{"id":6221,"date":"2016-09-15T06:14:59","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T06:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/09\/15\/do-you-care-about-religious-liberty\/"},"modified":"2016-09-15T06:14:59","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T06:14:59","slug":"do-you-care-about-religious-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/09\/15\/do-you-care-about-religious-liberty\/","title":{"rendered":"Do You Care About Religious Liberty?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Then you had better vote for Trump. &#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Martin Castro, an Obama appointee, is chairman&#0160;of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Here\u2019s Mr. Castro: \u201cThe phrases \u2018religious liberty\u2019 and \u2018religious freedom\u2019 will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Mr. Castro\u2019s is the prevailing view among progressives. Barack Obama alluded to it when he derided small-town Americans bitterly clinging to guns or religion (i.e., the Second and First Amendments). Ditto for Mrs. Clinton, who in a remark about reproductive rights declared that \u201cdeep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.\u201d &#0160;(William McGurn, <em>WSJ<\/em>, 12 September 2016)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">We should thank Mr. Castro for giving us such a clear and concise insight into the mind of the Left.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\"><em>Hypocrisy<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Note first the liberal-left obsession with hypocrisy. &#0160;&#0160; Why does it so exercise them if not because of their hatred of religion with its difficult-to-achieve moral demands?&#0160; (&quot;He who so much as looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.&quot;&#0160; I quote this hard saying from memory.&#0160; Too hard, a lefty might say: it drives people to hypocrisy.)&#0160; They hate the stringent moral demands religion makes and so they attack as hypocrites those who preach them.&#0160; <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">To a leftist, preaching can only be &#39;moralizing&#39; and&#0160;&#39;being judgmental.&#39;&#0160; It can only be the phony posturing of someone who judges others only to elevate himself.&#0160;&#0160; The very fact of preaching&#0160; shows one to be a hypocrite.&#0160; Of course, leftists have no problem with being judgmental and moralizing about the evil of hypocrisy.&#0160; When <em>they<\/em>&#0160;make moral judgments, however, it is, magically, not hypocritical. &#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">And therein lies the contradiction.&#0160; They would morally condemn all moral condemnation as hypocritical.&#0160; But in so doing they condemn themselves as hypocrites.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\"><em>Coded Speech and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">To understand the Left you must understand that central to their worldview is the <em>hermeneutics of suspicion<\/em> which is essentially a diluted amalgam of themes from Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Thus nothing has the plain meaning that it has; every meaning must be deconstructed so as to lay bare its &#39;real meaning.&#39;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Suppose a conservative says, sincerely, &quot;The most qualified person should get the job.&quot; &#0160;Applying the hermeneutics of suspicion, the leftist takes the conservative to be speaking &#39;in code&#39;: &#0160;what he is really saying is something like:&#0160; &quot;People of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race.&quot;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Or suppose a conservative refers to &#0160;a black malefactor as a thug.&#0160; What he has actually said, according to the hermeneutics of suspicion, is that the malefactor is a nigger.&#0160; But &#39;thug&#39; does not mean &#39;nigger.&#39;&#0160; &#39;Thug&#39; means <em>thug<\/em>.&#0160; There are thugs of all races.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Leftists often call for &#39;conversations&#39; about this or that. Thus Eric Holder famously called for a &#39;conversation&#39; about race.&#0160; But how can one have a conversation &#8212; no sneer quotes &#8212; about anything with people who refuse to take what one sincerely says at face value?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">One of Trump&#39;s signature sayings is &quot;Make America great again!&quot;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">To a leftist, this is a &#39;racist dog whistle.&#39; &#0160;It doesn&#39;t mean what it manifestly &#0160;means; there is a latent sinister meaning &#0160;that we can thank Bill Clinton for exposing. <a href=\"http:\/\/townhall.com\/tipsheet\/mattvespa\/2016\/09\/11\/watch-the-three-times-bill-clinton-said-make-america-great-againwhich-he-now-slams-trump-for-saying-n2216109\">It means<\/a> &#8212; wait for it &#8211;&#0160;\u201cThat message\u2026America great again is if you\u2019re a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don\u2019t you. What it means is I\u2019ll give you an economy you had 50 years ago and I\u2019ll move you back up on the social totem and other people down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">The irony is that Slick Willy used the same sentence himself!<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Here we come to the nub of the matter. &#0160;The liberal is a piece of moral scum who refuses to treat his political opponents as rational beings, as persons. &#0160;He dehumanizes them and treats them as if they are nothing but big balls of such affects as fear and hate bereft of rational justification for the views they hold.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino;\">Now read <a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2010\/11\/conservative-activism-the-lefts-incomprehension-and-the-genetic-fallacy-2010-version.html\">this entry<\/a> on the genetic fallacy.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<fieldset class=\"zemanta-related\">\n<legend class=\"zemanta-related-title\">Related articles<\/legend>\n<div class=\"zemanta-article-ul zemanta-article-ul-image\" style=\"margin: 0; padding: 0; overflow: hidden;\">\n<div class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\" style=\"padding: 0; background: none; list-style: none; display: block; float: left; vertical-align: top; text-align: left; width: 84px; font-size: 11px; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2015\/02\/michael-walzer-islamism-and-the-left.html\" style=\"box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; padding: 2px; display: block; border-radius: 2px; text-decoration: none;\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i.zemanta.com\/327184088_80_80.jpg\" style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; border: 0; display: block; width: 80px; max-width: 100%;\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2015\/02\/michael-walzer-islamism-and-the-left.html\" style=\"display: block; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; line-height: 12pt; height: 80px; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px;\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Walzer, &quot;Islamism and the Left&quot;<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\" style=\"padding: 0; background: none; list-style: none; display: block; float: left; vertical-align: top; text-align: left; width: 84px; font-size: 11px; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2015\/01\/there-is-no-provision-in-islam-for-mosque-state-separation.html\" style=\"box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; padding: 2px; display: block; border-radius: 2px; text-decoration: none;\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i.zemanta.com\/321502326_80_80.jpg\" style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; border: 0; display: block; width: 80px; max-width: 100%;\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2015\/01\/there-is-no-provision-in-islam-for-mosque-state-separation.html\" style=\"display: block; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; line-height: 12pt; height: 80px; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px;\" target=\"_blank\">There is No Provision in Islam for Mosque-State Separation<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\" style=\"padding: 0; background: none; list-style: none; display: block; float: left; vertical-align: top; text-align: left; width: 84px; font-size: 11px; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2015\/02\/if-nothing-is-sacred-what-does-that-mean.html\" style=\"box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; padding: 2px; display: block; border-radius: 2px; text-decoration: none;\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i.zemanta.com\/noimg_90_80_80.jpg\" style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; border: 0; display: block; width: 80px; max-width: 100%;\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2015\/02\/if-nothing-is-sacred-what-does-that-mean.html\" style=\"display: block; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; line-height: 12pt; height: 80px; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px;\" target=\"_blank\">What Does It Mean to Say that Nothing is Sacred?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Then you had better vote for Trump. &#0160; Martin Castro, an Obama appointee, is chairman&#0160;of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Here\u2019s Mr. Castro: \u201cThe phrases \u2018religious liberty\u2019 and \u2018religious freedom\u2019 will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/09\/15\/do-you-care-about-religious-liberty\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Do You Care About Religious Liberty?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}