I could barely read the Trib on Sunday morning. Not because I was disgusted by the news, but because I was so sick, for the first time in years, that it was a struggle to make it through it. I did note that on the editorial page lawmakers are clocking in, with veterans lamenting this session as pathetic, and freshman claiming it was more of a success.
The veterans are more on target.
One of the more controversial freshmen, Jeanette Ward, had a rebuttal editorial to one run on the 10th by the local director of American Atheists. I saw that editorial but didn't read it as I'm frankly not that interested in what the leader of an entity of a group of people who would have to practically lack leadership by definition has to say really. Moreover, there aren't actually atheist, as denying the existence of God doesn't mean not knowing he exists. All humans know the latter, while some maintain the former. More and more we live in a world where certain segments of our society deny that something that obviously exists, does not, so that's really not that interesting.
I read Ward, however, in part simply because she baffles, and somewhat irritates, me.
I also read it as Ward is writing, she claims, from a Christian prospective.
Now, that's a dangerous thing to claim in the first place as most of the world's Christians belong to Apostolic Christianity, with most of them being Catholic. If you aren't writing from a Catholic prospective, or at least an Apostolic Christian prospective, you have some groundwork to do as you are, by definition, part of a dissenting body that has some sort of major problem with the main body of Christians who date back to day one in the Faith. Maybe this doesn't matter if you are writing on something very general that all Christians agree on, but if it's down to the specifics, maybe not so much.
On general moral principles, as long as they're really general, that shouldn't matter too much, however.
Anyhow, I read her article. It started noting this:
In a famous October 1798 letter to the Massachusetts Militia, John Adams wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Well, I agree with that. And what she next noted, which was:
Adams was clearly referring to the newly ratified Constitution of 1787, the one we still use and cherish today. Rather than seeking to create a religious theocracy, Adams correctly observed what once was obvious: our republic, as structured by the 1787 document, depends upon a moral, grounded society. Adams believed that a society defined by vices would destroy the mechanisms for self government as created by the Constitution, resulting in despotism.
She went on to note from there that the founders presumed a system in which people shared a set of "relatively similar, classical morals" and that, "Today, there appears to be a widespread misunderstanding of what those morals are."
Well, while I hate to admit it, I agree once again.
So, what from there.
Well, from there Rep. Ward went on to complain about how the Legislature failed to pass HB0066 banning vaccine and mask mandates, looping this back into her understanding of a shared set of "relatively similar, classical morals".
Eh? How do you get there?
The founders lived in an era when quarantines, it might be noted, were common.
She noted that the Atheist group was in favor of vaccine mandates.
And hence we find a clear example of something failing due to the Self Centered Razor. Ms. Ward, in her editorial, proclaims herself a Christian, and I'm sure she's some sort of Christian. From there, she proclaims, in essence, that radial self-determination, within the limits that she conceives of it, or radial personal liberty, within the confines that she accepts it, are Christian principles. They are, to the extent that most Christians hold that man has free will and is therefore free to choose good over evil, or vice versa, but the assumption that the Freedom Caucus "me and mine" view of personal liberty is a Christian one is erroneous.
A lot of what that quarter, which flirts, in an unclear way that it doesn't really understand, with Christian Nationalism, suffers from that. And much of it has the appearance of determining what personal rights and liberties we value first, and then attaching them to a religious faith. People have gone so far in this direction to be able to blind themselves to the gigantic moral failings of some of their leaders. That moral failings would exist is not surprising, but to simply ignore them or excuse them does violence to the principals themselves.
And this gets back to the plank in the eye problems. A person worried, for example, about masks mandates being a matter of law might ponder divorce, which is clearly contrary to the teachings of Christ, being allowed first, but we're too acclimated to that. For that matter, in a society in which people seriously post paintings of Donald Trump in prayer, when he's about to be indited for having paid, in effectively, a pornographic actress to shut up about an affair. . . well.
Anyhow, the Founders were a variety of Christian faiths, with the Church of England being the most predominant. The Church of Scotland was represented and then the more "Protestant" faiths that had been dissenting faiths, from the Church of England, in England itself. A handful of Catholics were in the group.
They didn't have a problem with quarantines, which served the general welfare of everyone.
The concept that it's somehow anti-Christian, or immoral, to require the wearing of masks is simply wrong.
This is the second time Ward has made such a serious error in Christian understanding. In the legislature, she opposed extending Medicaid benefits to mothers who had recently given birth, as she felt the answer to the question "Am I my brothers' keeper" was "No". It's yes.
