More Leftist Athocracy...

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Commentary Magazine:

In response, Pelosi said, “Yes, I think that all institutions who cover, who give, health insurance should cover the full range of health insurance issues for women.”

This is liberalism/progressivism in its purest and most undiluted form. It does, in fact, want to weaken and eventually replace civil society and expand the reach of the state even into the internal life of the church. And it no longer even attempts to disguise its aims.

The American people can’t say we don’t know what the end game here is.

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Obama's Radical Effort to Push Religion From the Public Square...

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On Jan 20, the Obama administration announced that even religious based hospitals, universities and charities will be compelled to pay for health insurance that covers sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacients.

Why?

The answer is short. The Obama administration wishes to displace religious organizations in every and all possible public areas by forcing religious organizations to be faced with the choice of crossing governance, crossing their faith, or bowing out of the areas of our public square that are effected by this decision.

If the religious are to stay true to their faith and stay true to government they will ultimately be forced to retreat from engaging with their own society under this decision.

Although it is not only through hospitals, universities, and charities that religions expose themselves to those who may not be exposed to them, it is one that the statists among us wish to end. Statists understand that the marginalization of religion grows dependency on governance.

What we are witnessing with the introduction of this regulation is our atheocratic state in action. What is atheocracy? If is, of course, the opposite of theocracy. Just as there are theocratic states like Iran, there athocratic states like N. Korea and China.

Unfortunately each type of governance claims its own form of piety as a pretense for non pious rule.

That piety may come in different forms, such as religious piety (theocracy) or duty bound piety (atheocracy). Whereas the former’s power is circumscribed by the religion that empowers those who rule via a religious citizenry, the latter enjoys no such restraint, as duty bound piety is piety toward self.

The truer danger, then, is the atheocratic regime which is bounded by no wrong. History points to this. Pick your theocracy then pick your athocracy and compare the suffering under each. Based on sheer number of dead no theocracy can match the accomplishments of the atheocratic regimes of China, Russia, Nazi Germany, or N. Korea.

Does that make a theocracy desirable? No. But it is preferable to the atheocratic rejection of all religion.

There is a third way.

It is one that requires no false piety, as it is a choice that does not adopt a single religion for empowerment and it is a choice that does not reject all religion leaving only self in the form of duty from which rule is empowered.

That third way, secularism, is the inclusion of all the various religions or the lack thereof as legitimate voices informing a representative democracy.

Our nation originally chose option three, but unfortunately that third way requires a degree of tolerance the intolerant atheists and leftists among us find intolerable and it is they who are slowly forcing us toward the greatest threat to liberty, an atheocracy.





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Chasing Religion From the Private Home in California...

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WorldNetDaily:

Chuck and Stephanie Fromm already have been fined $300 for holding Bible studies for their friends at their home, and they face the potential for additional fines of $500 for each study held, according to a legal team taking their case to court.

The newest conflict over Bible studies in homes in America arose in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., where city officials say city code section 9-3.301 prohibits religious organizations in residential neighborhoods without a conditional-use permit, a sometimes very expensive procedure.

The code cites "churches, temples, synagogues, monasteries, religious retreats, and other places of religious worship and other fraternal and community service organizations."

What has been a decades long struggle to remove religion from the public square has left us with the de facto government establishment of atheism. With the establishment of atheism in America we can no longer count ourselves a secularist democratic nation for we are no longer a nation of tolerance for all religions, but rather a nation of increasing intolerance toward religion. We are transitioning from a secularist nation of religious inclusion to a nation of religious exclusion, an atheocracy.

There has never been and never will be an atheocratic democracy, for democratic ideals demand that all individuals and all groups be allowed to inform governance while atheocratic states demand silence from religious groups. In America's case that silencing of the religiously assembled is based on "separation of church and state". But there is no "separation of church and state", there is only this:

• "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

but amid the progressive bureaucratic desire for atheocratic governance the religion clauses have not been so much forgotten as distorted into a tool to silence the voice of some who choose to assemble leaving only atheists at the table.

America is loosing its democratic soul.

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Is this Really the Meaning of Secular?

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Just as it easier for politicians to rely on debt to fund all manner of wants and needs to avoid the difficult messiness of weighing those needs against available funds, it is easier for governance to increasingly push religion to the periphery of society rather than do the difficult task of managing the disparate demands of various religions, to exclude religion rather than to include religion in our ideal of a democracy.

Neither our politician's lazy dependence on debt nor our politician's exclusion of religion result in positive outcomes for our nation.

The Telegraph:

Praying in the streets of Paris is against the law starting Friday, after the interior minister warned that police will use force if Muslims, and those of any other faith, disobey the new rule to keep the French capital's public spaces secular.

Is this really the proper use of the term "secular"?The above use of "secular" is based on deliberate exclusion and is therefore more akin to atheism. It would be more correct to say "...to keep the French capital's public spaces atheistic."

We in America are guilty of this use of "secular" as well.

If there are theocratic governments in which a single religion holds sway over governance and there are atheocratic governments in which religion is persecuted and deliberately erased from the population, then what falls between? What is a government that adopts no particular religion yet includes all religious opinion in the governance of the citizenry? Historically this is the form of government American governance has taken and historically this was called secularism.

However, America has followed France in drifting from this melting pot approach toward religion and governance toward something less democratic. Each nation has shifted away from the democratic notion of the electorate fully informing governance and embraced the undemocratic notion of selectively choosing those groups that are no longer allowed to inform governance and each have done so via an evolving definition of "secularism".

It is not secularist to actively eschew all religion; that is the realm of atheism. And that is where we find ourselves today; with atheists in control of our public spaces and with atheism at levers of governance the religious will one day find themselves in an America much like the France of today, unable to pray on public street corners and increasingly forced from public view, eventually themselves isolated in their homes like the Soviets of thirty years ago or the Koreans today. Persecution is the way of atheocratic states.

It is sad that we do not deny atheists their bastardization of the the term "secular".



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The Evil of a Public Square Reserved for One...

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It appears to me that there is a conceptual framework based on the excesses of medieval Christianity that still defines current Christianity for some. I do not see any evidence of "deceit and murder, abuse of human rights and usurpation of Constitutional norms" in modern Christianity.

In fact, Christianity has suffered from the usurpation of Constitutional norms, as it has been chased from the public square it once shared with atheists. Sure, atheists were out numbered in that earlier shared public square, but the various interested parties had on the whole a voice commensurate with their numbers.

Today, as Christianity is physically chased from the lawns of town halls, as court rooms are cleared of the 10 commandments in towns unable to defend their right to such expression, and students fight to lead prayer at school, we increasingly see an atheistic minority in our public square with a voice far in excess of the minority position they hold. This silencing in the public square of the religious majority, I would argue, is the genesis of an atheocratic state within the US.

When we leave a single religion in the public square after having silenced all other religions, atheism included, we create a theocracy. But when we silence all religions leaving only atheism in the public square we create a greater evil, an atheocracy.

During the 20th century we have seen atheocratic states from the Soviet Union, to China, to North Korea, to WWII Germany and we have witnessed the extreme horrors soulless men are capable of levying against humanity. There is no example of the atheocratic state's counterpart, the theocratic state, exceeding the atrocities of man unleashed through atheism.

To be clear, I do not argue for a theocratic state, only to scale it against the athocratic state in terms of abuse toward humanity. What I do argue for, is the inclusion of religion in all its forms (as well as non religion, athesim) in the public square.

There is a strength in such diversity. It was evident among the various beliefs of the founders of our nation and reflected when crafting the Constitution (even today atheists and the religious each point to aspects of the Constitution that reflect their thinking) and it was a strength the US was able draw upon until the mid 20th century when it began to fade due growth in government and the growth of government's natural lust for an atheocratic state. In fact, it was this diversity in which no single religion or non religion (atheism) had the public square to itself that added to what we think of as American exceptionalism today, for in what other nation can we find such respect and tolerance for our fellow man that men allow each their voice regardless of the group with which they identify.

One can argue for the atheocratic state if they wish, but the morality of such an argument is sorely lacking considering modern evidence.

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Our Atheocratic State Demands Environmental Contrition ...

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The religion of science, atheism, has found a home in western governments. And just as the unknown gives rise to superstition, the immeasurably of the future gives rise to science's equivalent ... conjecture; the best example of which is AGW. The result is environmental contrition.

The fact is that scientists and politicians have been too quick to assume causation when it comes to climate change. Like ancient tribes of people who made sacrifices to the gods of nature, modern societies are too easily convinced that they are the ones responsible for weather changes and that they can somehow atone for their environmental sins through changes in behavior. And this happens to be very convenient for politicians and profiteers who are intent on regulating global energy use for their own power and financial gain.

...

All pain for no measurable gain.

Where once Medieval Catholicism co-opted government and forced tithes, modern atheism has co-opted government and is forcing environmental contrition.

Although America is not a Theocracy, it's well on its way to becoming an Atheocratic state.



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