On the ‘Sacredness’ of Our Institutions

 

Let me get the disclaimer done with: I don’t support rioting or invasions of government buildings. They should be stopped with whatever force is necessary.

But I’m not buying that there was some sort of desecration going on in the invasion of the Capitol Building. What is sacred in this nation is not institutions or buildings, but individual rights, liberty, and life. Whatever sacredness our institutions have is derivative of their core purpose in securing individual liberty. That’s a peculiarity of this nation we sometimes forget. The king is sacred in England, or the party in Communist China, but in a constitutional republic like ours, our government has only derivative sacredness.

We wave the flag, celebrate the Fourth of July, and have monuments in Washington DC as a way of holding individual liberty sacred. We should feel a sense of desecration when those core individual rights are violated, and only in a lesser sense when there is some attack on the institutions that protect them. George W. Bush expressed this in the wake of 9/11 when he said that “freedom had been attacked.” He understood that the significance of the attack on the Pentagon Building wasn’t that the building itself was really threatened, but that the real target was the individual liberty for which this nation stands. That is the thing to be concerned about.

Actual desecrations of individual rights and liberty have been occurring most of this year. To have secure individual rights means that one can trust that your rights won’t be violated by the government, and that the government will protect your rights from others who wish to violate them. Yet for most of this year, the government routinely stood by while BLM and Antifa rioters looted and burned private property, harassed citizens in their homes and at restaurants, blocked intersections, or set up “autonomous zones.” How many ordinary people’s lives were destroyed in these events? That is the desecration I am worried about. It happened when Joe Sixpack lost his livelihood when his hardware store was looted and burned, while police watched and did nothing.

By contrast, how many lives were destroyed in the Capitol Building invasion? I’m not talking about the rioters themselves. You get involved in a riot, you take your chances. I’m talking about ordinary, innocent people who go home from work and show up the next day to find their store looted. As far as I know, the number is zero. Whatever damage was done to the Capitol Building will be quickly repaired. In a few weeks, you won’t even be able to tell it ever happened. You can still see the boarded-up businesses in Portland and other cities, however.

Capitol Buildings, Congresses, Presidents, and Senates are not sacred. It is the individual liberty they are supposed to secure that is sacred.

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  1. tigerlily Member
    tigerlily
    @tigerlily

    Great post!

    • #1
  2. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    The Capitol should be treated with respect, but it’s interesting that small businesses that are the lifeblood of communities and those who own them are not considered as sacred as a building that’s housed any number of scoundrels.

    • #2
  3. ape2ag Member
    ape2ag
    @ape2ag

    In contrast to BLM, no one is buying guns to protect themselves from viking hat guy.  

    • #3
  4. JamesSalerno Inactive
    JamesSalerno
    @JamesSalerno

    The Antifa and BLM malcontents were also allowed to organize and openly call for violence on the big tech platforms. And they often did it with corporate blessing and sponsorship.

    • #4
  5. mildlyo Member
    mildlyo
    @mildlyo

    Yes. Sacred is entirely the wrong word to apply to the works and institutions of government.

    There can be respect for, compliance with, and even pride in government when it works well. When it does not work well there is no reason to feel nor act on any of these.

    • #5
  6. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    Antifa tried to burn the Federal Court House for over a 100 nights this summer. Did we a word from the Democrats?

    • #6
  7. tigerlily Member
    tigerlily
    @tigerlily

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    The Capitol should be treated with respect, but it’s interesting that small businesses that are the lifeblood of communities and those who own them are not considered as sacred as a building that’s housed any number of scoundrels.

    Although you’ll be happy to know that small businesses owned by minorities will be sacred to the incoming Biden-Harris administration at least with respect to small businesses owned by white people.

    • #7
  8. JamesSalerno Inactive
    JamesSalerno
    @JamesSalerno

    tigerlily (View Comment):

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    The Capitol should be treated with respect, but it’s interesting that small businesses that are the lifeblood of communities and those who own them are not considered as sacred as a building that’s housed any number of scoundrels.

    Although you’ll be happy to know that small businesses owned by minorities will be sacred to the incoming Biden-Harris administration at least with respect to small businesses owned by white people.

    Reminds me of that old Simpsons episode where Sideshow Bob is driving through the neighborhood, yelling through a megaphone all the names of the people he would NOT kill. He calls out the names of everyone in the Simpson’s household, except Bart.

    • #8
  9. DonG (2+2=5. Say it!) Coolidge
    DonG (2+2=5. Say it!)
    @DonG

    We are a nation of ideas.  Those ideas of God-given individual liberties and a government of the people are what is sacred.  Those ideas have not been treated well lately.

    • #9
  10. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Superb post. It is humans who have the potential to be holy: not government buildings. And human holiness is only possible through liberty.

    Thank you.

    • #10
  11. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    I do not agree with the elevation of liberty above all else.  Liberty is an important value.  There are other important values, often in conflict with liberty.

    Even the Declaration does not limit itself to liberty.  It does not say that we have an unlimited right to liberty, nor does it say that individual liberty is the only right that is given by God.  (Technically, it says that we are endowed with rights by our “Creator,” but I don’t think that there’s a candidate for a Creator other than God.)

    I may be misinterpreting the OP.  I am growing increasingly hostile toward libertarianism, which I find to be lacking in nuance with respect to many issues.  I am mindful of the danger of becoming a grumpy old man, though I may not police myself well in this regard.

    The Capitol, like other monuments and like the flag, are tangible symbols of our ideals, history, and traditions.  A violent assault on such symbols is a manifestation of hostility to those ideals, history, and traditions.  It is more significant than similar violence, however wrongful, directed toward an ordinary building.

    I am quite concerned about this.  Over the summer and fall, we saw a number of violent and often riotous attacks on public monuments, and I think that most of us were appalled.  It is more significant to tear down a statute of George Washington than to tear down one of the statues at Bob’s Big Boy (if any such still exist).  Both acts are wrongful, and both should be subject to prosecution, but the former is a symbolic attack on the Republic itself.

    The Capitol is one of our most important monuments, along with the White House, the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, the Washington Monument, the Statute of Liberty, and Mount Rushmore.  I think that those are the top 7.

    So I disagree with the suggestion that an attack on the Capitol is not a very big deal.

     

    • #11
  12. JoelB Member
    JoelB
    @JoelB

    tigerlily (View Comment):

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    The Capitol should be treated with respect, but it’s interesting that small businesses that are the lifeblood of communities and those who own them are not considered as sacred as a building that’s housed any number of scoundrels.

    Although you’ll be happy to know that small businesses owned by minorities will be sacred to the incoming Biden-Harris administration at least with respect to small businesses owned by white people.

    This reminds me of the Rabbi’s blessing in Fiddler on the Roof. -May God bless and keep the Tsar (far away from here).

    • #12
  13. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    So I disagree with the suggestion that an attack on the Capitol is not a very big deal.

    I can’t speak for the O/P, but my point (#2, above) is that other incidents that have received decidedly less attention are just as big a deal.

    • #13
  14. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    So I disagree with the suggestion that an attack on the Capitol is not a very big deal.

     

    As do I, for many of the same reasons.

    The rhetoric last week calling the attack a “coup” was foolish and histrionic.  It was no coup, it was an angry mob.  But that does not make it morally much better – it was still an attempt to bully the government for not giving in to what the mob wanted.  It was still a type of mindless angry destruction, and an attempt to undo history by desecrating its symbols.

    Think about it like this: suppose someone burns a church, or a synagogue, or a mosque.  Have they harmed Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam by doing so?  No.  But they have made a symbolic gesture that they wish such faiths were unmade, and have made clear their hostility to the practitioners thereof.

    Of course Christianity is not the sum of its churches.  But those churches have meaning.

     

    • #14
  15. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I’m going oppositely these days on this. The more I read about it, the more it sounds like a bunch of mostly unarmed tourists invaded the Capitol. It was scary for the people who were working in the Capitol, but the only person who got killed was one of the demonstrators. I may be wrong, but that’s the way it looks to me now.

    I watched a video a bystander captured of the woman Air Force veteran who was shot by the Capitol police–properly so, I suppose, given where she was and what she was doing–but looking at the people milling around the room while the first responders attempted to save her life, all I saw were relaxed people. There was no aggression in the room, either from the Capitol guards, the first responders, or the demonstrators. I did not see any weapons in the hands of the protestors.

    In other words, this was no “insurrection,” as the press and the Democrats have made it out to be.

    The stress Americans are feeling right now living under the press’s desire to cause panic and the Democrats’ desire to achieve their political objectives is terribly acute. The public is so nervous about everything right now because the press and the Democrats are putting so much pressure on everyone that they just can’t take any more stress. The cup is full. The camel’s back is breaking. When anxiety is high, people startle very easily. It seems like that’s what happening right now in the response to this event.

    It was a newsworthy event, but it was neither an act of war nor an insurrection nor an act of domestic terrorism.

    But I’m sure of this: by the time the press and the Democrats get through with it, we will have spent trillions of dollars on it and we will have destroyed people’s lives.

    I grew up in the lovely fifties and sixties when easing fear and panic was the noble and right thing to do. We had just come out of World War II, and the thing that bugged the Brits the most about Hitler was his screeching all the time hysterically about everything. After the war, there was a desire to get back to a normal calm and confidence that we can meet any challenge working together.

    • #15
  16. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    MarciN (View Comment):

    I’m going oppositely these days on this. The more I read about it, the more it sounds like a bunch of mostly unarmed tourists invaded the Capitol. It was scary for the people who were working in the Capitol, but the only person who got killed was one of the demonstrators. I may be wrong, but that’s the way it looks to me now.

    I don’t know.  I just don’t.  There were clearly some bent on violence and some who looked like they were on a tour.   Some broke in, and some were admitted in. In terms of relative numbers, I’ve no idea.

    I understand the “fog of war” but it’s extremely disappointing to me that on the sixth day after a significant event we have so little information on specifics.  Meanwhile, some narratives are taking hold as they always do.

     

    • #16
  17. WI Con Member
    WI Con
    @WICon

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    I do not agree with the elevation of liberty above all else. Liberty is an important value. There are other important values, often in conflict with liberty.

    Even the Declaration does not limit itself to liberty. It does not say that we have an unlimited right to liberty, nor does it say that individual liberty is the only right that is given by God. (Technically, it says that we are endowed with rights by our “Creator,” but I don’t think that there’s a candidate for a Creator other than God.)

    I may be misinterpreting the OP. I am growing increasingly hostile toward libertarianism, which I find to be lacking in nuance with respect to many issues. I am mindful of the danger of becoming a grumpy old man, though I may not police myself well in this regard.

    The Capitol, like other monuments and like the flag, are tangible symbols of our ideals, history, and traditions. A violent assault on such symbols is a manifestation of hostility to those ideals, history, and traditions. It is more significant than similar violence, however wrongful, directed toward an ordinary building.

    I am quite concerned about this. Over the summer and fall, we saw a number of violent and often riotous attacks on public monuments, and I think that most of us were appalled. It is more significant to tear down a statute of George Washington than to tear down one of the statues at Bob’s Big Boy (if any such still exist). Both acts are wrongful, and both should be subject to prosecution, but the former is a symbolic attack on the Republic itself.

    The Capitol is one of our most important monuments, along with the White House, the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, the Washington Monument, the Statute of Liberty, and Mount Rushmore. I think that those are the top 7.

    So I disagree with the suggestion that an attack on the Capitol is not a very big deal.

     

    What about flag burning? Seems like a similar argument that we’ve been chewing on as a country for a while now. Wasn’t that leader of the Proud Boys arrested for destroying an Anifa or BLM flag?

     

    • #17
  18. J Climacus Member
    J Climacus
    @JClimacus

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    The Capitol is one of our most important monuments, along with the White House, the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, the Washington Monument, the Statute of Liberty, and Mount Rushmore. I think that those are the top 7.

    So I disagree with the suggestion that an attack on the Capitol is not a very big deal.

    I am no libertarian. And I do think the attack on the Capitol was a big deal. But I don’t think a special line was crossed with the attack. I think that line was crossed a long time ago. What I am objecting to is the language I am now hearing, to the effect that the Capitol Hill riot was different in kind than earlier riots because it attacked  something sacred. I didn’t hear that language being used before.

    With you, I think there is a difference between tearing down a monument to Washington and a statue at Big Boy. But we didn’t here the “sacred” language being used when Washington’s statue came down. We didn’t hear it being used when the rights and property of ordinary citizens were routinely destroyed over the summer. It was only when the riots touched close to home to Washington elites that somehow something sacred was attacked. Nothing sacred was touched when someone’s livelihood was ruined when a Big Boy was looted and burned and Nancy Pelosi dismissed it as “mostly peaceful”. But now I’m supposed to respond with religious horror because someone pissed on Nancy Pelosi’s desk? Bollocks on that. Joe Sixpack’s hardware store is just as sacred as the House of Representatives chamber.

    It’s the location of the sacred in the people – in their rights, property, and, yes, also their values, communities and traditions – that made this nation what it was. The White House used to be just another house. In the 19th century, people could literally just walk in and out of it. That’s obviously not possible now for security reasons. But the point is that it was the opposite of Buckingham Palace: my home is the sacred space, not the king’s palace. That made America the unique and glorious nation that it was.

    That’s changed now. Now the business or home of an ordinary person can be invaded or looted and its of no political or cultural consequence – like it never was in most nations through most of history. Now we are becoming like every other nation in history, where things only matter to the extent that they affect elites.

     

    • #18
  19. JamesSalerno Inactive
    JamesSalerno
    @JamesSalerno

    J Climacus (View Comment):

    Joe Sixpack’s hardware store is just as sacred as the House of Representatives chamber.

    Joe Sixpack’s hardware store is more sacred. It actually provides goods and services to the community.

    • #19
  20. J Climacus Member
    J Climacus
    @JClimacus

    WI Con (View Comment):

    What about flag burning? Seems like a similar argument that we’ve been chewing on as a country for a while now. Wasn’t that leader of the Proud Boys arrested for destroying an Anifa or BLM flag?

    Flag burning is an interesting example. The American Flag is a global symbol of freedom and liberty. When protesters in China want a symbol, they use models of the Statue of Liberty and wave the Stars and Stripes. They get it.

    So what happens when you burn the symbol of freedom and liberty? Should that act itself be protected as an act of liberty? That is a deep question I won’t try to answer here.

    But the point is that what really matters – for both us and Chinese protesters – isn’t the symbol but the rights they represent. What’s sacred is the individual liberty and freedom the flag represents. That’s why it might just be allowable to permit burning the flag – because it is just a symbol. What is not permitted is burning the rights and liberties the flag represents.

    Now our political institutions are more than symbols. They are structures put in place to secure individual liberty and the common good. But its that common good and individual liberty that ultimately matters – not the political institutions built to protect them. So when we only start using religious type language when the political institution is attacked, but not when the politicians permitted and even egged on gross violations  of individual rights – we have our scale of values inverted.

     

     

    • #20
  21. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    J Climacus (View Comment):
    It was only when the riots touched close to home to Washington elites that somehow something sacred was attacked. Nothing sacred was touched when someone’s livelihood was ruined when a Big Boy was looted and burned and Nancy Pelosi dismissed it as “mostly peaceful”. But now I’m supposed to respond with religious horror because someone pissed on Nancy Pelosi’s desk? Bollocks on that. Joe Sixpack’s hardware store is just as sacred as the House of Representatives chamber.

    This is what angers me. The legislators probably do see the Congress as “their church” or sanctuary, since many of them are secular anyway, or behave as if they are. Good post, J.

    • #21
  22. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    J Climacus (View Comment):
    It was only when the riots touched close to home to Washington elites that somehow something sacred was attacked.

    No, not only that.

    People who sincerely believe the outcome of this last presidential election was a massive fraudulent steal and the true winner obviously should have been Trump share this country with people who believe it’s been proven beyond reasonable doubt that there was no irregular voting substantial enough to change the presidential outcome, that the 2020 presidential election was essentially free and fair.

    It takes no belief in the specialness of buildings,  or government officials, or elites, or patriotic furniture, to worry that resisting the peaceful transfer of power after a free and fair election erodes a vital process guarding, as you say, “individual rights, liberty, and life”.

    Anyone up in (sometimes literal) arms out of a sincere conviction that this last presidential election wasn’t free and fair because it was stolen from Trump, the rightful winner, knows exactly what it feels like to perceive resistance to free and fair elections as an assault on their sacred fundamental liberties. It’s logically inconsistent to expect the people who believe Trump is the one trying to steal an election here to feel any different.

    • #22
  23. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    Anyone up in (sometimes literal) arms out of a sincere conviction that this last presidential election wasn’t free and fair because it was stolen from Trump, the rightful winner, knows exactly what it feels like to perceive resistance to free and fair elections as an assault on their sacred fundamental liberties. It’s logically inconsistent to expect the people who believe Trump is the one trying to steal an election here to feel any differently.

    I think J was referring to the Capitol building itself being referred to as “sacred.”

    • #23
  24. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    J Climacus: I don’t support rioting or invasions of government buildings. They should be stopped with whatever force is necessary.

    Neither do I.  But I also support the same thing for private property.

    J Climacus: What is sacred in this nation is not institutions or buildings, but individual rights, liberty, and life. Whatever sacredness our institutions have is derivative of their core purpose in securing individual liberty.

    Exactly.  And our private property should have the same (if not more) value as our government institutional buildings.  I would no more want to see the Washington Monument desecrated as a Burger King burn to the ground . . .

    • #24
  25. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    Anyone up in (sometimes literal) arms out of a sincere conviction that this last presidential election wasn’t free and fair because it was stolen from Trump, the rightful winner, knows exactly what it feels like to perceive resistance to free and fair elections as an assault on their sacred fundamental liberties. It’s logically inconsistent to expect the people who believe Trump is the one trying to steal an election here to feel any differently.

    I think J was referring to the Capitol building itself being referred to as “sacred.”

    Here’s what J said in his OP:

    J Climacus: I’m not buying that there was some sort of desecration going on in the invasion of the Capitol Building. What is sacred in this nation is not institutions or buildings, but individual rights, liberty, and life. Whatever sacredness our institutions have is derivative of their core purpose in securing individual liberty.

    and

    J Climacus: George W. Bush expressed this in the wake of 9/11 when he said that “freedom had been attacked.” He understood that the significance of the attack on the Pentagon Building wasn’t that the building itself was really threatened, but that the real target was the individual liberty for which this nation stands. That is the thing to be concerned about.

    Emphasis added.

    J acknowledges that 9/11’s real target wasn’t any building, but “the individual liberty for which this nation stands”, and “That is the thing to be concerned about.” But J also says “I’m not buying that there was some sort of desecration going on in the invasion of the Capitol Building”, as if it were impossible that “the significance of the attack on the [Capitol] Building wasn’t that the building itself was really threatened, but that the real target was the individual liberty for which this nation stands.”

    So attack on Pentagon? Yes desecration, in the sense that the real target was what the Pentagon ultimately exists to protect, our liberties.

    Attack on Capitol? Not desecration, even though the real target was what the Capitol building was hosting at the time, a step in the peaceful transfer of power after what many Americans quite reasonably believe was a free and fair election, a step whose ultimate purpose is to secure our liberties from one election cycle to the next (as well as to ensure we’ll even continue to have election cycles that let us kick out the bums inimical to our liberties).

    The stance that outrage over the Capitol attack couldn’t be motivated by what J describes as the motive for outrage over the Pentagon attack, namely the understanding that such attacks make “the individual liberty for which this nation stands” the real target, is at best naive, missing an obvious — and oft-stated — reason for outrage over the Capitol attack. It is at worst dishonest.

    • #25
  26. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    I do not agree with the elevation of liberty above all else. Liberty is an important value. There are other important values, often in conflict with liberty.

    Even the Declaration does not limit itself to liberty. It does not say that we have an unlimited right to liberty, nor does it say that individual liberty is the only right that is given by God. (Technically, it says that we are endowed with rights by our “Creator,” but I don’t think that there’s a candidate for a Creator other than God.)

    I may be misinterpreting the OP. I am growing increasingly hostile toward libertarianism, which I find to be lacking in nuance with respect to many issues. I am mindful of the danger of becoming a grumpy old man, though I may not police myself well in this regard.

    The Capitol, like other monuments and like the flag, are tangible symbols of our ideals, history, and traditions. A violent assault on such symbols is a manifestation of hostility to those ideals, history, and traditions. It is more significant than similar violence, however wrongful, directed toward an ordinary building.

    I am quite concerned about this. Over the summer and fall, we saw a number of violent and often riotous attacks on public monuments, and I think that most of us were appalled. It is more significant to tear down a statute of George Washington than to tear down one of the statues at Bob’s Big Boy (if any such still exist). Both acts are wrongful, and both should be subject to prosecution, but the former is a symbolic attack on the Republic itself.

    The Capitol is one of our most important monuments, along with the White House, the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, the Washington Monument, the Statute of Liberty, and Mount Rushmore. I think that those are the top 7.

    So I disagree with the suggestion that an attack on the Capitol is not a very big deal.

    Old patriotic icons have been destroyed or defaced as part of the replacement of the dying American civic religion by the Church of Woke.

    The buildings of that religion are symbolic places of power. As happened (twice now) with the Hagia Sophia, the old symbols, blasphemous to the new religion, will be purged or repurposed as symbols of the conquest of the blasphemous old by the sacred new, and the buildings themselves consecrated to the new religion.

    It will often be the case that adherents of the old religion will not be permitted in the rededicated space, or will be required to perform unique abasements to enter.

    If the Church of Woke becomes ascendant, patriotic sentiment (aka adherence to the old civic religion)  such as you are expressing will be a weapon in the hands of Woke to weaken your resistance.

    Postscript: See Lloyd Billingsley’s Frontpage mag piece Veni Vidi Vichy

    Petain was a patriot, trying to preserve sacred France.

    • #26
  27. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    JoelB (View Comment):

    tigerlily (View Comment):

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    The Capitol should be treated with respect, but it’s interesting that small businesses that are the lifeblood of communities and those who own them are not considered as sacred as a building that’s housed any number of scoundrels.

    Although you’ll be happy to know that small businesses owned by minorities will be sacred to the incoming Biden-Harris administration at least with respect to small businesses owned by white people.

    This reminds me of the Rabbi’s blessing in Fiddler on the Roof. -May God bless and keep the Tsar (far away from here).

    The Tsar didn’t have Alexa and her sisters, or the NSA, or Twitter, Facebook and the rest. Harder to keep the Tsar far away now.

    • #27
  28. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    The sacred institutions of a Free Society have all been destroyed by the Left.  That would be the Nuclear Family, Education, the Free Press, most of Organized Religion.  The Covid crisis showed that individual liberty will be yielded up quite easily now, and I wonder if the people are now ripe for a fully totalitarian society in America.

    • #28
  29. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    There is a sense awe that I get when I walk into a great structure: of the beauty, the craftsmanship, the architectural expanse and flow of the eye, and the sweat toil and the years that went into its making. It is similar to what I feel when I walk into some cathedrals.

    I can see that those who are selected to inhabit this seat of power and this display of greatness to feel a religious nature in this environment and in themselves. After all, we all ascribe worthiness or worship to something. When those who don’t stay humbled in front of God are ascended to such authority, it’s not far for them to see their magnificent building as a temple of sorts, and to see themselves as priests of a god.

    • #29
  30. J Climacus Member
    J Climacus
    @JClimacus

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Attack on Capitol? Not desecration, even though the real target was what the Capitol building was hosting at the time, a step in the peaceful transfer of power after what many Americans quite reasonably believe was a free and fair election, a step whose ultimate purpose is to secure our liberties from one election cycle to the next (as well as to ensure we’ll even continue to have election cycles that let us kick out the bums inimical to our liberties).

    The stance that outrage over the Capitol attack couldn’t be motivated by what J describes as the motive for outrage over the Pentagon attack, namely the understanding that such attacks make “the individual liberty for which this nation stands” the real target, is at best naive, missing an obvious — and oft-stated — reason for outrage over the Capitol attack. It is at worst dishonest.

    You disagree with me about whether the attack involved desecration. Fair enough.

    I never said outrage over the attacks couldn’t be motivated by a perceived desecration. I argued that there was no desecration in fact; or, more precisely, that whatever desecration  happened is less serious than the violations of individual property and rights that have been happening all year. I think it’s a little late to start talking about desecration.

    You disagree with me and we could have a friendly discussion about which interpretation is more accurate to the situation. Or you could just call me naive and dishonest. The latter is probably easier.

    • #30
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