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New Year, New Unpopular Opinions
It’s been awhile since we’ve heard what wrong opinions we each have, so I figured we should get down to it… you know, to start the New Year off with a bang. I’ll go first:
The United States of America Is Not, Strictly Speaking, a Christian Nation
At least, its government wasn’t founded as such, and that’s even more true today than it was then. Our federal government has no official religion, is prohibited from forming one, requiring that you participate in one, or — notably — asking you to reject one.
That begs the question then: if the US is not a Christian nation, what is it? It is a nation founded by an overwhelmingly Christian-majority people, who remain majority Christian, and that permits some ceremonial Deism within its operations. The difference between being a “Christian Nation” and the reality of the United States is a fine, but relevant one. There is a difference between a nation and its government, a fact many Christians rightly point out repeatedly when leftists are in power.
The words “Under God” Should be Excised from the Pledge of Allegiance.
These words were only shoehorned-in under Eisenhower due to the Red Scare, and it’s high time they were stricken from from the Pledge.
I know what I am pledging allegiance to when I say those words: the Constitution of United States of America, its people and its principles. Why is that insufficient? If you say, “one of our principles is gratitude towards and recognition of the almighty,” I would point you the argument in favor of the first unpopular opinion I offered in this post.
It would be a mark of Christian humility, confidence in the strength of their witness, and their commitment to the principle of subsidiarity to accept — indeed, to champion — the removal of those words. If the Christian story is so compelling, and the truth of their claims so obvious, there should be no need to have their beliefs impressed upon people within the Flag Code.
Do I think anybody is being harmed as many atheists allege? I do not; at least, not the people you might think. I’m a big boy and not worried about semantic infiltration, but I also think that disentangling faith from the fell influence of the government would benefit religion (and the religious) in this nation greatly.
Perhaps, we could insert an overt oath of loyalty to the Constitution in place of “Under God” in an effort to clarify and make the Pledge more euphonious.
It would also have the pleasant side effect of skewering the Left on the horns of a dilemma.
The Tax Code Should Recognize No Difference Between Businesses and “Non-Profits.”
I am making no comment here regarding what state tax policies should be (especially with regard to property taxes). This should be done, of course, in combination with drastic reductions in the corporate tax rate and reasonable allowances (a standard deduction, if you will) for small organizations to maintain working capital and to make improvements to their facilities. There are a lot of reasons for this.
The term “non-profit” should indicate that the federal tax liability of such organizations ought to be zero to begin with, being as the government only taxes such organizations on the basis of profit (revenues minus expenses). As a result of this insane policy, much mischief is done in the name of “not-profiting.” (Sure, some people who work for non-profits seem to be doing an awful lot of profiting, but their salaries are subject to individual income and payroll taxes.)
Enough, I say.
Worthy charities will survive this minor inconvenience without substantial trauma because of their frugal and honest operation while behemoth skimming operations (like the United Way or the Church of Scientology) will likely dry up … or at least have to pay up.
It’s Entirely Possible Your Congressional Representative Is an Unbeliever.
Let’s face it: congressional representation isn’t exactly reflective of the demography of the population at large. The congressional delegation is overwhelmingly more male, whiter, and older than the average citizen. There are other ways in which this cohort is exceptional.
The average congressman is has also attained a much higher level of educational achievement than the average American, and not just in fluffy degrees. There are 213 holders of juris doctorates (lawyers; surprise!), 25 medical doctors, and a staggering 64% of Representatives overall hold graduate degrees (74% for senators.) I think it’s safe to say that the job of “congressman” tends to select for reasonably high levels of intelligence and achievement among the pool of possible candidates.
Another statistical anomaly is the fact that there is only a single Representative (Kyrsten Sinema, D-AZ) out of 535 members of Congress who admits to being religiously unaffiliated.
If Congress were reflective of the population at large, one would expect there to be about 37 agnostics/atheists among the 535 members of Congress (About seven % of Americans are either agnostic or atheists.)
Is it curious that out of all of 535 Congress Members, only one openly admits to being religiously unaffiliated? Well, it would be curious if you were to discount the fact that 53 percent of Americans say they wouldn’t elect an atheist president. One could reasonably deduce from this statistic that the population’s distrust of Atheists/unbelievers as a representative would be roughly equivalent to be their dislike of the idea of an atheist president.
So, why is it possible — perhaps, likely — that your representative is an atheist?
Unless there is some sort of very perverse self-selection going on, you’d just expect as a function of statistics for there to be some there. Militating against this theory is the average age of congress, as older Americans tend to be more religious.
What points are in favor of the theory? This study correlating measures of intelligence (using college entrance exams, GPAs, etc.) with acceptance of atheism. Congress is peopled by members who are — on average — considerably older and more intelligent than the average American. Given the tension between these facts it would come as no shock to think that there is a sizable cohort of closeted atheists/unbelievers/deists in the ranks of our representatives. It’s even possible that that proportion is higher than their relative representation in the population.
Let’s hear some other unpopular opinions for the New Year!
Published in Culture, Domestic Policy, Politics, Religion & Philosophy
Most self-proclaimed atheists that I know are, by their actions, pagan earth-worshippers. Yet they are entirely unaware of it.
Most of us are not very good at examining the presuppositions that underpin our thoughts.
The Declaration sums up America’s founding principles with eloquent brevity:
I don’t know of any better statement of the purpose and assumptions underlying the entire American project.
But wait. You probably noticed that I omitted something from the above quote, which actually reads:
So here’s a counter question: If you want to take “under God” out of the Pledge, do you also want to take that pesky Creator language out of the Declaration?
I don’t know whether the American project could survive rejection of the fundamental premise that our ideals come from God. I’m going to close with one of my favorite Churchill quotes:
I’d be happy to get rid of the entire pledge, not just the “Under God” part.
I read it… in The Onion.
Eh. Replace “Elves” with “God” and it doesn’t necessarily shock me.
Plenty of people believe that the moon landings were faked too… Is your point to say that only 13% definitively ruled elves out? I wouldn’t definitively rule them out either… ;)
It could not. I continue to believe that a rational atheist does not value “useless” human life, and so people who are judged less valuable can (and perhaps even should be) culled from the herd.
We can start with those who come from inferior genetic stock, the crippled or handicapped, the mentally infirm, then the unborn, and ugly newborns. Buck vs Bell remains the law of the land: the government can legally forcibly sterilize anyone it deems inferior.
Eugenics is NOT crazy. It is, in fact, quite rational and scientific in its way. It is also monstrous – but only in the eyes of those of us who believe, despite all the scientific claims to the contrary, that G-d created us each with a valuable soul.
Of course, this was all to keep different kinds of Christians from cracking things up.
I think it’s largely unnecessary, being as the Declaration itself has no force of law. The Constitution is the Document that actually empowers a government.
Even so, I think it’s a fair question to ask: who is this “Creator”? Why was Jefferson so vague? If he meant “The Christian God” he could have said “Yahweh,” “Jehovah,” or even “Jesus,” the “Holy Spirit,” the Trinity or any other easily identifiable name for the God of Abraham.
He said none of these things intentionally out of a rational ecumenicism. Charles Murray has an interesting article at AEI about how fractious and culturally disparate the Republic was at the Founding.
If I were elected President I would ask for a copy of the Constitution, not the Bible. Your mileage may vary.
Just be thankful many of our public religious references are in Spanish or Latin and in the South.
How long do you think Body of Christ, Connecticut would last?
Agreed. When they say “Atheist” they mean “anti-Christian.”
I could easily make the opposite argument. For-profit companies create wealth, lift people out of poverty, and make it possible for non-profits to exist at all. You could annoy non-profit workers by telling them that they are parasites living off the profit-minded.
We’ve seen what the world is like under communism, national socialism, and fascism, all atheistic, unless you count worship of world leaders and the government as a religion, and I don’t care to live under any of them.
Only ignorance of the Book of Genesis could allow for such a comment.
By its very nature a reference to “endowed by our Creator” refers to the creation of man in the Torah. And since the Torah uses different names for G-d, it is most accurate not to use any specific one!
Yup. I am opposed to non-profits on the principle that they do less good.
Dennis Prager has defined the world’s most dynamic religion as… leftism.
I’m inclined to agree with him. I think that (again) the atheism exhibited by some of these regimes was not a longing to eradicate religion – it was hostility towards traditional religions and a desire to replace them with the worship of something else. Their evil was done in the name of leftism – atheism was an easy excuse.
I’ve read the Book of Genesis several times. I’m willing to stand corrected here, but it seems to me that Jefferson wouldn’t have been operating from the perspective of Judaic teachings regarding the naming of the divine.
I’m still hoping for other unpopular opinions to get in here.
I don’t want to dominate this conversation… completely.
I hope Trump gets elected President.
*runs from grenade*
There’s been a lot of discussion of Majestyk’s unpopular opinions, but not much in offering up new ones, so let me go:
Circumcising children is barbaric and should be outlawed. Its cultural/religious significance matters no more to me than that of foot-binding. That certain religious groups would be disproportionately affected does not dissuade me which brings me to my second opinion:
Laws shouldn’t have exemptions for the religious. Alfred Smith and Galen Beck should have the right to smoke peyote, but not because of their particular beliefs about the spirit world.
I’ve got more, but will leave them for later (got to go to work).
I don’t go as far. They serve a purpose where charity or pressure can make an important difference.
But self-disfigurement of adults is cool? I speak, of course, of plastic surgery, boob jobs, butt implants, Botox, tattoos… why stop there? If you don’t like changing people’s bodies against their will, why not OUTLAW PE?!
Now THERE is an unpopular opinion that America’s schoolchildren could get behind!
Here is my unpopular opinion: For their own sanity, and for the sake of reducing cat overpopulation, single women over the age of 32 should be married off by computer-pairings to available men.
These degrees are as fluffy as anything else.
That made me laugh.
OK, here’s one: Congress should exercise its authority under Article III to remove the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction over all amendments to the Constitution.
Anything that diminishes the authority of the Supreme Court, especially in interpreting the 14th Amendment but also the 1st and 10th, is helpful to the return of (small-r) republican government.
(For reference, Article III states in part: “In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.”)
It made me cheer.
That’s certainly unpopular – for now. In 10 or 20 years, who can say, given how fast hostility to Christians and Jews is growing, and how ardent it is becoming.
Cat got my juices flowing.
If it is wrong to change peoples bodies against their will, shouldn’t it also be wrong to change what people think against their will? After our, our thoughts are far more precious and important than physical features – so they should be doubly protected. Especially from people who are not trained expert professionals. Like parents.
Reading – Writing – ‘Rithmatic
Schools don’t need to run sports programs.
Ok, here is one that will banish me from Ricochet:
Ronald Reagan was great and likable but he was mostly lucky with an economic recovery driven by baby boomers reaching maturity and a Soviet policy made easier by the crash in oil prices.
(ducking)