Claude -- You refer to "policies modified by the Bush administration to make cultural exchanges with Cuba more difficult," and you claim that this was discussed above. Can you be more specific as to 1) exactly what policies were modified to make cultural exchanges with Cuba more difficult, 2) where this was discussed? I can't find anything that corresponds to what you are saying.
If your words are taken very loosely, you might be referring to the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, which is discussed in the Common Dreams article that you linked earlier. But that Act was passed unanimously in the Senate, along with John Kerry's vote. So how, again, does this show a distinction between Bush and Kerry?
Lots and lots of disparaging adjectives in that post, but very little evidence (none, to be exact) that 1) Bush or his political appointees had anything to do with this visa decision, or 2) that Kerry's administration would be any different. (That could be the case, but I haven't yet seen any evidence of it.) It's not as if low-level civil service bureaucrats under Democratic administrations always make good decisions on who gets a visa. (See this story on human rights activists denied visas under Clinton, or this story on the Clinton administration's denial of a visa to the head of Cuba's National Assembly.) In fact, I'd suggest that a good deal more outrage would be appropriate over the Bush administration's decision to continue the Clinton administration's 1995 policy of forcibly returning people to Cuba even when they were desperately trying to escape to America. (As seen most recently in the case of the eleven Cubans who tried to sail to Florida in a 1959 Buick.)
[quote]Oh, come off it. Atrios is one of the most widely-read political bloggers in the world. I'm not "finding" some obscure niche thing that nobody ever heard of.[/quote]
Well, actually you (and we) are in fact reading some "obscure niche thing" when we read Atrios. By his site counter, he apparently gets 50,000 hits per day. Assuming that those are all unique visitors, he has as many readers as, say, the local newspapers in Muncie, Indiana, or Hot Springs, Arkansas or [insert any of several hundred American small towns here]. Small potatoes, in the grand scheme of things. (On the other hand, my own blog gets about as many readers as the newspaper, if there is one, in Toad Suck, Arkansas.)
Put another way, if every single one of Atrios's readers lived in Manhattan, there would still be only about a 1 in 33 chance that any given person in Manhattan was an Atrios reader. So don't be surprised that there are massive numbers of people who haven't heard of some little corner of the Internet that you or I happen to follow.
Because the freedom to choose religious schooling is a form of religious liberty. And when the government takes taxes from everyone and pays for everyone's schooling except for those who want religious schooling, the effect is to discriminate against the liberty to choose religious schooling.
Put it this way: What if the government paid for no one's schooling and then punished religious students with a $5,000-per-year fine? The economic impact would be precisely the same. Either way, the religious students are penalized relative to the government's treatment of everyone else.
I suppose I should correct myself by adding that the ACLU has indeed worked on behalf of religious liberty in a variety of cases. On the other hand, its rigid view of the Establishment Clause leads it to take positions that are harmful to religious liberty. For example, there's its unwavering opposition to vouchers. This has the effect of telling religious students, "If you choose the secular option, we'll pay for it; but if you choose a religious education, we'll fight you tooth and nail." There might be other good reasons to oppose vouchers, but the conflict with religious liberty is unavoidable.
I understand that Patrick came up with one remark attributed to a sitting Vice-President 16 years ago. But he provides no evidence that this one off-hand remark had even the remotest effect on public policy, i.e., that it actually denied religious liberty to any real-world atheists.
Patrick will say that I am "kidding" myself, no doubt, but I do not see even a shred of evidence that there is any meaningful right-wing movement to deny religious liberty to non-Jews and non-Christians. If you look for people who are actually working in the trenches to further religious liberty for Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Baptists, Catholics, peyote-smoking Indians, and every other imaginable group, you're going to find mostly right-wing conservative groups (such as the Becket Fund, which has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Buddhist Temple, and has urged the New York Public Schools to make allowances for Muslim students who needed extra time for Ramadan prayers).
Patrick said: No, he didn't need to; the movement he works with has other people to advance that claim. But if you don't think it's one of the long-term agendas of the institutional right, you're kidding yourself.
As to these "other people" claiming that only Jews and Christians ought to have religious liberty:
1. Who are they? Name names.
2. How are they connected to Novak?
3. How are they connected to the "institutional right"?
And most importantly:
4. In concrete terms, what exactly have they accomplished towards their putative goal?
Ken MacLeod correctly interpreted what Novak actually said. To wit:
Novack isn't saying (here, at least) that religious liberty is only for those who have a 'specifically Jewish and Christian concept of God' . . . . He's saying that Jefferson's and Madison's argument for religious liberty depends on such a concept.
The argument might go something like this: Outward conformity is of no avail before a God who reads our consciences; the God with Whom we have to do. Indeed, if the prophets and the gospels are anything to go by, it's utterly abhorrent to Him. Coercing or even tempting our neighbours into venality and hypocrisy by making such conformity a requirement or a political/social benefit is to put our souls and theirs in mortal danger, and to undermine true piety.
Etc, etc. I don't know if that's the argument the Founders made, but it's a reasonable argument, and a strong counter to those who claim that the principle of separation institutionalises atheism or religious indifference or scepticism towards scripture, etc.
Yes, it is indeed an argument that the Founders made. MacLeod here comes close to reproducing an argument that was central to James Madison's famous Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments from 1785. The first among many reasons listed by Madison is the primacy of individual conscience and belief in the eyes of God, a notably Christian (nay, Protestant) concept of religion:
The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.
That said, one can have a long and interesting debate over the conceptual roots of Jefferson's and Madison's beliefs on why religious liberty is worth preserving. But, contra Atrios' misrepresentations, Novak never claimed that Jefferson or Madison thought religious liberty itself should be enjoyed only by Jews and Christians.
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