On 1/11/2011 1:57 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:08:49 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> The problem with this is that its the **same** excuse that is used by
>> nearly every city council, and other government body, for ***actually***
>> violating the constitution, by having an opening prayer, then babbling
>> about how it just wasn't convenient for them to find a Buddhist that
>> day, or some such, to "flesh out" the roster and make it non-Christian
>> specific. Oh, and of course, they ***never ever*** open without it, so
>> it very much supports religion in general, even when they play lip
>> service to being "fair" about which one of the, maybe 3, they will
>> bother/allow to open the meeting.
>
> I don't entirely disagree with what you've said above.  Having a prayer
> of any sort during government proceedings is a problem for me.
>
> But that's not what we're talking about here.
>
>> Sorry, but Warp is dead right.
>
> I respectfully disagree.  But hey, we can do that.
>
>> The government promoting a day of prayer
>> does not **in any way** imply anything other than an endorsement of
>> religion in general,
>
> Which in and of itself does not violate the the constitution.
> Acknowledging that some people are religions is different from saying
> "You must pray on this day, and if you don't, you're going to jail".
>
>  From a historical context, that's what the founders were dealing with:
> In England, there was a state-sponsored religion, and practicing
> protestants were legally barred from practicing their own non-state-
> sanctioned religion.
>
>> and too often, given the words of those who do such
>> promotion, defend doing so, and get elected on the principle of the
>> "Christian nation" BS, a *specific* one. Its kind of like how federal
>> money gets spent on "faith based initiatives", yet, somehow, 99.9% of
>> all the initiatives getting funded are Christian ones, even when other
>> groups present alternatives, or worse, alternatives that are not "known"
>> to lie, cheat, steal, or fail to provide the things they claim they need
>> the money for (not that we would know, in many cases, since they are
>> often sub-groups of bigger groups, and only the "government" money needs
>> to be accounted for). The 0.1% is pure, 100%, lip service to the
>> principle, and mean jack shit with respect to the idea that the
>> government isn't "endorsing" something.
>
> And those things should be dealt with individually.  That doesn't
> inherently make the NDoP a bad thing or a violation of the US
> Constitution.  Again, this is something entirely different than the
> subject at hand.
>
> Jim
While this is, *technically* true, from a purely literal stance, there 
is often quoted a concept of "spirit of the law". And, I would, and many 
others have, that if you do not enforce the matter strictly, you lend 
yourself to a slow erosion of principle, in which the number of people 
trying to actively violate it, or find ways around it, or even 
repeal/change it, increases, as more and more succeed in finding such 
loopholes. We often have difficulty seeing this, for much the same 
reason the other side can't imagine every problem being solved from 
guns, or prayer, or capitalism, or what ever combination of notions they 
think are king of the hill at the time. That people might breach the 
spirit of the law, and, being allowed, then breach the law itself, isn't 
an easy thing to recognize, if your goal is to only apply it "loosely". 
The problem is, of course, we *do* see people crossing the line, such as 
one case in the last ten years where a Jewish family was hounded, after 
the city council member that belonged to it said, "Maybe its a bad idea 
to *specifically* open with a prayer to Jesus." In some areas, this is 
all too common, and the excuse is always a) we are allowed to have 
prayers, so the mere accident of who gets prayed to all the time is 
coincidence, b) we would (though not really, see above) allow someone 
else to do it, if we had anyone else around to do so, and c) the 
constitution only says you can't endorse religion, not that we can't 
shove it down everyone's throughts, as long as its "non-sectarian" 
(i.e., being allowed to avoid/not participate in/deal with it, is *not* 
protected, according to this argument).

Its like telling someone, "You need to use turn signals, but not on 
parking lots", pretty soon people are making jokes, like locally here, 
in the vein of, "When you move here they inject you with a virus, which 
makes you forget where the turn signals are." Enforcement *only* 
happens, as it is, if someone sues, and in many places, everything from 
homogenization of the assumption that there is nothing wrong with their 
purely sectarian support, to even fear of what would happen *if* someone 
protested, results in *no* enforcement. And, you can't take something on 
a "case by case" basis, if no one will recognize there *is* problem, 
admit it needs to be fixed, or actively do something about it.

If the rules was "never", this wouldn't be a problem. Instead, we have, 
"Well, you are not supposed to, but....", and a near infinite list of 
exclusions and exceptions. So, unless someone crosses a line by a 
provable amount, nothing happens, and even if they do, they pay a fine, 
maybe lose some government endorsement (unless they are the government), 
and next week the are doing the same thing again.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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