It's ridiculous. The law of Moses was for the Israelites. Christians have a new covenant. Christ is your salvation not the laws of Moses. Yes I know most of the commandments are referenced in the New Testament. It doesn't mean they aren't great rules to live by.

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What the list does not include is a goal of promoting a sense of spiritual righteousness and developing religious faith. Which is all that I'm against.

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I think you're being too narrow with what I'm saying the primary purpose is. A republic only works if the people love rule of law more than self. This is public or civic virtue in a nutshell, it requires voluntary self-denial or self-sacrifice to function. Every political philosopher I've ever read agrees with this, including our founding fathers with unanimity. That is the reason the government has a vested interest in public education. It is as much a requirement to continue the state as a functioning entity as a military, courts, and so on.

Our founders - and gain, most political philosophers I have ever read - made a link between public virtue and private virtue, which is another word for morality. People who are amoral are necessarily incapable of self-denial or self-sacrifice for the whole. This is not a uniquely Christian thing; what made Sparta great and her people admirable was their absolute devotion to their law and to their state, their public and private virtue.

Now, because our country's population was nearly completely Christian at the time of its founding, and how that played out in the founders opinions, and the laws they put in place, they identified private and public virtue explicitly in Christian terms. So you can work back up the chain - if you need private virtue for public virtue, you need religion to inform private virtue.

In a nutshell, being against developing morality in public education - which is fundamentally a religious thing - invalidates the entire chain laid out here. You can't teach someone to love the law more than themselves if you can't teach them a morality or ethic that compels them toward self-sacrifice.

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Development of religious faith is not required for a workforce to achieve the goals above.

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Therefore I find this statement completely false, as would I am certain our founding fathers - like Washington said, how could you have functioning laws if people don't have any religious or moral obligation to follow the oaths which underpin our law and courts? "national morality can [not] prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

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That children should be taught those values.. is well within what I think is consensus in this country

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All you're saying here is that the religion/philosophy/virtues taught in our school should be what is held in consensus and these are consensus because they're what should be taught in schools. It's almost tautological.

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The trouble is that we need a way to draw a line between which values we should teach in public school and which we should not. This is impossible if you are unwilling to allow for any philosophical or religious distinction between values.

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We have one, you already identified it. It is consensus. Morality is fundamentally a philosophical or religious exercise. Calling some of it religious and others philosophical is just another appeal to that consensus - where to draw the line. Which is an appeal to raw political power.

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I believe that there is a general consensus among Americans that there is a distinction between 'secular' and 'religious' values - even if you don't.

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there is are reason ad populum is a logical fallacy.

Don't you see that it appears that you are talking out both sides of your mouth:

"Consensus is an invalid tool for determining the laws of a society, it's the ad populum fallacy"

"We should use consensus to determine where the line should be"

Nobody here is arguing for objective morality and you yourself have stated there should be no religious favoritism.

However if we use consensus without context there absolutely will be religious favoritism.

The best we can do as a society is use consensus to determine what " there should be no religious favoritism" actually means and looks like. In which case I have no idea what your issue is as it seems to me that's what we've already done.

This is not me trying to straw man your views, it's what it appears you are saying. If not don't take offense simply clarify.

i didn't make either of those arguments. the ad populum fallacy is that "because everyone says there is no distinction, there is no distinction". and i didn't say we should use consensus, i said that in the end that is what happens. the problem is people don't want to say - it is consensus - they want to say - it is secular, or it is not-religious as if there is some view from nowhere from an unbiased person. which goes back to the first point. in other words, there is and always will be religious or philosophical favoritism in any system. denying that is a useful tool to disguise anything you don't want to call religious, and then excluding anything you do on religious grounds.

public schools in a republic are necessary to teach virtue, and secondarily to ensure productive citizens. virtue requires morality. morality is the stuff of religion or philosophy. if you try to get that out, you eliminate the primary function of public schools.

i'm totally fine with saying - ok, we'll just teach popular morality in schools. this is a matter of fact statement. but it's no appeal to secularism, its just an appeal to current consensus, which is an ever-moving target.

I say follow the Constitution. Separation of church and state. We aren't Afghanistan.

Oh, case closed then. How did nobody ever think of that? Guess we really are the Christian Republic of America

Serotonin said:

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Quantum Entanglement said:

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I say follow the Constitution. Separation of church and state. We aren't Afghanistan.

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Phrases not found in Constitution:
"Separation of Church and State"

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Remind me, when religion is mentioned in the text of the Constitution, what is the context?

Sapper Redux said:

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Serotonin said:

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Quantum Entanglement said:

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I say follow the Constitution. Separation of church and state. We aren't Afghanistan.

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Phrases not found in Constitution:
"Separation of Church and State"

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Remind me, when religion is mentioned in the text of the Constitution, what is the context?

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"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

So if the people of Connecticut or Massachusetts want to have:
- a state church supported by taxpayers
- religious education
- public prayer
- etc

then that is all fine, because the Constitution is clear that Congress can't override the people of those states and suppress their democratic rights.

Serotonin said:

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Ah yes, the 14th Amendment, passed to suppress public religious education, legalize abortion, and make heterosexual marriage just one flavor on the marriage menu.

Is there anything it can't do?

In all seriousness, state churches are perfectly fine. They've existed before and can exist again.

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If we just get rid of the 14th amendment, they could definitely exist again. While we're at it, I think the 19th Amendment needs to be readdressed. I'm not sure our political system can handle the emotional swing of the female vote.

no, it does not. at least not simply as you state.

Serotonin said:

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Ah yes, the 14th Amendment, passed to suppress public religious education, legalize abortion, and make heterosexual marriage just one flavor on the marriage menu.

Is there anything it can't do?

In all seriousness, state churches are perfectly fine. They've existed before and can exist again.

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Based on what? That they existed before does not actually mean they can exist again.

Sapper Redux said:

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Zobel said:

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good article on this topic here:

https://lawliberty.org/incorporating-the-establishment-clause-wrongly/

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Wow. That's hardly a majority legal or scholarly opinion on the applicability of the 14th amendment to the 1st.

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I think that depends on whether you read an opinion from a conservative source or a liberal source.

Sapper Redux said:

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One of the lead authors of the 14th Amendment believed it applied the first 8 amendments to the states and local governments. Incorporation was held up because of a conservative reaction against civil rights for freed slaves leading to Jim Crow and because of an extreme pro-business climate in the Supreme Court from the 1880s through the 1920s, though judicial incorporation began in fits and starts in the late nineteenth century. So it's inaccurate to claim that incorporation of the establishment clause was some novel idea that arose in the mid-20th century.

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And was that guy a liberal?

Macarthur said:

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dermdoc said:

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The 14th Amendment was never meant to do what liberals think it was.

Neither was the general welfare clause.

Those two things have been used by libs in ways nobody envisioned.

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Seriously, Doc?

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Yes sir. The latitude used on these two things were never envisioned by the authors.

Because they had no idea people would think to use something which was meant to protect states rights into enabling more totalitarianism.

They even said that one had to have a belief in God to understand this.

Serotonin said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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dermdoc said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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dermdoc said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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One of the lead authors of the 14th Amendment believed it applied the first 8 amendments to the states and local governments. Incorporation was held up because of a conservative reaction against civil rights for freed slaves leading to Jim Crow and because of an extreme pro-business climate in the Supreme Court from the 1880s through the 1920s, though judicial incorporation began in fits and starts in the late nineteenth century. So it's inaccurate to claim that incorporation of the establishment clause was some novel idea that arose in the mid-20th century.

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And was that guy a liberal?

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For 1867, yes. And his amendment with the language protecting individual rights was adopted into the US Constitution.

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Do you ever read anything other than liberal sources?

Like Thomas Sowell?

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Thomas Sowell? That's your idea of a historian? I read people working with primary sources and engaged with the historiography in the field. I'm not interested in what political polemicists have to say because at the end of the day they aren't interested in the history, they're interested in creating a narrative they can use to justify their claims in the present. Sowell is a perfect example of ideology bulldozing over nuance and what the record says.

No, I haven't read Sowell in years, just like I haven't read Chomsky or Zinn in years.

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Sowell is brilliant but OK…what are your alternative sources?

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Depends on the topic. What specifically are we talking about? Sowell is as derivative and blinkered as any other Austrian economist.

AggieRain said:

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Serotonin said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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dermdoc said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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dermdoc said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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One of the lead authors of the 14th Amendment believed it applied the first 8 amendments to the states and local governments. Incorporation was held up because of a conservative reaction against civil rights for freed slaves leading to Jim Crow and because of an extreme pro-business climate in the Supreme Court from the 1880s through the 1920s, though judicial incorporation began in fits and starts in the late nineteenth century. So it's inaccurate to claim that incorporation of the establishment clause was some novel idea that arose in the mid-20th century.

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And was that guy a liberal?

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For 1867, yes. And his amendment with the language protecting individual rights was adopted into the US Constitution.

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Do you ever read anything other than liberal sources?

Like Thomas Sowell?

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Thomas Sowell? That's your idea of a historian? I read people working with primary sources and engaged with the historiography in the field. I'm not interested in what political polemicists have to say because at the end of the day they aren't interested in the history, they're interested in creating a narrative they can use to justify their claims in the present. Sowell is a perfect example of ideology bulldozing over nuance and what the record says.

No, I haven't read Sowell in years, just like I haven't read Chomsky or Zinn in years.

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Sowell is brilliant but OK…what are your alternative sources?

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Sowell argues for personal responsibility. Sapper for reparations. No, Sapper will seek to discredit rather than than affirm Sowell. Common sense is an antiseptic not all can accept.

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Yeah, that's what it is. You got me.

Sapper Redux said:

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AggieRain said:

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Serotonin said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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dermdoc said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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dermdoc said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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One of the lead authors of the 14th Amendment believed it applied the first 8 amendments to the states and local governments. Incorporation was held up because of a conservative reaction against civil rights for freed slaves leading to Jim Crow and because of an extreme pro-business climate in the Supreme Court from the 1880s through the 1920s, though judicial incorporation began in fits and starts in the late nineteenth century. So it's inaccurate to claim that incorporation of the establishment clause was some novel idea that arose in the mid-20th century.

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And was that guy a liberal?

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For 1867, yes. And his amendment with the language protecting individual rights was adopted into the US Constitution.

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Do you ever read anything other than liberal sources?

Like Thomas Sowell?

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Thomas Sowell? That's your idea of a historian? I read people working with primary sources and engaged with the historiography in the field. I'm not interested in what political polemicists have to say because at the end of the day they aren't interested in the history, they're interested in creating a narrative they can use to justify their claims in the present. Sowell is a perfect example of ideology bulldozing over nuance and what the record says.

No, I haven't read Sowell in years, just like I haven't read Chomsky or Zinn in years.

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Sowell is brilliant but OK…what are your alternative sources?

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Sowell argues for personal responsibility. Sapper for reparations. No, Sapper will seek to discredit rather than than affirm Sowell. Common sense is an antiseptic not all can accept.

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Yeah, that's what it is. You got me.

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Well Sowell is for personal responsibility.

Are you for reparations?