{"id":668,"date":"2004-02-21T03:06:06","date_gmt":"2004-02-21T08:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/02\/secular_government\/"},"modified":"2004-02-21T03:06:06","modified_gmt":"2004-02-21T08:06:06","slug":"secular_government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/02\/secular_government\/","title":{"rendered":"Secular Government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Resonance reader jeff-perado (e-mail: stutz[at]unlv.nevada[dot]edu) has been monitoring discussion of religion’s role in government and e-mails the following:
\nIf you happened to catch the Feb 17 edition of the 700 Club<\/i> you heard Pat tell his audience that the best thing that could happen in Iraq would be for them to adopt a secular constitution that allowed freedom of and freedom from (Islamic) religion. But not 5 minutes later, Pat is ridiculing England because they want to make their schools more secular. So which is it Pat? Do you want true secularism or true theocracy as a country’s governing principle? (Hint: Secularism means freedom from religious pressure in ANY direction — not freedom from any religion EXCEPT Christianity) If anyone is unclear of the meaning of secular, check here<\/a>.
\nFor those of you with a strong stomach, and are willing to watch an actual 700 Club<\/i> broadcast, head here<\/a> and select the Feb 17 show.
\nI could write an entire book chopping Sean Hannity off at the knees, but it is really unnecessary, as his “logic” is self-destructive. He defends Bush and castigates liberals in one fell swoop by saying that Bush went to war with “evil” in Iraq, whereas liberals try to reason with evil. The failure in his logic is twofold: first, why then is Bush not invading Cuba and its bloody tyrant Castro, or China their bloodthirsty regime, or any of the dozen evil dictators of African countries?
\nThe answer is: Hannity’s theory on fighting evil is fundamentally flawed. Bush himself says some dictators must be reasoned with and not destroyed by bombs and bullets (North Korea and Iran).
\nSecond if this Hannity were serious he would advocate using the atomic bomb to destroy all evil in the world by bombing all evil regimes. Since we have seen the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq as acceptable to conservatives, then there should be no problem with using American atomic weapons of mass destruction in Hannity’s screwy (and completely frightening) logic. Please, for the safety of this planet, ignore these repulsive conservatives, and bring sanity back into the world. Peace is a good thing, as no one dies needlessly from bullets and bombs. War kills children, as we have seen in Iraq, and how can anyone justify killing children as being a good (and moral) thing?
\nYou may ask why I insist on watching Pat and his propaganda, but I find it very useful in keeping an eye on what they are thinking and how to best expose their tripe. Because I insist on logic and reason above their form of derision, I must be able to provide valid counteragruments. This is why I find it necessary to learn what their passions are. So now you know why I hit so hard on subjects such as allowing homosexuals the decency of having the same rights as heterosexuals, keeping prayer in the church and in the home but out of schools, keeping the ten commandments out of taxpayer’s public facilities, and keeping religious teaching out of U.S., state, and local law. These things are what Pat fights for and I must keep up on, so I can defend our U.S. Constitution from his onslaughts, and protect the rights of all Americans from his destructive agenda. As I have pointed out, the worst human-created disasters in American history were all religiously motivated, so we all must fight to keep religion out of our government, or we will suffer more 9-11’s.
\nThe gods of all religions belong in their respective churches, not in our halls of Congress.
\nRemember nothing else of Pat’s, but this statement, “Government should be secular.” He was referring to Iraq, but it is just as crucial here in our most cherished land, The United States of America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Resonance reader jeff-perado (e-mail: stutz[at]unlv.nevada[dot]edu) has been monitoring discussion of religion’s role in government and e-mails the following: If you happened to catch the Feb 17 edition of the 700 Club you heard Pat tell his audience that the best thing that could happen in Iraq would be for them to adopt a secular constitution […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}