First, I make absolutely no apology for so frequently quoting Marilynne Robinson, perhaps the greatest English speaking intellectual today, certainly in the running for greatest writer of the English language during my lifetime. We share the same concern, to save and promote the traditional, religious liberalism, what was the original American liberal tradition of equality, economic justice, the common good, liberal public education and other public institutions available to all, the poorest and least among us, those who have the least in ways of opportunities, physical and intellectual disadvantages provided with the means of having the blessings to which the are entitled. I have frequently found that things I had more felt than articulated clearly, she has said extremely well already.
I have not hesitated to disagree with her, though I am convinced she is right that John Calvin's view of the economic content of the Mosaic Law is the source of that liberalism in New England and the United States, I am not an admirer of Calvin's adoption of an extreme version of Augustine and, as I recently became convinced, Anselm's view of salvation and damnation and other aspects of Christian faith. I do think that the doctrines of original sin and, eternal damnation and predestination and substitutionary atonement have had a profoundly damaging effect on Western European culture and Western Christianity.*
Second, I think I probably quote a range of sources wider than the average blogger does, often quoting full paragraphs and passages of those I disagree with profoundly, sometimes to refute what they said, sometimes to agree with those things they said that we agree on.
Third, you sound like a friggin' Senate Republican-"moderate"-fascist looking for distractions, smokescreens and cover. Since when is it unallowed to cite evidence that supports your contention and calling lies lies? I'll tell you when, when FOX and CNN and the networks and the NYT not to mention the lower depths of lying media made it wrong for Democrats and liberals to do that because it was their fault that Republican-fascists wouldn't like it. The Republican-fascists - I saw Jack Kingston lying his friggin' head off on AM Joy through a You-Tube pirate posting of her show, lying saying one thing and then two minutes later saying the opposite, lying like a Dershowitz when he was called out for his double-talk.
Another hugely incorrect assumption the "founders" made was the ridiculously romantic Jeffersonian view of "the press" which they had every reason to know would sell out The People, the common good, morality far more than "the press" would serve them unless they were forced to not lie. Jefferson was a bit of an idiot in many ways becuase he bought huge loads of "enlightenment" bull shit about the force of nature in the course of human affairs righting things in the end, despite ourselves. The next two-hundred years proved that was stupid but it's still the dishonest pretense of our legal system in so much of what it practices, intentionally dishonestly and merely stupidly.
* Though not so much in Orthodox regions. They have their own problematic baggage - especially when they have become identified with nationalism - along with the good, as does every identifiable aspect of human culture and history. I'm hoping to read some of Tolstoy's and others writing relevant to that but that to-read list gets longer a lot faster than I can read. I think a lot of atheism grows out of illiteracy and a superficial knowledge of history - if you count believing lies as part of that "knowledge". But that would get me into what I concluded from re-reading a blog brawl from a decade ago I hadn't remembered keeping. Maybe another day.
I will say that as time goes on my respect for the thinking of Gregory of Nyssa and St. Macrina the Younger (which we know only through him) increases. As does the meaning of the Transfiguration which, among other things, couldn't help but negate some of the other distortions that became common in Western Christianity.
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