subrosaDom
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quote:
ORIGINAL: njlauren
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quote:
ORIGINAL: chatterbox24
That's the United States of America and our culture.
I wonder why that saying became so popular, while in Rome do as the Romans do?
Majority vote rules and I do think people will live through it. 
No, we are not majority vote rules, and it is one of the reasons we have a first amendment. One of the biggest myths we have is that majority rules, when our whole system was set up to protect the right of minorities. The first amendment was written in large part to stop the dominant religious faith of the time, the Anglican/Episcopal church, from doing what they had done, steamrollered people of other faiths, including evangelical Methodists and Presbytyrians, and to allow free practice of religion. It is funny that the shitkickers, the evangelicals that are so busy wanting to force their beliefs into public life, backed up by the GOP, forget that they once were the minority. The Catholic Bishops, because they are the largest religious group in the country, forget that they were a despised minority and owe their success to the first amendment, and often back this kind of nonsense (the Catholic CHurch, among other things, has severe problems with remembering, in the 1950's a monk wrote a treatise about how the church flourished under separation of church and state, and the church leaders weren't happy about that, and excommunicated him for writing it and refusing to be silenced).
The fundamental problem even arguing this is majority rules is that there isn't one faith in this country, that Christianity is split into a lot of smaller pieces, mixed in with other faiths, and the claim 'this is our culture' is bullshit, pure and simple. Sure, it is easy to claim that in shitkicker land, where everyone belongs to the local evangelical churches and everyone is white and a true believer, but that isn't much of the country. I think if you did polls you would find that most people, especially the young, would think the idea of opening with a prayer is idiotic and wrong (little hint, less than 30% of the young people identify with the GOP in this country, and this religious hegonomy is one of the reasons why).
The only way such a prayer could be legal is as the OP said, if we allowed prayers from other groups as well, the first amendment says that the government cannot favor any one religion over another, and prayers to God or especially Jesus as not generic, there is no such thing. A generic prayer, one that would encompass all faiths would not be very good, and unless at each meeting we allowed people to say their own prayers, there can be no such thing.
Not surprising, though, this is a court that is dominated now by right wing Catholics, who have all but in most cases let it be known that their church rules all others. I am shocked that Kennedy went along with this, of the 5 conservative justices, he is the one who at least has shown some independence, Thomas is nothing more then Scalia's sock puppet, and Alito and Roberts have made clear that it is Vatican uber alles when it comes to law and belief.
I don't know what the world is coming to when I agree with DomKen and njlauren inside of two days, but she is certainly right as far as majority rules not being the order of the day (I'll refrain from commenting on the last paragraph ;) -- chatterbox24, to be clear, we democratically elect a representative government. That does not mean majority rules, which is what you get in a pure democracy. We are a constitutional republic. Unalienable rights are not subject to vote, which is why, a vote can't "alienate" them. Majority rules means a dictatorship. I don't like what you said and I get 51% of the people (or in the case of Hitler, a plurality was sufficient) and you're imprisoned. You have no rights under such a system. If you can't say what you think, then you have no freedom (now, I would argue that 5th amendment and private property rights undergird that because as long as I can own a printing press, virtual or otherwise, I then have the ability to speak, and so you really need the 5th and the 1st). But neither exists in a pure democracy. It is the fault of politicians and commentators of both parties who continually refer to us as a "Democracy." It galls me every time I hear that. So, so wrong.
< Message edited by subrosaDom -- 7/17/2014 8:00:23 PM >
_____________________________
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
- Nietzsche
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RE: You can now violate someone else's religion with pr... - 
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