Reply #88: Hold Up [View All]

[debsianben]

What if some one told you that the United States belonged only to those who shares the same "ethics and world view"? No fucking thank you, Pat Robertson! I would not accept that those who wanted to have it considered that way (even if they were the great majority) had any right to legislate it. If they succeeded in legislating it, I would fight tooth and nail to reverse it and restore civilized secular democracy. You cannot both be a civilized secular democracy and be reserved for those who share the same ethical outlook or the same worldview or the same culture, which is what Pat Buchanan's ilk want.

Thinking that its OK for states to only belong to those of their citizens that share the same worldview is the sort of mindset that lead to all kinds of ugliness a few centuries back (the Reformation, the Wars of Religion, persecution of heretics, etc.) and convinced most non-idiots of the need to have a state that didn't belong soley to those of its citizens that shared a certain world view.

Besides, it's not even descriptively accurate. Go out and ask a bunch of liberal secular Israeli Jews in Tel Aviv whether they share the same ethics or worldview as the heredi zealots in the Mea Shera'im, or for that matter the murderous gangs of armed settlers on the West Bank, and I suspect they'd answer in the negative. The only thing that share is a sense of ethno-cultural identity. There's a word for believing that states should only belong to those of their citizens that share a given ethno-cultural identity, and I think we all know what it is.