States petition for secession

So then, you have no specific examples of First Amendment violations to offer.Why did you lie to us? What is Christian doctrine on lying and deceiving?

I wouldn't call Faith a liar.Faith has expressed that she does not like the First Amendment because it doesn't preserve her view of Protestantism as the law of the land.Perhaps her language is not exactly correct when she talks about her position, and she may have some goofy beliefs about what the first amendment is supposed to do, but I don't believe she is attempting to deceive anyone as to what her position is. She seems to accept that the First Amendment does what it does, and has admitted to the possibility that some of the founding fathers intended it to work as it does.And I think it is true that back in the 18th century, that the country did allow communities to implement her brand of Protestantism as at least the local or state religion.Faith wants her own country or virtual country (a virtual state won't do) in which everybody is her kind of Protestant. If the first amendment does not allow that, then rather than cancel it for everybody, she wants an enclave where she is free of it. She wants a theocracy and she is willing to secede from the US if that would work. I don't see anything dishonest about that.

Answer Dwise's question.Does the First amendment only apply to your own very particular Christian theology, or to every American?

Faith stated in Message 179: I very specifically requested specific examples of the government violating the First Amendment. I even provided three examples of government violations myself, from 1954, 1955, and 1956. Faith then spent several posts avoiding that request. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that Faith had made false statements in Message 179 and that she knew those statements to be false as evidenced by her avoidance of my simple and pertinent request for specific examples.At any rate, the question of what Christian doctrine is on lying and deceiving is highly pertinent in any discussion of "creation science".Edited by dwise1, : Corrected verb tense.

quote:

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Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.

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-George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense, 1905

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The problem with all theocracies, Faith, is that these "secondary" points eventually become "primary" points to the sect in power. Other sects resist so there are trials, hangings, burnings. Often one of the opposition sects takes over the state. More trials, hangings, burnings.You may feel you are on the rightous side of the sword in the beginning but you could very quickly find yourself on the pointy side. That is why theocracies are evil.

Your statement: This would seem to imply that you don't want to see or talk to most of your family.

All this talk of splitting up the country through Red/Blue secession is rich fodder for distopia fiction, be it in book or movie form. Maybe a writer will see this and develop the ideas. At any rate, it should be interesting to kick some ideas around.The "red card"/"blue card" idea is interesting, but not practical. Having different rules for different groups of people living in the same society would be a nightmare for law enforcement, much more so if based on actual cards, since until someone produced their card it would be impossible to tell how to deal with that person. Rather, in order to immediately identify what you are dealing with, there would need to be immediate visual cues, such as attire. I would therefore propose very strict rules for the type of clothing one could wear. Blues, being the normals, could wear normal clothing, while the Reds would need to wear very distinctive clothing that would make them stand out, perhaps various forms of Pilgram clothing, since they want so much to emulate the Pilgrams. Nor is this idea without precedent, since medieval laws dictated what clothing every class of person was allowed to wear. The Jews especially had to wear very distinctive clothing to make them stand out. In keeping with that tradition, Reds should probably also be required to only live within special communities set aside for them alone, which in Italian were called "ghetti" (singular, "ghetto"). It would be very nice irony for Reds (being Red on religious grounds) to share the same fate that they had meted out to others previously.But having both parties co-existing in the same society wouldn't work. Again, the Blues would not be the problem, but rather the problem is with the Reds. Indeed, this entire discussion is due to the Reds' inability or abject refusal to live with others; the Blues do not even begin to have that kind of problem. The only "solution" that would make any sense (actually, the real solution is for Reds to grow up and learn to live with others, but apparently they are too developmentally challenged for that) would be for territories to secede from the Union, but that "solution" is rife with problems.First, how would that secession be conducted? By state? But how then would they handle their own Blue regions? As I noted, there are only a few states (Utah, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, as I recall) that contained no blue counties in the last election; even Texas, the prime candidate for secession, had wide areas of very deep blue. Even within those Red regions there are many Blue citizens. How would they be treated? Basically, we are talking about a form of the Taliban taking over parts of the country. How will the Blues living in those parts of the country be treated? Would they be forced to leave, to become refugees? Wouldn't they be entitled to try to defend their homes from such a hostile takeover? Homeowners have a lot of equity tied up in their properties. Who would reimburse them for the loss of having to abandon those homes or to sell them to Red racketeers at a huge loss? Who would finance their forced resettlement to Blue territory? Basically, we'd have the Reds replaying the Israeli takeover of Palestine along with the same baggage that continues to contribute to Middle East instability and volatility. Even if states themselves would split up by counties, the same problems would still exist.And how would those Red territories do business? What will they have that will be valuable enough for Blue companies to want to take the enormous risk of doing business with them despite the Taliban-like draconian laws that they'd be exposing themselves and their employees to? Inter-state commerce would also suffer, since now they'd have to be shipping through a foreign country, especially if secession results in a Red/Blue patchwork, leaving Blue cities isolated in a sea of Red, not unlike the status of West Berlin before Reunification and equally vulnerable to a Red seige though without much hope for an airlift campaign to sustain them as we had done for over a year for Berlin.But the real problem would be the very nature of Reds themselves. They cannot get along with anybody else; they cannot tolerate anybody who is the least bit different. Over time, some Reds will start to form opinions that are different the opinions of other Reds. How will Reds deal with that? Increase the level of oppression against their own? Expell those dissident Reds? To where? Certainly not to any Blue territories; the Blues wouldn't have as much a problem with that as would the exiled Reds who would chafe as they do now at having to live in Blue territory. And if too many Reds turn dissident, what then? They would do what they had learned to do, secede from the Red nation. So over time, the Red nation would repeatedly splinter apart into smaller and smaller territories, Balkanizing along "ethnic" lines and undoubtedly through less than peaceful actions (ie, bloody civil war). And those territories would harbor long-held hatred for each other and would undoubtedly war against each other at every opportunity in attempts at "ethnic cleansing". A Red nation cannot help but to descend into chaos. A Red nation is doomed to spectacular and bloody failure.A Blue nation would fare far better, since the characteristic trait of Blues is that they have grown up and learned to get along with others, to tolerate differences and to resolve conflict fairly and maturely. So then the real solution to our problem is not secession, but rather for Reds to finally grow up and learn to play with others.----------------"Those who do not learn the lessons of science fiction are condemned to live them." -- email tag line

I can't imagine Conservative Catholics or Mormons being welcome in Faith's "Red State". And it doesn't seem as if Faith would be happy with a "Red State" that placed Catholicism or the LDS on an equal basis with her Protestantism. Or in other words, the evidence of this thread supports your view.

Dr. Adequate. I believe your eyes are sliding over the 'not' in Faith's sentence."Na I don't want to NOT see or talk to the blues"

So then the fragmentation of the nascent Red nation would begin almost immediately during its very formation as each different religious sect, unable to tolerate any other religious sect, struggles to carve out its own private little territory. And since very little spills blood more quickly than land disputes, the sale of popcorn should sky-rocket as everybody watches the gory spectable.I would anticipate somebody pointing out that in the Puritan colonies we did not observe such proceedings as I described, but their situation was quite different. Any dissenters to the Puritan colony could leave (or be forced to leave) and walk inland a few miles and set up their own settlement after having killed the Indians who were already living there (as Will Rogers observed, even back when all they had to do to get new land was to kill the Indians living there, they probably still complained about the cost of lead and gunpowder). In the case of a Red nation, all the land is already taken so there is nowhere for dissidents to go to set up their own settlements and the land's occupants are as well armed as the dissidents.

Oh, you're quite right. My bad. Thanks to you and apologies to Faith.

The same A.A. Hodge who stated, "Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.?Also, the theme of this thread was actually about the complete ridiculousness of the idea of secession merely because a group lost an election, not how can we make two separate, but equal (sound familiar) governments.Now, as per your idea it is completely unfeasible! What happens if someone, looking at evidence as A.A. Hodge said to do, in a red country decides that they no longer believe in God, Jesus, or any of it, but would like rights still? Is the only option you give them deportation or conversion to maintain their rights? Are you allowing those with differing views to vote or is this to be a society where decisions are made only by the "True" Christians...if you are allowed to vote without being a "True" Christian, then what happens when the person who looked at the evidence begins to speak out against the injustices caused by the "True" Christian majority in this society? This can lead to a paradigm shift within your own hypothetical country.How will you silence them? And the fact that you would need to silence them is a great reason that what you are proposing is a Theocracy that will ultimately fail. How different were the views of the Kurds when they are compared with other Sunni Muslims? The small details matter when you have removed all large differences and this will be a problem in your proposed utopian society as well. Saddam did not deal with those with slightly different beliefs very kindly, now did he?I understand that you only want to deal with the basic hypothetical, not with the how the details would work, but without details we cannot determine if your idea is even remotely possible.ABE - My mistake, not all Kurds are Sunnis, but rather the majority of them are. So, the argument still stands although it seems to be more ethnic based than religion....but the idea of slight differences still plays.Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

Where have I said one thing that suggests I want to "destroy freedom in the USA?" I realize there is nothing that can be done at this point to return us to the original Protestant inspiration of the country, so I'm playing with the idea of finding a way to secede and start over. I'm sure that's not possible either but I wish it were. You're welcome to your idea of freedom, I consider it a recipe for the ultimate collapse of the nation, so I'd like to get out from under it if possible.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Coragyps, the presence of TV preachers, most of whom are apostates and not Christians anyway, has nothing to do with the character of the nation and its laws, which is what I'm talking about. We've long since left a Christian inspiration in the areas of government.

Thank you, NoNukes, I have been honest about all this and thank you for recognizing it.