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acroyearfrom RSR: "The foundation of our nation was based on inalienable rights endowed by a creator," says Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a Republican and former lay Baptist minister. "And so the very foundation of democracy is based on intelligent design."
Me:
Perhaps that's what the DoI says. However, the Declaration of Independence is not the binding law of this land. It is merely a contract between certain colonies of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the mother country. The UK doesn't technically acknowledge the DoI, rather the Treaty of Paris, as the document by which they recognize that this country is independent.
The binding law of this land is the Constitution which states that the right to govern is a right granted by the people.
The Rights may have been granted to us by a creator, though mind you, as a philosophical argument, Jefferson presents it as a given, and axiom to justify the rest, rather than as a thesis to be supported. There is no legal document recognized by any freely elected authority in this nation or its colonial ancestry, which claims any philosophical support for Jefferson's assertions in the Declaration.
However, the protection of those rights rests in a document that states that power is granted by and rests in "We The People", and gives that creator no legal authority whatsoever.
And, of course, that shows the use of the buzzword of "Democracy" to mean "The American System which I view as vastly superior to the rest of the world", completely ignoring the fact that true Democracy, and the concept of the Republic as well as its first (corrupt) Roman implementation, come from greek philosophers who'd never heard of "God" or "Jesus" (they predated Christ as a man by 450 years).
The Foundation of Democracy is not "Intelligent Design", its education.
And those who say otherwise obviously have been indoctrinated, not educated.
Me:
Perhaps that's what the DoI says. However, the Declaration of Independence is not the binding law of this land. It is merely a contract between certain colonies of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the mother country. The UK doesn't technically acknowledge the DoI, rather the Treaty of Paris, as the document by which they recognize that this country is independent.
The binding law of this land is the Constitution which states that the right to govern is a right granted by the people.
The Rights may have been granted to us by a creator, though mind you, as a philosophical argument, Jefferson presents it as a given, and axiom to justify the rest, rather than as a thesis to be supported. There is no legal document recognized by any freely elected authority in this nation or its colonial ancestry, which claims any philosophical support for Jefferson's assertions in the Declaration.
However, the protection of those rights rests in a document that states that power is granted by and rests in "We The People", and gives that creator no legal authority whatsoever.
And, of course, that shows the use of the buzzword of "Democracy" to mean "The American System which I view as vastly superior to the rest of the world", completely ignoring the fact that true Democracy, and the concept of the Republic as well as its first (corrupt) Roman implementation, come from greek philosophers who'd never heard of "God" or "Jesus" (they predated Christ as a man by 450 years).
The Foundation of Democracy is not "Intelligent Design", its education.
And those who say otherwise obviously have been indoctrinated, not educated.
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Date: 2006-01-10 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 05:58 pm (UTC)I keep running into people using that argument too - I think it's mostly based on the belief that people will knee-jerk stand and salute when a founding document is mentioned and not point out that our law isn't based on the DoI one bit. (Unless that rather scary person on Newshounds was serious when s/he bitched that "The Constitution is the Bible for secular people" and said that we'd all learn better on judgement day.)
But even for the sake of argument, let's say that the founders were just to the right of Pat Robertson. Even if that mind-boggling proposition were true, it STILL wouldn't mean that "the very foundation of democracy is based on intelligent design." It would be like saying that "the foundation of democracy is based on a flat earth" or "...the solar centric system" or all the other things that religious scientists believed throughout the centuries that was just plain WRONG. Belief does not make fake science a fact. It doesn't even make it science.
I do like your line about education. So. Very. True!