The Slippery Slope Toward Theocracy
Dean
Here are some flags. Apologies in advance that they're not all quite to the same scale, they're just what I've found randomly searching on the web. Anyway, do you notice what these flags all have in common?
(Flag of the Dominican Republic)
(Flag of Switzerland)
(Flag of Sweden)
(Flag of Iceland)
(Flag of Norway)
(Flag of Denmark)
(Flag of Finland)
(Flag of Greece)
(Flag of the nation of Georgia.)
In case you were wondering, those are all crucifixes. Christian crucifixes. Here are three more that a most Americans don't know but probably should:
(Flag of Saint Patrick, historically representing Ireland, now North Ireland)
(Flag of Saint George, representing England)
(Flag of Saint Andrew, representing Scotland)
Put those last three together, and you get what some Americans very wrongly think is the "English flag."
(The Union Jack, representing the United Kingdom.)
Interestingly, that particular collection of three crucifixes is found on at least two other national flags that I know of:
(New Zealand)
(Australia)
There are surely some I've missed.
Oh wait, here's one: It's also known as the St. Andrew's cross, and was designed by Christians to represent their nation:
(Flag of Jamaica)
Interestingly, most of these countries have officially established state religions--state churches which receive taxpayer funding and official recognition at government functions.
I find myself wondering: how can anyone bear to live in any of these oppressive theocracies? Surely they must all be on the slippery slope toward Taliban-style rule.
Discuss.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Bush Travels
- Theocracy Thoughts
- Who's Afraid of the Religious Right?
- The Slippery Slope Toward Theocracy
...then no, none of these countries have officially IMPLEMENTED state religions.
If, by state religion, you mean "citizens are forced to abide bny the principles set forth in the holy books of said religions"...
...then no, none of these countries have FORCED state religions.
If, by state religion, you mean "these countries recognize that a large majority of their citizens believe in the Christian God, but they also recognize that many people are not religious, or follow other faiths, and they're not going to shove our official traditional religious beliefs down your pagan or non-Christian throats"...
...then yes, these countries have state religions.
But I expect there are many who read this post who'll just fluff over it and say "Yeah, Dean's right. Lots of people have state religions. So what are these cranky liberals whining about?"
That's largely because most people don't know anything about the countries you've listed.
For the record, few, if ANY, of the above countries would be considered religious at all.
Linked.
A crucifix has the body of Christ on it
A cross is only the crossed beams
But your point is taken
And for Michael:
Several of those states do, in fact, recognize one or more religions as "official", which grants them certain rights and priveleges, such as tax exemption, subsidies for schools, etc. That's even the case for countries without crosses on their flags, like Germany (the hakenkreuz, broken cross, or swastika of the 3rd Reich doesn't count!).
I did say there wasn't forced implementation of them.
Read my comments before comment on them please.
I mean, who can't answer a question competently if they get to change it?
People can bear to live in each of these countries because their politicians recognize that, although the religions may be official, they have no right to force their religious beliefs on the citizenry either directly, or through the creation of laws that would subjugate the citizenry to their religion in a backhanded way.
Furthermore, I can tell you with absolute certainty that most, if not all of the citizens of each of these nations, when they are religious at all, practice it privately. Most everyone respects that others have different beliefs, and that they have no right to impose their beliefs on others, and others have no obligation to follow the tenets of the official religion.
That, my friend, is why it's so simple to bear living in these "oppressive" countries...
...respect.
In all teh examples mentioned, the countries were either never too populous/diverse to have had the officialness of religion be a major issue, or (in the case of the UK in particular), were wracked by centuries of religious-driven warfare and stifling of dissent - and yes, even "taliban-style" theocracy - which predated their present seeming calm integration.
The bloody history of religion and government with no separation is precisely what motivated our own separation clause - the founders had the benefit of being a few centuries less removed from that oppression than we.
Religions, governments, and markets all act as sources of oppression. Forcing them to act independently means that they will seek to oppose each other - and thus have less attention towards the common man. Freedom, or rather constitutional liberalism, thrives in the interstices of the separation of these powers. Should they conglomerate, that niche is extinguished.
That makes no sense to me.
What in any of those government prevent the official religions from flexing their power? Absolutely nothing. That they don't is much more an indication of their unwillingness to do so rather than the government prohibiting them from doing so.
You remember that the largest reason there's a United States is because England's "official religion" was doing exactly what you said it can't do.
Aren't we headed the other direction?
---because you live here.I did NOT say it CAN'T do it. I said they DON'T do it.
Stop deliberately twisting what I say. It's fucking irritating.
Aren't you implying that in America we DO, even though we CAN'T? If not, then what's your point?
Speak plainly, your obtuseness is... mildly irritating.
Do you care to explain how this is that people aren't forced to attend a church service for a state-run religion?
No, you didn't.
You said that the official religions of those countries "...have no right to force their religious beliefs on the citizenry either directly, or through the creation of laws that would subjugate the citizenry to their religion in a backhanded way".
If they do not have the right to do it, they don't suffer from a lack of desire but from the lack of opportunity. In other words, they can't do it.
"Stop deliberately twisting what I say. It's fucking irritating."
I couldn't agree more which makes your doing it really strange to me.
Here's my simple point. We do not have an official religion in America. We can no have an official religion in America. Our founding document expressly forbids such a thing and leaves open the wonderful opportunity for every religion to play on an equal footing in the public square. We are far, far from the Theocratic regime that some want to prophesy. Indeed, the countries Dean mentioned are far closer to that very thing for two reasons: 1) they have no legal prohibition against it happening, and 2) they actually have an official state religion that could force some form of theocracy as England essentially did in the past.
You may think that the issue is religion but, truly, it isn't. I don't think that you can really understand what is going on without reference to the "meta-debate" - the terms by which we discuss points of contention.
Take a look at Aziz's post above. Aziz makes a nearly unassailable point: that forcing religion, government and markets to act independently is a valuable mechanism for avoiding the tyranny of the majority. In this, of course, he begs the question of whether such an historically unprecedented alliance of God and State is actually occurrance. Without looking closely, though, it would appear quite difficult to disagree with anything he has to say.
In short, Aziz has adopted a 'meta-debate' strategy that has become irritatingly common on the left and that has the benefit of permitting them at least the appearance of moral superiority.
What Aziz and other Democrats are attempting to do is to define the very shape of the debate to make opposition to their policy positions illegitimate. It is not enough that democratic majorities favor a given policy - a standard that was certainly good enough when majorities favored the Democrats' policies. It would appear that, with them out of power, a whole new standard for implementing policy must be satisfied.
Let's take a concrete example. Opposition to the current abortion policy is undoubtedly motivated, in large measure, by religious beliefs. By Aziz's reasoning, however, any attempt to change this policy in response to the demands of its (religiously motivated) opponents would necessarily be an illegitimate "alignment" of government and religion. Very conveniently, legislators must either agree with the pro-choice side or they are "theocrats" pursuing a "Taliban-style" oppression of innocents.
Similarly, the battle over the filibustering of judicial appointments isn't a matter of stopping the Democrats from cleverly exploiting this mechanism so a super-majority is needed to confirm an appointment. Instead, it has evolved into a titanic battle where the very "rule of law" is being called into question (ex. Al Gore's comments to a MoveOn.org rally yesterday).
In these strategies, the Democrats are resorting to fundamentally anti-democratic means for maintaining their grip on policy. They are trying to redesign our debates so that we are never discussing policy changes, we are instead "attacking the constitution" or "undermining the rule of law" or "knocking down the wall of separation of church and state."
This is a dangerous tactic and I will not be surprised to see people on the Left begin lashing out in desperate, even violent attempts to "stop the descent into theocracy" or to "defend the Constitution" when, in fact, we are looking at what have always been pure policy differences. When you ratchet up the rhetoric in such an irresponsible manner, it follows that those who take these rhetorical devices at face value will begin to ratchet up the level of opposition even to the point of violence.
Of course, if you've followed the evolution of post-modern philosophical and political discourse over the past century or so, there is little surprise in any of this. Violence is often an effective political tactic and there is no better way to inspire violence than to build a burning fear of your opponents (or a proxy such as Capitalists, Jews or Kulaks). Indeed, after several decades of post-modernist domination of academia - and the corresponding inculcation of the values of anti-Capitialism and "oppression" theory - I am actually surprised that things have remained as calm as they have. I do not, however, expect this calm to last.
It is power.
Then they replaced it with that cheesy, stand-for-nothing rag with the maple leaf. Probably for purposes of convincing the Quebecois that the anglophones really were not more loyal to culture of les Anglais than to that of la Belle France.
Bullshit, of course, and the Frenchies new it right from the get-go. A man who tries to sit on two stools simultaneously will fall right off both and onto his ass. As a result, Canada is perpetually threatened with Quebec voting themselves right off the Canadian map. More so now than before the Ontario Anglophones began the bullshit campaign.
Bicultural societies have no real future. Either in Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Canada, or, for the matter, the southwestern USA.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
There are also the State flags of Alabama and Florida, which incorporate the St. Andrew's Cross in red on a white field; Mississippi, which has made the Confederate battle flag the union of its State flag ( http://www.netstate.com/states/ );
and Hawaii, which actually incorporates the British Union Jack.
( http://tinyurl.com/74mmp )
Miserable theocracies one and all, obviously.
;-)
Most normal human beings understand "state religion" to be defined as the "officially approved or sponsored" religion in a particular country. An excellent example is, of course, the Church of England; studying the history of that church illuminates the antecedents of our own policies towards State and Religion quite nicely.
For example, the First Amendment to the Constitution explicitly states that Congress shall not establish a religion, but this doesn't mean that the states may not. In fact, most of the original states had an established religion, although they were all disestablished during the first part of the Nineteenth Century; whence the term antidisestablishmentarianism. Heh.
In any case it is quite Constitutional for a state to establish a religion. If, say, Utah decided to make the Church of the Latter Day Saints the state religion, they would be well within their rights to do so. The contemporary fantasy of complete "separation of church and state" has no foundation in American political thought. In fact, the only concrete citation which can be cited is a private letter written by Thomas Jefferson.
Alas, we far past that stage today. Now a tiny minority of athiests have been regularly filing suits with the ultimate goal of eliminating any mention of religion in American political life. One of their recent "victories" includes the court-ordered removal of a cross from a Veteran's Memorial in San Diego which has stood for over 75 years.
I have -by the way- no doubt that Demmons' and other resident liberals conviction that I am a conservative will be reinforced by this post. I've even been accused in the past of being a NASCAR-loving redneck because of my position.
It's too bad they don't listen to the argument, instead of hearing what they want to hear. But then (these days) the mark of a true liberal seems to be the conviction that they're the only one with a grasp of the "truth" (whatever that is), as witnessed by their appropriation of the phrase "reality-based" blogging.
It was Constitutional for a State to establish a religion. Since we added the Fourteenth Amendment, which applied the Bill of Rights (among other privledges and immunities) to the States, establishing a State Religion is no longer Constitutional.
Yours,
Tom Hawkson, aka Wince