Civil discussion
Why is it that so many people seem to have lost the ability to engage in a civil and polite discussion about a difficult topic?
In its weekend edition (May 19-20) the BDN published an excellent front page article titled, “Got Faith?” Judy Harrison, the author of the piece, called the BDN readers’ attention to the decline in the number of religious adherents in Maine.
The article clearly invited reflection and comment on the reasons for the apparent waning religious self-identification. By way of response to Harrison’s work, I would have expected readers to suggest their own reasons for the change. Perhaps someone could have expanded (or critiqued) the remarks of Reverend Lyford “Terry” Phillips, president of Grace Evangelical College and Seminary in Bangor. Possibly, someone could have even connected the change to global shifts in our cultural paradigms or maybe emerging rifts in our overall social fabric. But there was no such reasoned thinking to be seen on the electronic comments relating to Harrison’s article.
Instead there were well over 400 sharp verbal exchanges between devout Christians and nonbelievers that, in my opinion, were completely unsuitable on a public discussion forum.
The adage that “people should be able to disagree without being disagreeable” (uttered by Sen. Barry Goldwater, among others) seems to have become irrelevant in our current social climate. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s the reason for all the religious disassociation — maybe there is no civility in religious groups, either. Maybe that’s why folks leave.
Rick Hubbard
Howland
70 years young
You have to be at least over 70 to pull off writing this line that Mr. Richard Dudman posted in his May 21st editorial, “One big thing about older people is that they keep dying.”
His piece highlights the various consideration one must address as one enters the so-called golden years. He wrote the essay with grace and humor. We will know when Mr. Dudman is “failing” once he goes to clip-on bow ties.
George Burns was once asked (when he in his late 90s): “George, why do you go out with younger women?”
“All the women my age are dead,” was his reply.
William Gallagher MD
Bangor
Gun attacks
State Sen. Cynthia Dill, a candidate for the United States Senate, recently characterized Maine gun owners as “vigilantes” in a very unfair attack.
Charging that Maine legislators were “spending our time making it easier for people to become vigilantes,” Dill criticized her legislative colleagues who voted for LD 1859, a bill that prohibits the wholesale seizure of firearms and ammunition in a civil emergency.
Not long ago she attacked one of her U.S. Senate Democratic primary opponents, Matt Dunlap. Dunlap served briefly as the interim executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine in 2011. He is currently a member of SAM’s board of directors.
In a Democratic candidate debate, Dill challenged Dunlap about his membership in the National Rifle Association. She followed up with a press release, quoting Dunlap’s response to her challenge, in which he said, “I would accept the financial support of the National Rifle Association.”
Maine sportsmen and gun owners are encouraged to take notice of the positions of Sen. Dill. She is currently raising money and advocating for a national park and has decided to pick a fight with gun owners and their advocates. Two candidates, Attorney General William Schneider and former Gov. Angus King, are both SAM members. If they appear on the ballot with Sen. Dill should they expect similar attacks?
We are not endorsing a candidate in this important Senate primary race, but we believe Maine voters should be well informed for the June 12 primary.
David Trahan
Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine
Augusta
” LD 1859, a bill that prohibits the wholesale seizure of firearms and ammunition in a civil emergency.” Doesn’t the second amendment already do that? The spirit of this bill is in the right place, but if government ignores our constitution, why wouldn’t they ignore LD 1859? In reality, the only reason people support using governments guns to disarm citizens is because they don’t want citizens to have guns in the first place. If this scenario were to play out again, LD 1859 will just be another shred of paper next to the constitution. I prefer LD 7.62×39 among others. I’ve got news for Cynthia Dill, if you’re really worried about Mainers taking the law into their own hands, sending jack booted thugs to steal peoples means to defend themselves would be the LAST thing you should do.
I think she felt like she was already elected and speaking the party narrative on a Sunday morning talk show. She forgot she still needs to actually be elected…by those same gun owners.
I would vote for a paper cut-out before I’d vote for Dill.
I’ve never seen a candidate for public service (Dill) that had such little chance of ever being elected. Let her spend her money and continue to run her mouth, it’s good for the economy.
Great letter, Mr. Hubbard. I trace my own movement to unaffiliated to the increasing involvement of so many churches in politics in a thinly veiled partisan manner. I long for the days that churches “rendered unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and rendered unto the Lord what is the Lord’s.”
I can even recall you telling others what their religious beliefs were then assaulting them for holding them. Saint chenard.
I’m sorry to see your memory fail you. I criticize other’s political positions, regardless of whether they are religiously motivated. It’s what the First Amendment encourages.
Does the First Amendment allow you the right to decide what others believe in the first place?
The First Amendment allows people to think whatever they want.
Actually the First Amendment prevents the Government from enacting laws restricting what people can say and think.
Are you arguing about something?
Just responding to your post. Isn’t that what you wanted when you responded to mine?
I agree with you on that point. In fact I’d go one step further by adding that the First Amendment even allows people to be uncivil, as undesirable as that may sound. Please understand that I am not trying to put anyone down. My comment is merely intended to shed light on what I believe is part of the First Amendment.
The First Amendment really only deals with the government and the laws it can make regarding speech. Other entities can pick and choose the speech they want to allow. For instance the BDN could ban any idea it wanted from these pages if it chose.
That’s right. The BDN can report whatever it pleases as long as it is not deliberately misinforming, something very difficult to prove. On the other side of the coin there is nothing that says it may not be accused of bias.
As you said the first amendment allows people to freely express themselves without government interference (I am paraphrasing) It does not say anything about what people think. The first amendment no longer exists. I have witnessed its erosion slowly but surely since 911. Citizens in Occupy movements all over the U.S. have been violently prevented from exercising their first amendment rights.
AMENDMENT ICongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
I’ve never decided what anyone’s belief is. I have suggested to people like you the logical result of their expressed beliefs: that your support of the Blunt Amendment would allow a Muslim employer to insist that the health insurance policy he purchased for his employees be consistent with Sharia law.
Of course it wouldn’t. A Muslim employer may presumably own a business and that falls under secular law. A Mosque is something totally different and according to the US Constitution exists outside of secular law.
As for your denial that you have told others what their beliefs are…. I will kindly point them out for you as they pop up.
Read the Blunt Amendment. It allowed any employer, for moral or religious reasons, to decline to provide certain types of health insurance to his employees. The employer need not be a religiously-affiliated hospital or school to benefit from this language: any Dittohead could deny his employees contraceptive coverage under the Amendment’s unambiguous language. Senator Collins voted for the Amendment!
I don’t believe the Blunt amendment proposal would be an invitation to Sharia law, at least not the parts of it that might run contrary to the Constitution itself. The proposed amendment is intended to protect the conscience rights of people under the First Amendment. Without going into detail, it is intended to prohibit the government from imposing unreasonable mandates that violate personal conscience.
LOL. I have no right to impose my beliefs on my employees. Read the Blunt Amendment. The bishops can preach all they want but can’t stop an insurer from covering contraception.
You’ve got your understanding of what the bishops are trying to do all wrong. They are not in fact trying to stop insurers from covering contraceptives. What they are saying is that employers should not be forced against their conscience to insure their employees for contraceptives and abortifacients (drugs intended to cause abortion). As we speak there are companies more than willing to offer health care insurance without that coverage.
Over 40 religious entities are suing the federal government over this issue. I have little doubt they will not prevail in the long run when the issue is decided by the Supreme Court.
Four points:
(1) The regulations limit the type of policies that can be sold by any insurer to an employer covering its employees, with exemptions for church employees as distinct from employees of hospitals and colleges run by churches. The latter receive tons of federal money.
(2) The regulations imposed upon insurers costs the church-related hospitals nothing, as health insurance that does not cover contraception has a higher premium. Paying for birth control is cheaper than paying for unwanted pregnancies.
(3) Georgetown has a health insurance policy for its students as to which the students paid the entire premium, yet insisted that the policy not cover contraception. If that is not imposing one’s own religious beliefs on the conduct of another, I don’t know what is. Many Georgetown students aren’t even Catholic and being Catholic is surely not a condition of admission to Georgetown.
(4) A contraceptive is not an abortifacient.
You are right that the Supreme Court is going to summarily reject the lawsuit brought by the Bishops and others. It is not even a close question and the Supreme Court has routinely upheld facially neutral statutes that in no way require a change of one’s religious beliefs. Could I refuse to pay taxes because monies spent on war violates my religion?
This argument can go on and on. I could respond to each of your points, but with little or no audience left to observe our conversation, I don’t think there is any point in going on. Besides, I doubt I can change your mind and I doubt you will change mind. Thank you for engaging.
You obviously have no clue what the verse you quoted even refers too. Perhaps the reason for your “movement” is John 3:19 This is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light…..
How delightfully “Christian” it is of you to call me evil by way of a Bible verse (John 3:19). How “clever” you are to leave out the last five words: “because their deeds were evil.”
The Bible verse I quoted is one of the few found in three out of four Gospels: Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, and Luke 20:25. Christ’s answer to the pharisees was a masterful response to a question they hoped would either get Christ in trouble with Jewish nationalists or with Roman authorities: should a Jew pay Roman taxes? I remember discussions in church and Sunday school about this episode. Mainstream Christian theologians stress that this quote by Christ lends support to the separation of church and state. Christ was here to gather recruits for a heavenly kingdom, not an earthly one.
You are here to call all who disagree with you evil. How sad.
In all candor, I don’t think cp444’s response was intended as a personal attack. You had indicated a preference for “unaffiliated” because of church involvement in the political realm. What I believe cp444 was trying to say is that the general movement away from organized religion is a sign of people embracing materialism and pleasure to the exclusion of religious practice and belief. I believe both factors are at play here, that is, that there is less adherence to religion on account of dissatisfaction (as in your case) and attraction to the secular world.
Incidentally, I don’t believe it’s in society’s best interest to separate state and church entirely. Religion has always played a vital role in society. For one, it has acted as a unifying force. I don’t see why it can’t continue to be that way in spite of a growing split between secularists and people of faith.
Our founders had detailed knowledge of religious wars and persecution in the prior 300 years and never saw religion as a unifying force. Hence, they expressly prohibited any religious tests for office and adopted Roger Williams’ approach to the church/state divide.
You confuse cp444 and me within your post.
Let cp444 tell us what he meant. He doesn’t need an apologist. He surely know what five words he was leaving out given his use of the ellipses.
Is that why the First Amendment guarantees freedom OF religion and not freedom FROM religion? Incidentally most of the signers to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – with the First Amendments unchanged to this day – were church goers whose ancestors had fled religious persecution. You don’t think this is coincidence? Whatever the case may be, the First Amendment is here to stay in the foreseeable future. And besides, any effort to tax religious institutions is a clear violation of it. “Congress SHALL MAKE NO LAW (emphasis is mine here)…prohibiting the free exercise thereof (meaning ‘religion’)”. From this reading it very clear to me Congress may not ( the term “shall” in the Amendment denotes compulsory action in accordance to standard English usage in the time it was written) make any law impeding religious practice. Speaking out on moral issues is part of religious practice. It was then the practice during the signing by the founding fathers as it is today. Nothing has changed.
Three points:
(1) The word “God” is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution.
(2) You conveniently omit reference to the First Amendment’s ban on the establishment of religion.
(3) Read Reynolds v. United States, the first of many cases allowing Congress (and later the states) to regulate or outlaw religious practices (in that case polygamy).
This is settled law.
“God” is not mentioned in the Constitution but reference to God is there as in the term “religion”.
I did not conveniently omit reference to the First Amendment’s ban on the establishment. I could have cited the entire clause but I didn’t think it was relevant to my argument. The current issue is not about the government establishing a religion. It is about taxation (for some posters) and unwarranted interference in religious practice (take your pick). If you want to include the reference in my above comment go ahead and do it, and you will find out it does not change my argument one iota.
Certain forms of religious practices may be regulated or even forbidden when the Constitutional rights of others are impeded. My refusal to pay for someone’s contraceptives is not one of them. People are free to purchase and use contraceptives. They and the government however have no right for force a third party to purchase contraceptives for their use in violation of the party’s conscience. Again, as I stated earlier, the Supreme Court will render a decision, unless the current Obama Administration reverses its position.
Dylan would tell you to know your song well before you start singing.
You have self-evidently never read the Constitution closely. Read the original Constitution. The word “religion” appears nowhere therein. Nowhere. The word “religious” occurs in a telling clause in Article VI: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
The First Amendment uses “religion” but once in first barring any “establishment of religion” and then barring the prohibition of “the free exercise thereof.” Thus, the two uses of “religious” or “religion” are in the context of creating a secular state uncontrolled by any religious denomination and exercising no control of any religious domination.
If Congress can outlaw consensual polygamy, despite its firm foundation in the Bible, it most assuredly can control conduct whether or not it affects the “Constitutional rights of others.” Until you have read the long line of cases beginning with Reynolds v. United States, I might as well be writing to a parrot.
Know your song well before you start singing. Any Constitutional scholar would tell you that the Bishops’ lawsuit is hopeless. There is over 100 years of precedent that runs against it.
We’ll see what happens when it happens. One more thing: I wasn’t born just yesterday as you seem to imply.
But reading closely is not your strong suit.
Maybe no, maybe yes. But one of my strong suits is civility. How about it pal? Do you want to discuss civilly or do want to be obnoxious? If you want to be the latter, I believe the moderator might have something to say about that. This comment will be flagged to draw the moderator’s attention in addition to yours.
When you have never read a document closely, do not try to tell me what it says or means. In the spirit of the First Amendment, I will not flag your comments.
Chenard, who said I never read the Constitution “closely” in its entirety? I don’t know where you get your information. Anyway, if you can’t be civil, butt off.
Your own post with its claim “God is there as in the term ‘religion'” reflects your failure to read the Constitution closely. Read my prior posts closely.
If you are going to quote anyone including myself, please quote accurately. Otherwise, you are perpetrating a falsehood. For the sake of accuracy I stated in part “…reference to God is there as in the term ‘religion'”, which gives my quote an entirely different meaning than your misquote does.
Yes, cp444 consistently makes Christianity look bad.
Succinctly said.
Rick-having a public discussion on this issue is a good thing.
….
Rick Hubbard, in this day and age of information, it’s hard for religions to insulate their members from outside influence. When their leaders make claims that are refuted or don’t stand up to the light of day, they lose the trust of their members.
It is a shame that religion has fallen. There are basic tenets to all religions that are beautiful and have meaning. Its too bad that people have an innate tendency to use their particular beliefs to want to wrest power over all others.
Our children aren’t receiving the basic morals that they were 40 or more years ago.
Every generation says “our children aren’t receiving the basic morals that they were 40 years ago.” Even Socrates was put on trial for corrupting the morals of the youth.
You are correct. There are some things that the children of today are learning that are better than 40+ years ago. Tolerance of others not exactly like them is one of them.
Socrates was guilty.
Ah, Cheesecake, you show your true colors in pronouncing Socrates guilty. You do not claim that he was simply “found guilty,” but that he was guilty.
Let this be a lesson to any other philosopher who teaches young people to think for themselves and not accept the gods and conventional wisdom delivered to them by their elders!
Do you wish the hemlock cup to be passed to other free-thinkers as well?
Find a sense of humor……
I have one. Most of your posts tickle that sense of humor and draw my smiling ripostes.
Great post, as a classics major I am grateful to see your clarification for the confused and for standing up for Socrates, and the noble search for knowledge.
Thanks. According to Plato, Socrates said he was neither Greek nor Athenian, but a citizen of the world. Those were brave words then and brave words now.
Socrates was guilty of encouraging people of all ages to ask questions, and to question authority. Is that, to you, worth the death penalty?
humor humor….
You say outrageous things on a regular basis. If you mean for your outrageous comments to be taken as humor, you might want to give some indication. Otherwiese, it just looks like all of your other outrageous stuff.
:-)
You seemed to miss the humor in my quote from the RSV translation of the Psalm, “I shall accept no bull from your house,” even though I clearly marked it with a smiley face :-)
Your comment about Socrates was not identified in any way as humor — how can we tell it from your usual stuff?
I can’t help but wonder why Dill thinks there are a bunch of vigilantes in Maine. People have been legally able to buy guns for how long in Maine and a multitude of other states, and has there been an increase in vigilantes out there that we just don’t hear about? If I recall the majority of the firearms seized in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina were never returned to their owners, just saying.
My guess is that the “vigilante” thing in Maine makes a good sound bite, nationally, and the very few that support Dill don’t know the difference. The thing is, as she typically does, she spoke before she knew the ramifications of what she was saying. There are several Dem gun owners as well as Republican. Once again, she doesn’t understand Maine … there are generations of law abiding Maine people across all political leanings, who own and use guns.
You bring up important points, Mr. Trahan.
Dill should not be running her campaign on things she doesn’t understand. But that concept would severely limit the campaign issues she supports. The fact that she cannot answer questions or explain the details of any issues, will insure that her campaign will continue to at least be “entertaining” as she continues to blurt out popular sound bites. How embarrassing for serious minded constituents.