On Mon, 23 Jan 1995, bill mitchell wrote: > >Nathan's right: anti-clericalism fought the _established_ church. > >Now we don't have that any more. It's fine as far as I'm concerned > >if some people have religion. That doesn't alwsys always mean > >that they're closed to reason. > > > Jim: > > religion is one of things that it is difficult to have choice over. the > Roman catholics particularly get innocent minds when they are young and lay > heavy guilt trips on them with the most preposterous range of mystical > claims about things more reasoned people call natural - including natural > body functions. even when they grow older and see beyond it, the guilt often > remains to haunt their sexuality and other personal areas of their lives. As opposed to what capitalists do to young minds in making mass starvation acceptable, while making people accept alienation and subservience to capitalist authority acceptable? Or what, to be honest, various left cults have done over the years to young recruits? Of course, we can condemn the individual teachings around sex, but that is different from calling for the state to disorganize non-state institutions--which is what anti-clericalism often amounts to in the 20th century. > so while Nathan says being anti-religion (read > anti-anti-people-and-freedom-religions) is tantamount to being > anti-democratic, i have to disagree. democracy requires an equality of > choice, and it cannot exist properly when all these loons from the catholic > church are behaving as they do. even the liberationist theologians in south > america know that. I think this line of thought is extremely dangerous, since it brings up the idea of "fit parents" versus "unfit parents." Many in the right wing are now talking about improving the choice of children by taking them out of the hands of mothers who might undermine their values. If we get into a game of having the state try to steal the minds of other peoples' children from their parents and their church, where does the idea of "unfit" upbringing end? --Nathan Newman
