A while ago, in about 2006, Our Curmudgeon, Francis W. Porretto (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, not the same person. I maintain the fiction that Dolly isn't resident inside my skull, too. It's rhetorical device. Get over it.) made a great post...
Aren't they all?
Well, yes. But we don't always have something cogent to say in response. This time we did: a redux of our post of a couple now six-and-a-half years back, The Legacy of the Faithless. Herewith reposted. Enjoy.
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GOT A GRATIFYING RESPONSE To the Loyalty Oath post. I guess I should say right off, I didn't compose that oath. In case I didn't make it quite clear, that's the official oath that naturalized citizens take at those ceremonies at the Federal Courthouse that the local news runs features about on Flag Day and the like.
Some readers seemed to have some objection to the wording of the oath inasmuch as it concludes with "So help me God."
My mother used to conclude oaths with "So help me God," though the only citizenship they had to do with was my poor example of the type. ::grin::
Not picking on Daniel [a commentor on the original thread -- probably Daniel Day -- ed.], but because he put it most succinctly, I think. He wrote, "Do we have to drag God into it? I would be sincere in saying every part of this oath except the final sentence."
Personally, I can take it or leave it. But I would urge and argue against a kneejerk rejection of all mention of God. My rationale may itself be just as kneejerk, since it is primarily a reaction to what I see as the repugnant nature of High Socialist Atheism. Call it the legacy of the faithless. However, I have piled a whole host of rationalizations on top of that which, though it make a tropeheavy structure, it nevertheless might serve as a balm for a spirit weary of struggle against what it sees as theocracy.
Pace my atheist friends who are nevertheless not collectivists, I should at the outset differentiate between them and the enemy I seek to excoriate.
Atheism means literally away from the practice of theism, which most sources define as the belief in and acceptance of a divinity or divinities -- of whatever nature. Thus an atheist is someone who does not believe in and accept the existence of divinity or divinities. It is a belief, just as is the belief in the divinity of Christ. As such, it is based on faith, since there can be no proof.
But it is not yet a system of beliefs. Some atheists might never come to a system of beliefs, preferring to deprecate all such and found their entire behavior on logic from proven principles. I'm not prepared to argue whether that is possible, but I suspect it is not. For my purpose here, I assume it is not and move on from there.
Anyone who does not wish to live in the eternal "now" of limbic drives experienced by most animals (so we presume from observation of animal behavior), must at some point at least attempt to generalize from experience and the species of desire we call principle. In order to save time and not have to reformulate every rule from "A is A" forward each time one is confronted with a moral dilemma, one must systematize ones conclusions as to appropriate behavior in various circumstances. Thus a system of belief. Regardless of whether one believes that this system is handed down from God or merely handy, it is nevertheless a faith.
Thus, even an atheist may be a member of the faithful.
On the other hand, there is a portion of humanity which seeks to control the lives of others and to force others to conform to some notional ideal. There are many stripes, though they all seem to have certain earmarks in common: They are elitist. They are cruel in that they assume the mass of humanity must be inveigled or forced into cooperation (recognizing that their prescriptions are unpalatable). They are arrogant in the hubristic assumption of their righteousness. They are willing to encompass great evil in the furtherance of their cause, yet blind to the fundamental, intrinsic evil of that cause.
Many of these profess to atheism. However, the difference is that the strain of atheism is not so much away from belief as it is against belief. It is not so much atheism as it is antitheism. It has not concluded on its own that God does not (or may not) exist, but rather admits the possibility of God's existence and nevertheless demands that belief in Gods be rubbed out, like a blot on the excutcheon of humanity.
These are not members of the faithful, but rather are the faithless.
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A slight sidetrack... May I commend for your consideration, Pascal's Wager?
You may believe in God, and God exists, in which case you go to heaven.
You may believe in God, and God doesn't exist, in which case you gain nothing.
You may not believe in God, and God doesn't exist, in which you gain nothing again.
You may not believe in God, and God may exist, in which case you will be punished.
If one applies this to a personal system of principles not founded in a religion, one might come to the conclusion that, though a man might not believe in God, to behave as though God did exist would nevertheless be that man's best bet.
If that man desires to be a moral man and live in the community of believers in God, he might take his cues from and behave as though he were one of the believers.
And, recognizing that his own liberty is incumbent on his defense of the liberty of others, and finding the actual existence or not of God to be a matter of some indifference, he might find it harmless -- indeed, helpful -- to... swear an oath by God.
After all, he does not intend to foreswear or deny the oath. His intent is honest. Since he does not believe that God exists (thought Pascal's Wager, if taken seriously, might tend to obviate that belief), the words of the oath that refer to God are a null signal -- useful to some and thus worthy of inclusion, but not to all. Not to our moral atheist.
And I think you can tell from my argument here that I do not accept the contention of some bigoted Christians that an atheist cannot ipso facto be a moral being.
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As you can tell from the crickets, Dolly, your argument is being met about like a turd at a banquet. SO appropriate.
Now: back to those collectivist antitheists.
Individualism is the strongest possible system on which to build a society. Each productive member of society acts as a portion of the structure. The whole is strengthened by the power of voluntary bonds between individuals, in a skein of such bonds that is almost impossible to sunder at a stroke. (This is why America was so able to weather the blow of the 9/11 atrocities; individuals acting voluntarily in concert.)
Collectivists find individualism anathema. In order for their vision to be brought about, they must break down individualist societies. To do this, they have hit upon the tactic of striking at those bonds among individuals using a corrosive on the material of which those bonds are built -- trust.
OK, Alger. I follow that part. But what does that have to do with oaths and God?
Dolly, you are a joy. I couldn't have timed that better if I'd written in myself.
What indeed?
In a society based on individualism, how do you know you can trust a stranger? For that matter, how do you know you can trust someone you know — or think you know? After all, why is the wisest piece of advice ever to not go into business with family or friends?
The answer is contracts. Agreements. (And it is signally instructive that our homegrown collectivists seek to advance their agenda by attacking America's fundamental social contract, the Constitution.) The simplest contract is probably a handshake deal, or the word, "Sold!" But the most primitive is the oath. "Swear it!" "By God, I will!" Oaths and contracts are connective tissue, binding society together.
To a moral person -- to the faithful -- I contend, the form of an oath is irrelevant. It is an external manifestation of an internal aspiration: to affirm one's intent to perform. So long as the intent is pure, the precise words can be... "singing the Dublin telephone book in Gaelic" and still serve the purpose.
But to the faithless, seeking to attack the bonds of trust, harboring the intent to deceive, the precise, hairsplitting words -- the form of the thing -- are of greatest import. Thus you get attacks on the presence of the name of God as a grace note in the music of a society. Thus you get the spectre of a man whose entire being exemplifies the placing of style over substance, of form over function, arguing before a court of law that the truth of his words depends on one's definition of the verb "to be."
These are people who, by their actions, corrode the structure of society.
So -- please, my friend -- do not disparage those who swear in the name of God, for that is the legacy of the faithless.
My name is Gabrielle Dolly and I approve the contents of this blog.
I'm little, but I'm loud.
All helicopters are black after midnight.
Yes, a broken clock is right twice a day, but it is still broken.
No, I don't want to live forever, but neither do I want to spend the rest of my life dying.
Screw feminism; celebrate your babe-ness.
If you've got 'em, flaunt 'em. And, Baby, I got 'em.
Get some on ya. More usually does the trick.
Yeah, I'm anti-war. Trouble is, the enemy isn't. So, what're ya gonna do? Bleed on 'em?
You look to me like somebody who actually believes that there's no such thing as a stupid question.
"Life's too short to box with stupid liberals. Trouble is: there ain't any smart ones."
Okay. Here's how this works: If all you got's a hammer, pretty soon, every problem starts to look like a nail. Folla? 'N' if all you've got is government, pretty soon every solution starts to look like oppression.
Beauty may be only skin-deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
You may not be able to impose democracy on a country, but you sure as hell can impose socialism. Stop it!
Damned right I'm an enemy of the state. Aren't you? Why the hell not?
Just so's y' know: I didn't pick the fight.
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I don't PLAN on fightin' in a leather bikini with my midriff exposed and my boobs half hangin' out. It's just... sometimes a fight comes at you without giving you a chance to get all armored up. 'N' ya jus' gotta go to war in the unnerwear ya got on.
Cincinnati novelist Mark Alger is one of nature's noblemen, and one of the best writers on the Web. Treat yourself. --Francis W. Porretto
Mark Alger is a writer, who just happens to blog. And if you're not checking him out you're doing yourself a disservice. --Raging Dave
Mark Alger's Baby Troll Blog, whose look at life and the world around him, along with pithy comments from the effervescent Dolly, deserve to be on everyone's required reading list. --Guy S.
YOUR QUOTE HERE
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SIG-BLOCK QUOTES
"Society has no right to be unjust to a single one of its members, ... the whole society minus one, is not authorised to obstruct the latter in his opinions, nor in those actions which are not harmful, in the use of his property or the exercise of his labour, save in those cases where that use or that exercise would obstruct another individual possessing the same rights." --Benjamin Constant
"Individual liberty; Individual Responsibility." --Russell Means
"When you want to blather away into the ether, collecting the accolades and shunning the negative response, you're not advocating for speech to be free -- you're advocating for talk to be cheap." --Jane Galt
"A leftist idea can be recognized by three earmarks, It will be: 1)Founded in ignorance, 2) Focussed on irrelevance, 3) Engaged in wishful thinking. --Mark Alger
4) "And threaten use of the coercive power of the state to extract compliance." --Arnold's Corrollary (ed.)
"I could tolerate leftists if they had any coherent ideas for a better way to do things. But they don't. They cling stubbornly to failed brain-fart dreams that have been attempted over and over again with disastrous results, but they never learn. When better ideas come along, they simply screech and holler at them, then fling feces like the monkeys they are." --Acidman
"All the extravagance and incompetence of our present government is due, in the main, to lawyers.They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizen has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half." -- H.L. Mencken.
Just One Question Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons? --Joe Huffman.
The Jews in the Attic Test
I looked at all laws that restricted freedom with a view to the impact it would have in a worst case scenario of our government run amok. Will this law make it difficult or impossible to protect innocent life from a government intent on their imprisonment or death? ...I told them I called this test my "Jews In The Attic Test". Furthermore I told them that if it fails this test no further discussion is really needed, the law must be opposed in the most vigorous manner possible.
--Joe Huffman
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APHORISMS PASSED
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." -- Barry Goldwater
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"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." -- Thomas Jefferson
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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government... -- Thomas Jefferson, 1776
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At the core of modern liberalism is the spoiled child -- miserable, as all
spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and
useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. --P.J. O'Rourke
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[W]e're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers, and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.
On the contrary, they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory.
--President George W. Bush
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THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. --Thomas Paine
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"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of." ----Texas State Rep. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp
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One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure -- and in some cases I have -- that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy. --Jeff Cooper
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The only sure way to get the money out of politics is to get the power out of government. --Mark Alger
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When Obama says he wants to "spread the wealth," you can be sure it's your wealth he's talking about, not his.
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Carry your gun - it's a lighter burden than regret. --Breda
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Only fools speak of "climate change" as though it were something remarkable or frightening. Climate is change.
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To all the hogs at the trough in DC: You don't get to waive my rights.
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In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. --George Orwell
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It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace, Peace!" -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! --Patrick Henry
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Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line - and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time? --Jesse Helms
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COMMENT: You know, it amazes me the stupidity of all your get-rich-quick schemes. They fail on one singular point: commerce requires trust. Your sneak attacks and unwanted turds-in-burning-paper-bags-on-the-doorstep comment spam portray an individual or organization who is willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get what he wants. Yeah. Right. I want to do business with somebody like that. And then you don't give any contact information except for HTML links. What makes you think anybody would follow those? Sorry, Bub. Not from this site. My readers aren't that stupid. Or that gullible.
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