak. Count to ten, pray, whatever it is you have to do to start making some sense to the rest of the society. Because sooner or later you're going to find out that this society doesn't need you anymore if this is all you can produce for its value: angry irrational dissent with no legal merit under our system.