On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 7:22 AM, Andrew Crystall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> All an explicit Church-State divide does is mean that politicians > cannot explicitly be called on their overtly religious policies, > because there is this "divide" in place so they couldn't *possibly* > be religious. > > When people are elected by a religious electorate, on religious > policies, a "divide" is make-believe and only serves to prevent > rational and mature discussion of policy. In a reprisentative > democracy, you will have people elected who are religious by > religious people - if you don't like this, you should be looking for > another political system. > > Oh, and it gets in the way of "this is what some people believe" > religious education in schools. The "Founding Fathers"(tm) seem to have put a lot of thought into protecting the minority against the tyrrany of the majority, at least according to Page Smith in his landmark book, _The Constitution: A Documentary and Narrative History_. Separation of church and state is an important way in which the United States protects believers in minority religions from the tyrrany of being told they must believe exactly as the majority tells them. That does not mean that religious people must leave their faith at the door when serving in a public office. It just means that they must respect the fact that others have a right to believe as their conscience dictates, and that reasonable people can reasonably disagree. But in the end, those disagreements aren't really as large as we like to pretend they are. In the end, as a good friend of mine once wrote, we all want more or less the same things. We want to be happy. We want to be free from persecution. We want to be economically stable. We want access to "the good things in life," however we personally define those things. Both in religion and in politics, people from all parts of the spectrum want basically these same things. We just differ in opinions as to the best way to achieve these things. When people complain that the candidates for a particular office are basically the same, I usually reply that they wouldn't want it any other way. Very rarely do the differences in approach reach the importance that they have in this election cycle. At its best, an explicit Church-State divide ensures that we can hear every opinion as to which path we should take to reach for the things we all want. Separation of Church and State also empowers and supports what I believe is the most important and most neglected value in today's society: empathy. I currently work at an inner-city K-8 school with a student population poor enough that just over 90% of our students qualify for the federal free and reduced lunch program. One thing separates the students who succeed and those who don't. That thing is the ability to step outside of themselves and see things from another person's point of view. The students who practice empathy are almost always the students who get good grades and stay out of trouble. When a student learns empathy, other traits such as respect for peers and respect for authority come as natural results. Empathic students don't get into fights with each other because they have fewer disagreements with their peers, and they have fewer disagreements because they actively try to see things from their peers' point of view. Empathic students don't smart off to teachers because they try to see things from the teachers' point of view. Empathic students always look for other points of view, other ways to see things. That means that empathic students are clever and creative students, good problem solvers, because creativity and the ability to solve complex problems is basically the ability to look at the same things that everyone else has looked at and to see something new and different. I started this e-mail by mentioning that the framers of the US constitution found it important to protect the minority from the tyrrany of the majority. That is basically enforced empathy. If empathy isn't the ultimate survival skill in the modern world, it certainly is at least a contender. If we had more empathy in this country, in this world, then it would be not only a much more pleasant place to live, but also a much safer place. But then again, maybe I'm just a naive optimist. -- Mauro Diotallevi Alcohol and calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
