No Subject

[Douglas <dougwils@moscow.com>]

Dear visionaries,

Allow me to begin by reiterating what I said at my first entrance --
don't want to wear out my welcome. I am happy to do my very own personal
imitation of declining enrollment. All I need is for someone
authoritative to say the word. Scram, Wilson, or something like
that.

I concur with Doug Jones' response to Melynda Huskey -- the issue is not
whether we call it theology, worldview, paradigm, or the box we are all
constantly exhorted to think outside of. At the end of the day, every
social order is willing to force other people to do things they
don't want to do. The "god" of the system is appealed to
whenever there is willingness to coerce. I am certainly willing to
require certain things in the name of my God (no stealing bicycles, for
instance). You all are willing to do the same in the name of your
"god." We can even find common ground -- you also prohibit
stealing bikes. But you also insist that I must help pay for the
inculcation of a "system/whatever-you-call-it" which
contradicts my religion at all the basic points -- aesthetics, authority,
epistemology, ethics, and so on. Melynda asks, in effect, why we cannot
admit that non-theological systems are possible. But we do admit it -- if
all you mean is recognizing that many systems do not use an upper case G
in God or even the word god at all. What we do not admit is the
possibility of a social order without a final court of appeal, with the
decisions of such a court imposed. This is plain enough to those of us
currently on the receiving end. Why is it not plain to visionaries that I
pay lots and lots of dollars annually for the education of your children,
while you all contributed nothing to the education of mine?

John Danahy asked why we cannot reverse the order of my illustration,
making one's private religion the core belief, with government schooling
being the condiment. The answer is seen above. The core beliefs of any
social order are those which are imposed. The peripheral beliefs are
those which are optional. The day you let me opt out of my property taxes
for government education is the day I will be willing to call it a
"condiment."

Debi Robinson-Smith apparently believes that Robert E. Lee wore blue and
wrote letters to President Lincoln. She doesn't like judgmental
invalidating CONTROL and likes individual rights prevailing everywhere,
resulting in freedom of CHOICE. She says, "worship your way while I
worship mine." Okay. It's a deal. Do I still have to pay for yours?
Or do I still not have a CHOICE?