@Smokin Joe
Joe,nothing personal,but just about every word in your rant above describes perfectly why it is so hard for Republicans to win. The left wants a communist police state,and the right as defined by you want a religious police state.
Either way you end up with a police state,and very few people want that.
The Dims are just better at lying about it. They always seem to be advocating more freedoms and less government control,and in YOUR police state it's always about LESS freedoms and and MORE government control.
Let's get one thing straight, pete. I don't want any damn police state--from either side. Power has always corrupted, no matter how allegedly benevolent it claims to be. How many evils have been perpetrated against people or even whole populations under the assertion it was being done for benevolent purposes?
You may see left/right, Marxist/Capitalist, or any of a dozen spectra, but in government, for me the line, the spectrum of government is not so much what power it exerts, but that it can exert power at all.
The dark side is a totalitarian police state AKA 1984, with some 20th century governments coming close, and others still in play. The more power a government has, the more I don't like it, no matter how benevolent.
The less power a government has, the better ("The government which governs best governs least".)
But the only time NO government is preferable to some government is when your neighbors are distant, honorable, and do not outnumber you (and don't want your stuff).
Now, you have a definite burr under your saddle over religion, but what better government than a man govern himself?
In this country, no one is gonna whack your head off because you won't hump a rug five times a day pointing your head at some rock in the desert. If you Love Jesus, that's up to you. If you want to worship otherwise, that is a guaranteed Right.
But we do have some rules, oddly enough, rules which were included in the rules other religions have had, rules which generally work in all societies, help keep bloodshed to a minimum, and allow folks the freedom (if widely practiced) to carry on their lives as they see fit without hunting each other down in reprisal.
If someone is bad enough at following those basic rules, one or more people will do what they can/must to not suffer the depredations of someone who won't follow those rules. If the actions of others truly aren't having any effect on other people, then they are generally left alone. That doesn't mean I can't reserve the right to disagree with or disapprove of what they are doing, and it doesn't mean I have to change my worldview to give approval if I disagree. It only stands to reason that If I don't want to be compelled to believe something, I can't compel someone else to do so either.
A society is just a bunch of people who agree about most things, about rules, and what conventions they will or will not agree (and thus give power) to. History is rife with cultures which self-destruct, and the means by which (if honestly examined) are usually the same: either a breakdown in those social conventions, or poor choices of social conventions to begin with. We don't agree murder is a good idea, so we prohibit it. We don't consider it murder, generally, to execute those who have committed crimes so heinous we wouldn't want them in the general population (same reason we have prisons). But I find it incongrous that if someone took an axe and chopped up a 6 month old baby we'd likely give them 'the needle', but yet some demand the "right" for women to choose to have the same done to a baby within their womb that is only 6 months in development. In a living room, it would be a crime scene, in a uterus, it's a "choice". (What greater way to control a people than to convince them it is okay to execute their children, those who are the only 'innocents' in the cast of characters surrounding that murder.) YMMV, but that's how I see it. All religion aside, it isn't right.
What you don't seem to get about Religion, and especially Christianity (properly practiced) is that the rules of Christianity are a matter of choice, not imposition. You choose to believe these rules are good, that they work for you, that you sleep better at night, are healthier, happier, etc. --or you don't. You choose to follow them--or you don't.
The only time Jesus unloaded a can of whoop-ass was chasing the money changers out of the Temple. If I walked into my father's house and saw some bunch had turned it into a tourist trap, likely I'd have a similar reaction.
But the Son of God who had calmed a storm at sea, made the blind to see, the lame walk, and raised a man from the dead would be theoretically capable of calling down fire and brimstone from the heavens, but didn't.
The whole human thing, from Adam and Eve, has been a matter of choice on the part of the humans, not compulsion. The Almighty let humans make their choices from the Tree in the Garden on--and suffer the consequences, and only intervened directly to express His distaste for what was going on by kicking them out of The Garden, with the Flood, and the destruction of a couple of cities. Almost all other human misery was the product of them not listening to what amounts to good advice, the natural result of choosing badly.
A careful examination of history of religions reveals that whenever that religion is abused to justify theft of other people's stuff (including land and resources), enslavement, or slaughter, religion is only a thin veil cast over the greed of someone else, or even someone directly involved with the religion, to take, enslave, or manipulate, for fun and, of course, profit. Often, the most reprehensible and bloody acts undertaken in the name of god (not capitalized because many gods have been thus named in the course of human history), are undertaken to clinch or retain power, not for God, (capitalized) who already can do or have whatever He wants, but for the person calling the shots--someone who might claim to speak for God, but who have their own interests in the forefront.
If The Almighty is already fully capable of wiping the enclaves of what He objects to off the map, (there are a couple of examples which come to mind), then He can do this any time He so chooses, He does not need for me to do that. He is fully capable of any punishment on anyone He chooses, no police state necessary. It is only the most objectionable acts which compel societies to make rules about what they are willing to tolerate (in the way of behaviour) in their midst, and likely the idea of having your stuff stolen, your daughter raped, your labor compelled, and other such things would not go over well regardless of the presence of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion--or even the absence thereof. But religion presents its adherents with ready-made sets of rules for living in a culture, not perfect rules, often waved about and selectively enforced by the vipers who seek power, but which if properly and humbly practiced produce a culture that can get along. That's the reason, that despite numerous failures in earthly leadership along the way, those religions and the cultures which embrace them have survived for millennia. At the base level, those who really practice what they preach get along well enough to pass that set of beliefs and standards on.
As for defending my right to believe in Him, though, that is a human to human problem, and a Right worthy of defense against those who would impose their beliefs on me, who just wants the freedom to choose what I will believe.
Consider:
My ancestors left their homeland to believe as they would, for that freedom, and helped establish a colony on these shores based on the freedom to worship as one chose. As Catholics, they were already persecuted back home, and here they found that freedom. Of course, if you are going to have true freedom of worship, you have to let in people of other beliefs, or it isn't real freedom, just the freedom to do it your way.
So they let in people of other faiths as well. By the time the Colony was 100 years old, Priests were being hunted (literally) by the purveyors of the Protestant Reformation--one such sold himself to my ancestor, and as a slave enjoyed the protection of being property of the Manor Lord, untouchable without the Manor Lord's protection. He later purchased his own freedom when things had settled down. Now, was that Reformation, the looting of monasteries and burning of libraries in England under Cromwell, an offshoot of the desire for Henry Tudor to retain POWER by being able to present a legitimate heir, which apparently he thought required a different wife (repeatedly) or any of a number of sackings and lootings (including the Templars) conducted for any other reason than an excuse to steal wealth and acquire power? Where did Jesus ever say to do that???
The bit about "Thou Shalt not suffer a witch to live" came from Exodus, not Jesus' teachings in the New Testament, and even the thingy about putting those who had sex with animals to death came from that same set of rules. Here, the Christians get blamed for what the Jews wrote down. How funny is that? Or is it because some scribe came up with an angle by which the destruction of people the Crown/Prince/Nobles/bankers/Clergy considered a threat could be removed from the equation by asserting their will was the "Will of God"? A situation where even the accusation of such perfidy could result in being stripped of title and assets and burned at the stake?
Everyone asserts during a war that "Gott mit uns". But someone wins and someone loses--and sometimes the winners leave you wondering what god they worship.
In the end, it is not the religion as a rule (especially where Christianity is involved) but the corruption of individuals by the power represented in using that religion (including Christianity) to control others, even though there is no call in Christianity to do so. (In fact, Christians are admonished to 'test the spirits' in the sense that every Christian is called upon to be knowledgeable in scripture, and to weigh that which they are told against what is proposed as a safeguard against False Prophets and abusers of scripture. That doesn't always work in practice, obviously, whether that failing is from people imposing their desires on the words or just ignorance, at some point when it goes astray there is something in it for them.) I don't have a dog in that fight, except I don't like the idea of my culture sanctioning the murder of innocents, and I'm not exactly ecstatic about someone calling a union as productive as marrying a rock and a tree "marriage" with the expectation of the full faith and credit given to a marriage capable of producing progeny and the next generation.
But the closest the Christian gets is the idea that you don't hang with people who are determined to live badly and you don't embrace those bad choices--especially the very choices you were warned about. You disapprove of then, you admonish their practitioners among you, you advise them otherwise, you can even indoctrinate them from an early age, but you can't FORCE someone to believe. You leave them to their own devices and in the hands of The Almighty. It's simple as that.
If you read the book, you'll find no one was killed by those following Jesus or his teachings, not while He was around. Some were killed
for following those teachings, even more so for spreading them, because they were a definite threat to the power of a Roman emperor who was ready to declare himself divine.
In fact, if you follow the rivers of blood which carve the history of nations upstream, you will find at their source a man, woman, or small group who use every means at their disposal (and religion is often thus used) to motivate others to do the dirty work which gives them more wealth and power.
None of those leaders are/were hanging out at the waterfront with the fishermen (except for a photo op), they're in opulent palaces trimmed with marble and gold. They pay lip service to this or that, but in the end, they're all the same. They want to be on top of the heap, they want wealth and the power to keep or enhance that, they will eliminate any threat to those ends, not by the goodness or kindness of their hearts, but at the point of a weapon and standing on the dead bodies of those who they feel are a threat.
We were perhaps the most fortunate people in history to have a group of founders who understood full well human nature, who had, at least in one instance turned down being King, who desired to leave as a legacy a society which afforded to others the Rights to worship (or not) as one chose, and which valued a host of other Rights to property, belief, personal security, and ultimately the security of those freedoms. They were not perfect, but their guiding philosophies sprang from the very idea that we all stand equal before Our Creator and that no man has the Right to infringe upon the very Rights Our Creator has endowed us with. In human history that is rare indeed.
Like I said, they were not perfect, there were unresolved issues, but it was the closest anyone has come, and was inspired by the philosophies with which they were well familiar, derived from Christian thinkers and thought.
Definitely not a totalitarian state, and I would bleed alongside you to prevent such.
