- Joined
- Jan 12, 2005
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- 23,580
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- New Mexico
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- Independent
Sorry, but you'd be wrong. I just said that I do not believe for a second that freedom of religion is a universal, inalienable right and now you're telling me that I do? That particular right applies only within the society where it has been granted. In a society where it has not been granted, such as parts of the Middle East, you *DO NOT* have freedom of religion. They *CAN* ostracize you or kill you for practicing a religion that you are not, by law, allowed to practice. You might not like that, but it doesn't change the fact.
The reality is, you're looking at reality through American-colored glasses, but there's a whole wide world out there that doesn't give a damn what American law, culture or society says.
You're right. There are many places that do not recognize unalienable rights of any kind and almost without exception such places harbor the world's most viscious and greedy leadership and the world's poorest, most oppressed, depressed, repressed, and discouraged people.
But we aren't talking about a 'right to free speech' in Nepal are we? We aren't talking about a right to the free exercise of religion or of the press in Iran are we? We aren't talking about the right to free market principles in some of Africa's most brutal regimes are we?
We are talking about the unalienable rights afforded by the U.S. Constitution that has made Americans the most free, most optimistic, most productive, and most prosperous people the world has ever known and that produced a society as classless as any the world had ever known.
And we are in danger of re-creating the oppressive and damning culture that the Constitution freed us from. A culture in which the government forces one group to serve another; a culture in which the government, not the Constitution, decrees what rights we will and will not have.
Some of us don't want to re-create a society like that. We think our best hope is in fighting to live under guaranteed Constitutional freedoms as the Founders understood those freedoms. We don't WANT to be like anybody else.