What is Liberal?

I'd probably be less surprised and upset about it than you would be once you saw what they require of you. I'd at least expect it.

isten, if this country had always been secular and pagan no Christian would make a fuss. We'd simply expect to be thrown to the lions, which is how the depaganization of the world got started 2000 years ago. I guess we could start all over. Being eaten by a lion is a fine fate for a Christian.

But as long as we know that this nation WAS once Christian we do what we can to keep it from falling back into total paganism.

Let's say the founders were the total Enlightenment jerks you all believe they were, a bunch of sneaky anti-Christians who defrauded the citizenry, nevertheless the pre-founding 1-1/2 centuries were Christian to the max.

1)SlaveryTotal ignorance. There were no Puritans in the South, and the Puritans did not own slaves.

You're going to have to prove that one. The early Puritans made friends with the Indians, and at least two famous later Christians of basically the same doctrinal vein as the Puritans, lived among them as missionaries, David Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was also President of Princeton briefly before he died, such a moron he was.

They were theocrats, that is true, but that is because when they first arrived in America there was nobody else but themselves to govern, and they all lived personally with God as their governor, so the community itself was under God with human administrators. Quite understandable if you think about it. Not applicable to a pluralistic society of course, but theirs wasn't.

One famous witch trial which was apparently based on a hysteria whipped up by teenagers, and it was opposed as well as defended by prominent Puritans. Just because you don't believe in witchcraft doesn't mean it doesn't exist, although in a nontheocracy we don't prosecute witches in any case.

Actually, the medical community has said that the brain waves of an infant up to 10 weeks old are no different than the brain waves of the unborn from week 18 on. So, to say that it's a human when there is no differentiating brain activity is incorrect and abortion could be legal up to the 10th week after birth.

This litmus test might also be applied to the elderly in nursing homes via an excepted stimulus test.

So why do you care about abortion?

respecting the principles of MAJORITY rule and the WILL OF THE PEOPLE

We have both. Majority is always the primary principle. A representative government should reflect the will of the majority if it's truly representative.

The central tenet of Puritanism was God's supreme authority over human affairs, particularly in the church, and especially as expressed in the Bible. They believed, for example, that the worship of the church ought to be strictly regulated by what is clearly commanded in Scripture. Where their opponents defended many worship practices based on tradition alone, the Puritans considered these practices to be idolatry, regardless of their antiquity or how widespread they were among Christians. Thus, Puritan reforms were typified by a minimum of ritual and decoration, and an unambiguous emphasis on preaching. Besides the worship and government of the church, the Puritans also emphasized that the individual should be reformed by the grace of God. Each person, upon whom God shows mercy, should have a sense of his own unworthiness and a confidence that the forgiveness which is in Christ has been particularly applied to him; so that out of gratitude, a humble and obedient life would arise. Other important beliefs included:* Bible reading
* Personal morality
* Education and enlightenment for the masses
* Simple clothes for priests
* Simple ceremonies in Church
* Simple decorations (if any) in Churches
* Children being silent during meals
* No regard to women
* No "superstition" (e.g.: rejection of transubstantiation)
* Abolition of Church Hierarchy
* Opposition to the Monarch being head of the ChurchMost groups also believed the Divine Right of Kings was heresy; this became more pronounced during the reign of Charles I. Banned in their New England colonies;* Drama
* Religious music
* Erotic poetry.Drama and erotic poetry was believed to lead to immorality. Music in worship was not conducive to listening to God. Knowledge of Greek and Latin was important to them. Diversions included Bible discussions and reading the great Greek classics including Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid. They were encouraged to write their own poetry of religious nature. In modern usage, "Puritan" is often used as an informal pejorative term for someone who has strict views on sexual morality, disapproves of recreation, and wishes to impose these beliefs on others. None of these qualities were unique to Puritanism or universally characteristic of Puritans, whose moral views and ascetic tendencies (See Asceticism) were no more extreme than many other Protestant reformers of their time, and who were relatively tolerant of other faithsat least in England; the popular image is slightly more accurate as a description of Puritans in colonial America, whose social experiment took the form of a Calvinist theocracy.Controversy

Just ask me. I went through one as a young woman and I thought I was very enlightened, *knew* it was just a lump of tissue, *knew* it was the rational thing to do. It was within the first trimester too, all right and proper. Funny how the time factor seems to mean so much to everyone though it's just a smokescreen.

Afterward I had a vivid dream about the child I had been carrying, although I had thought I was convinced it wasn't a child. Even then I didn't "let it bother me," simply denied it as most women do. Took many years before I faced my own subconscious knowledge that I'd killed my own child.