American Politics Thread VI: Can't We All Just Get Along?

[HISPIDA]

I'd favor the high degree of interconnection of an extended family, but we have to start improving things somewhere. Going back to the nuclear family is a good first step.



The way I see it, the things I listed are themselves proper ends, rather than means to separate ends. With the exception of the nuclear family, which is the first step towards returning to the natural order of society.

The "natural order of society?" Please, do elaborate.

This also sounds like a fake Joker quote and I love it.

[Thermodolia]

My, my, and here I was thinking you were talking of 2000 year old traditions. But here you are talking about the nuclear family and whatnot. Which is it?

I'd favor the high degree of interconnection of an extended family, but we have to start improving things somewhere. Going back to the nuclear family is a good first step.

Not to mention that this still doesn't answer my question. What good comes out most of this?

The way I see it, the things I listed are themselves proper ends, rather than means to separate ends. With the exception of the nuclear family, which is the first step towards returning to the natural order of society.

Ok so are you in favor of government programs which would help like assistance for working families so a parent can stay home? Are you in favor of sex education so that accidental births don’t happen? Are you in favor of government assistance for single parents or assistance to help people keep a pregnancy?

[New haven america]

It's not about asking for help, it's asking for a lack of condescension and triumphalism about it. Whether you'd admit it or not, the broad cultural zeitgeist is derisive towards us at best and actively hostile at worst. We're treated as though we're some large oppressive group controlling society through the GOP from the shadows when in reality we are struggling to eek out an existence.

It doesn’t help your case when you have religiously conservative politicians who want to reverse every socially liberal thing in the past 50 years. It also doesn’t help that many of those politicians where/are in positions of power

It also doesn't help that the US has a 250-some year history of basically acting like a Conservative Christian Theocracy. There are Christian countries that still have it as a state religion in the modern era that are less evangelical and puritanical than the US is.

Course that makes sense, most of the original settlers of the US were basically the Christian Taliban. Fun Fact: The Puritans used to capture people and cut off their noses/ears and brand them as heretics (With a big ol' H on their face) if they didn't fit into their exact definition of what a Christian is. Quakers were favorite targets for anyone wondering.

[Fauzjhia]

The way I see it, the things I listed are themselves proper ends, rather than means to separate ends. With the exception of the nuclear family, which is the first step towards returning to the natural order of society.

you've been ignoring me, and did not produce any evidence that the left is threatening your religious freedom.
I begin to think, that you dislike the fact, that the people are starting to adopt morals that not the same as yours. But that's the freedom to decide for yourself what is morals and what is not, that's religious freedom. People who believe same-sex marriage is fine, does not force you to engage in a same-sex marriage, or to believe it, they simply want to be respected.

religious freedom is not only for conservatives.

[Senkaku]

It doesn’t help your case when you have religiously conservative politicians who want to reverse every socially liberal thing in the past 50 years. It also doesn’t help that many of those politicians where/are in positions of power

The implication though is that there's some monolith there. Like I'm Orthodox, we have basically nothing in-common with Evangelicals socially or politically. The most important religious figure in my church is a 60+ year old man from Syria, we're not represented by those people. There are as many hate crimes against Orthodox Christians who are mistaken for Muslims by right wingers as there are against Muslims. We're still equally affected by those cultural attitudes simply because our church is typically seen as patriarchal and sex-negative (and oftentimes with a subtext, even from liberal commentators, of actual racial animus against our leadership).

“We’re being treated badly for being perceived as foreigners instead of for trying to impose extremist theocracy on the nation, please feel bad for us!”

[Thermodolia]

It doesn’t help your case when you have religiously conservative politicians who want to reverse every socially liberal thing in the past 50 years. It also doesn’t help that many of those politicians where/are in positions of power

The implication though is that there's some monolith there. Like I'm Orthodox, we have basically nothing in-common with Evangelicals socially or politically. The most important religious figure in my church is a 60+ year old man from Syria, we're not represented by those people. There are as many hate crimes against Orthodox Christians who are mistaken for Muslims by right wingers as there are against Muslims. We're still equally affected by those cultural attitudes simply because our church is typically seen as patriarchal and sex-negative (and oftentimes with a subtext, even from liberal commentators, of actual racial animus against our leadership).

No I know. You aren’t at all similar to evangelicals but because you are religious you get lumped into the mix.

[The Temple of the Computer]

The "natural order of society?" Please, do elaborate.

This also sounds like a fake Joker quote and I love it.

'The natural order of society batman, is trans people doing your mom.' Spar-kie, Da Joker.

[Washington Resistance Army]

That sounds like work that Conservative Christians need to work on. People are free to leave any religious communities anytime they wish in the United States. It’s not the job of the wider society to push people into religion, that is the job of believers.

But it can be encouraged by the state. That's what Saint Constantine did. While pagans were still allowed to go about their ways and many traditional pagan mores were allowed to be expressed, if not practiced, he created an environment that made becoming Christian advantageous to oneself socially and culturally. I mean, this is also what hyper-secularists are doing at the social level and leveraging elite institutions for their own side.

He also created an environment that less than a century later led to non-Christians being able to be repressed in brutal ways, something that would continue until the Enlightenment really. We should respect Christians and whatnot but we should take a hard pass on any religion having true state power.

[Senkaku]

Regardless, the point I'm trying to make is that, even if there isn't persecution, it's completely understandable to have fears of your community's future in a society where you're increasingly a minority group and one that is pretty routinely derided in culture as uneducated, ignorant, and culturally backward. To say that it's complete paranoia to fear that your community might become totally irrelevant or even cease to exist is pretty strange when many internal projections already show a terminal decline in membership because many churches actually have reached a point of decline in generational membership that it is no longer viable for them to continue existing, because even socializing and reproduction within the community is no longer viable (there's a reason "flirt to convert" is a common joke in conservative Christian circles -- because the only option to meet a partner usually is to convince one to marry you and convert to your religion).

I beg you to someday make this argument in a room full of LGBT people who survived the AIDS crisis lol

[Punished UMN]

It's not about asking for help, it's asking for a lack of condescension and triumphalism about it. Whether you'd admit it or not, the broad cultural zeitgeist is derisive towards us at best and actively hostile at worst. We're treated as though we're some large oppressive group controlling society through the GOP from the shadows when in reality we are struggling to eek out an existence.

I think it’s conservative Christians that have feelings of condescension and triumphalism compared to non-conservative Christians. People have have hostility towards conservative Christians is because they do have a feeling of superiority compared to the general populace. Are they’re hardcore anti-theists that feel condescension and triumphalism over the shrinking numbers of conservative Christians, I admit that. But the general populace doesn’t care.

That simply doesn't reflect a reality, people are absolutely more suspicious or even hostile too me since I became religious, and I've had even close friends assume I am bigoted towards them for no good reason. It's straight up considered weird and strange to be traditionally religious among the younger generations, and there is often the assumption even (you see it here a lot actually) that it isn't even valid for us to bring our beliefs on fundamental questions of being into any form of discussion.

[Thermodolia]

The implication though is that there's some monolith there. Like I'm Orthodox, we have basically nothing in-common with Evangelicals socially or politically. The most important religious figure in my church is a 60+ year old man from Syria, we're not represented by those people. There are as many hate crimes against Orthodox Christians who are mistaken for Muslims by right wingers as there are against Muslims. We're still equally affected by those cultural attitudes simply because our church is typically seen as patriarchal and sex-negative (and oftentimes with a subtext, even from liberal commentators, of actual racial animus against our leadership).

“We’re being treated badly for being perceived as foreigners instead of for trying to impose extremist theocracy on the nation, please feel bad for us!”

The orthodox Christians aren’t really all that for implementing a theocratic state. That’s much more an evangelical position. But this comment is exactly what he’s talking about, the fact that non religious people conflate two very different religions as the same

[Punished UMN]

The implication though is that there's some monolith there. Like I'm Orthodox, we have basically nothing in-common with Evangelicals socially or politically. The most important religious figure in my church is a 60+ year old man from Syria, we're not represented by those people. There are as many hate crimes against Orthodox Christians who are mistaken for Muslims by right wingers as there are against Muslims. We're still equally affected by those cultural attitudes simply because our church is typically seen as patriarchal and sex-negative (and oftentimes with a subtext, even from liberal commentators, of actual racial animus against our leadership).

“We’re being treated badly for being perceived as foreigners instead of for trying to impose extremist theocracy on the nation, please feel bad for us!”

That's literally true though, the Orthodox Church has zero influence on politics and large numbers of clergy are victims of xenophobic hate crimes every year. Many Orthodox priests are afraid to wear their clerical clothing in public for fear of hate crimes, and I personally know two priests who have been physically assaulted by people who used Islamophobic slurs at them.

[Thermodolia]

It doesn’t help your case when you have religiously conservative politicians who want to reverse every socially liberal thing in the past 50 years. It also doesn’t help that many of those politicians where/are in positions of power

It also doesn't help that the US has a 250-some year history of basically acting like a Conservative Christian Theocracy. There are Christian countries that still have it as a state religion in the modern era that are less evangelical and puritanical than the US is.

Course that makes sense, most of the original settlers of the US were basically the Christian Taliban. Fun Fact: The Puritans used to capture people and cut off their noses/ears and brand them as heretics (With a big ol' H on their face) if they didn't fit into their exact definition of what a Christian is. Quakers were favorite targets for anyone wondering.

The evangelical idea of control didn’t really take off until the 1900s. Prior to that most evangelicals wanted nothing to do with the government seeing it as a bastion of sin

[HISPIDA]

This also sounds like a fake Joker quote and I love it.

'The natural order of society batman, is trans people doing your mom.' Spar-kie, Da Joker.

"What is this?"
"It's the natural order of society, Batman."
"This is a little girl wrapped up in a blanket watching My Neighbor Totoro."
"She's a lil' sushi roll, Batman."
"What do you mean 'a lil' sushi roll'?"
"Well, you see, the way she's wrapped up in the blanket is akin to sushi, specifically maki sushi rolls. This is actually pretty-"
"What are you, some kind of weeaboo?"
"*smacks lips* You're the one who knew it was My Neighbor Totoro."

[Senkaku]

“We’re being treated badly for being perceived as foreigners instead of for trying to impose extremist theocracy on the nation, please feel bad for us!”

The orthodox Christians aren’t really all that for implementing a theocratic state.

There’s less daylight between some Russian guy in Brighton Beach and the Southern Baptists than you’d think

That’s much more an evangelical position.

When they’re lining up on the same side of the pitch, you might consider that their sectarian differences are no longer preventing them from trying to hang you.

But this comment is exactly what he’s talking about, the fact that non religious people conflate two very different religions as the same

The idea that organized religion should play a significant role in determining state policy of any kind or in any way seems to be the fundamental disconnect here. If you somehow trust a bunch of zealots (or worse, priests) to keep the trains running then I guess that’s your burden to work through.

[North Washington Republic]

I think it’s conservative Christians that have feelings of condescension and triumphalism compared to non-conservative Christians. People have have hostility towards conservative Christians is because they do have a feeling of superiority compared to the general populace. Are they’re hardcore anti-theists that feel condescension and triumphalism over the shrinking numbers of conservative Christians, I admit that. But the general populace doesn’t care.

That simply doesn't reflect a reality, people are absolutely more suspicious or even hostile too me since I became religious, and I've had even close friends assume I am bigoted towards them for no good reason. It's straight up considered weird and strange to be traditionally religious among the younger generations, and there is often the assumption even (you see it here a lot actually) that it isn't even valid for us to bring our beliefs on fundamental questions of being into any form of discussion.

If you do bring your beliefs into discussions, people have a right to disagree with them. Denying that conservative Christians typically have a superiority and victimhood complex at the same time is denying reality. If one of my close friends converted to any religious, even Conservative Christianity and started to proselytize to me, then I’m going to respond with criticism initially and if they continue to do so that is going to turn into mockery. Again, religious liberty includes the right to ridicule other religious beliefs.

[Punished UMN]

Regardless, the point I'm trying to make is that, even if there isn't persecution, it's completely understandable to have fears of your community's future in a society where you're increasingly a minority group and one that is pretty routinely derided in culture as uneducated, ignorant, and culturally backward. To say that it's complete paranoia to fear that your community might become totally irrelevant or even cease to exist is pretty strange when many internal projections already show a terminal decline in membership because many churches actually have reached a point of decline in generational membership that it is no longer viable for them to continue existing, because even socializing and reproduction within the community is no longer viable (there's a reason "flirt to convert" is a common joke in conservative Christian circles -- because the only option to meet a partner usually is to convince one to marry you and convert to your religion).

I beg you to someday make this argument in a room full of LGBT people who survived the AIDS crisis lol

Believe it or not, society changes over the course of 30 years. The historical treatment of LGBT people is deplorable, but that doesn't mean that many Christian communities are not in danger of dying out within the next 10-20 years. I'm not exactly anti-LGBT anyway.

[Catarapania]

I'm sorry, I thought we were on the AMERICAN discussion thread. Most of us are ultimately of European descent, and therefore most heavily influenced by Christianity. Hence my statement.

Not everyone, though. Notably not, since you emphasized it, many AMERICANS.

If you're going to argue that most of the grandparents of most Americans weren't Christians of some stripe, then you're just going to be wrong.

If I had any evidence that the Left was open-minded enough to give me a fair hearing, I'd be happy to engage in argument and counter-argument. I have no such evidence.

Hmph. Not my fault you're unwilling to fight as tooth and nail as you claimed.

The question was why the Right fights dirty. My answer is that the Left refuses to fight fair.

My conscience isn't seared enough to fight dirty. I'm not like the others.

I am aware of the depth of decay into which the church in America has fallen, yes.

So christians that interpret the religion differently than yourself are "decayed?" Is every denomination but one decayed, then?

Look, scripture is pretty frank here.

Romans 1:26-27

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

I Corinthians 6:9-10

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.

I mean, it's clear as day what Paul had to say about sexual morality here. If a gentile church has the audacity to defy the words of the Apostle to the Gentiles, then I think it's fair to say that there's been some decay.

Oh, and if I get warned/banned for quoting a scriptural passage that uses the s-word for male homosexuals, it'll only prove my point about the religious intolerance of the Left.

[Thermodolia]

The orthodox Christians aren’t really all that for implementing a theocratic state.

There’s less daylight between some Russian guy in Brighton Beach and the Southern Baptists than you’d think

You literally have no idea what orthodoxy even is or you never would have said that.

Russian orthodox isnt even close to being the only form of othodoxy.

That’s much more an evangelical position.

When they’re lining up on the same side of the pitch, you might consider that their sectarian differences are no longer preventing them from trying to hang you.

So I guess the quakers, who are some of the most pacifistic people out there, want to hang me because they are a religion?

That comment makes no sense.

But this comment is exactly what he’s talking about, the fact that non religious people conflate two very different religions as the same

The idea that organized religion should play a significant role in determining state policy seems to be the fundamental disconnect here. If you somehow trust a bunch of zealots (or worse, priests) to keep the trains running then I guess that’s your burden to work through.

I said nothing of the sort. Just that people shouldn’t be discriminated against because they are apart of a religion.

[Punished UMN]

The orthodox Christians aren’t really all that for implementing a theocratic state.

There’s less daylight between some Russian guy in Brighton Beach and the Southern Baptists than you’d think

That’s much more an evangelical position.

When they’re lining up on the same side of the pitch, you might consider that their sectarian differences are no longer preventing them from trying to hang you.

But this comment is exactly what he’s talking about, the fact that non religious people conflate two very different religions as the same

The idea that organized religion should play a significant role in determining state policy of any kind or in any way seems to be the fundamental disconnect here. If you somehow trust a bunch of zealots (or worse, priests) to keep the trains running then I guess that’s your burden to work through.

Southern Baptists hate Orthodox people and even have slurs specifically for use against us. I've known lots of fellow converts who were disowned by Evangelical parents for converting to Orthodoxy.

[Rusozak]

Or that it never happened at all and it was Jewish space lasers beaming a false reality into our heads.

Legit ran into a Trump guy who thought the whole thing was staged. It immediately devolved into people trying to figure out where he got his news, which given that even the other people that were supporting his arguments up to that point bailed on him with that we never really got an answer as much as a lot of mumbling and subject changing. In the end the guys that were on his side kind of came around (the whole thing started with a discussion about LGBT+ folks) to the other side so to speak I think just to distance themselves from the guy who thought the insurrection was staged.

Are some of them still running with the "it was a communist black flag op" or something? They might as well just set the Reichstag Capitol Building on fire and hurry along down this path of repeated history.

[Immortan Khan]

He also created an environment that less than a century later led to non-Christians being able to be repressed in brutal ways,

Tell the folks at home about the various anti-Christian persecutions.

We should respect Christians and whatnot but we should take a hard pass on any religion having true state power.

Only way I can see this being done is through a millet system then. *shrug*

[Thermodolia]

There’s less daylight between some Russian guy in Brighton Beach and the Southern Baptists than you’d think

When they’re lining up on the same side of the pitch, you might consider that their sectarian differences are no longer preventing them from trying to hang you.

The idea that organized religion should play a significant role in determining state policy of any kind or in any way seems to be the fundamental disconnect here. If you somehow trust a bunch of zealots (or worse, priests) to keep the trains running then I guess that’s your burden to work through.

Southern Baptists hate Orthodox people and even have slurs specifically for use against us. I've known lots of fellow converts who were disowned by Evangelical parents for converting to Orthodoxy.

It’s almost like sectarian violence has been the cause of many wars.

The idea that two conservative religions would get along because they are both conservative religions is just laughable

[North Washington Republic]

There’s less daylight between some Russian guy in Brighton Beach and the Southern Baptists than you’d think

When they’re lining up on the same side of the pitch, you might consider that their sectarian differences are no longer preventing them from trying to hang you.

The idea that organized religion should play a significant role in determining state policy of any kind or in any way seems to be the fundamental disconnect here. If you somehow trust a bunch of zealots (or worse, priests) to keep the trains running then I guess that’s your burden to work through.

Southern Baptists hate Orthodox people and even have slurs specifically for use against us. I've known lots of fellow converts who were disowned by Evangelical parents for converting to Orthodoxy.

Evangelicals typically believe that Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy are “pagan”

[Immortan Khan]

That simply doesn't reflect a reality, people are absolutely more suspicious or even hostile too me since I became religious, and I've had even close friends assume I am bigoted towards them for no good reason. It's straight up considered weird and strange to be traditionally religious among the younger generations, and there is often the assumption even (you see it here a lot actually) that it isn't even valid for us to bring our beliefs on fundamental questions of being into any form of discussion.

If you do bring your beliefs into discussions, people have a right to disagree with them.

It's not about disagreement, it's about treating them as illegitimate and having no place in discourse.