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| date: | Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 1:54 PM | ||
| subject: | Fwd: FW: Check this out.... |
"When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." Thomas Jefferson
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....... only a minute and 38 seconds....& pay special attention to the last 10 seconds of it :
https://www.youtube.com/embed/
Posts
13 comments:
"Because if you take away religion, you can't hire enough police".....wtf!
What a crock of shit.
Mike Hawk
You don't need religion to learn right from wrong. And you don't need religion for a functioning democracy.
When you disconnect morality from god, you are good for goodness' sake. Not good under the threat of eternal hellfire.
Which position is the more pious?
Doing the right thing because it is right? Or doing the right thing because you are coerced?
1. USA is NOT a democracy, and it never has been.
2. My friends & acquaintances who are not religious are not criminals either.
3. Never ever ever ever believe anyone from the Harvard Business School.
Nifty propaganda. Not true. And btw Marxist from China? Oh really? There are Marxists in China? Like, China is this Marxist government? And like this faux Harvard Business School propagandist had to "learn" this tripe from some faux "Chinese Marxist"?
See number 3 above.
There have been many studies showing that the religious and super religious (fundamentalists) behave pretty much like everyone else-no more or less moral. These studies get largely ignored by those who don't want to acknowledge any of this.
People may get some personal fulfillment from their faith and church-going, and their charities may do some good, but there is no benefit to society regarding criminal behavior in having a church-going public. And good Christians know this. It is only the manipulators who try to pull this crap.
Clay Christensen is paid by Liberty Institute to produce these "religious freedom" (eg, means anti-gay, among other things) and First Amendment videos.
https://www.libertyinstitute.org/
Board of Liberty Ins is all white men with one man of color and one white female.
You can see the angle of the propaganda they are shilling. I guess Christiansen, as a Harvard Prof, makes for a good tout for this religiousless claptrap. I noted in the video that Christensen only refers to citizens going to churches and synagogues. If you go to Buddhist temple or, heaven forfend, a Muslim mosque, you probably will immediately turn into a criminal and commence to robbing and killing or something.
Bogus.
Clay's point that democracy relies heavily upon the compliance of the majority is well taken. A state where the majority does not voluntarily obey the majority of the substantive laws would be inefficient at best, and dysfunctional at worst.
His second point, however, is poorly supported at best, and inaccurate and insulting at worst. He said "If you take away religion, you can't hire enough police," and explicitly drew a positive correlation between weekly church attendance plus a belief in accountability to God, and obedience to laws. I think a rather large proportion of those who either do not attend church or do not believe they are accountable to God would balk, despite the persuasive mellow tones playing in the background, at the suggestion that the only leash holding them back from law-breaking is the threat of police enforcement. Very bogus, indeed. Religious folks don't have a corner on the moral market, and I am not aware of evidence that they are, on average, any more or less law-abiding than their non-church attending, non-theistic counterparts.
Though not acquainted with the relevant literature myself, I would also be unsurprised to find a lack of empirical evidence supporting Clay's claim- I can think of some relatively Godless countries with much lower crime rates than some highly religious ones, for example. I would speculate that other factors (the corruptness of the government, the economic security of the actor, the efficiency and fairness of the country's laws, the cost of compliance, etc.) are more predictive of voluntary compliance with laws than one's church attendance. If your aim truly is a functioning democracy, then you should focus on the factors that most powerfully predict that functionality: like economic opportunity, an efficient and accessible justice system, a strong and stable central government, etc.
Regardless of whether I've speculated well, what Clay's done is inappropriate: used the fear of law-breaking masses in order to promote religion, bereft of compelling evidence.
Mike Hawk
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/constitutional-myth-4-the-constitution-doesnt-separate-church-and-state/240481/
From the article: The current right-wing drive to harness the power of government to bring souls to Christ is dangerous and un-American. As no less conservative a figure than Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in 2005: "Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?"
It appears that Christiansen & Liberty Institute are one of those First Amend "truther" outfits trying to twist Thos Jefferson's words and make it seem like the Founding Fathers wanted USA to be a "Christian" nation. Not true, and using FEAR tactics about crime & criminality just show Christiansen & Liberty Institute as liars.
Why resort to Lies and Fear tactics to ram religion down people's throats? Just another way to manipulate citizens.
@Anonymous:
Hey dumb ass, how about spelling the guy's name correctly.
Just sayin'.
Mike Hawk
@Mike,
If you're going to use someone else's shit, at least post with credits.
Just sayin'.
http://bradcarmack.blogspot.com/2014/05/my-response-to-clay-christensen-on.html
Plagiarism?
Well, color me surprised.
And here I was going to give Mike props for a thoughful, well-reasoned post without all the holier-than-thou crap and name calling.
Looks like troll had a bad day today.
This is a spurious Thomas Jefferson quotation. Although it's frequently attributed to Jefferson, there is no evidence that he has any connection to the statement.
http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-government-fears-people-there-libertyquotation
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