..perhaps he is an ‘altered’ boy!.. ;o)

Dr. Phillies clearly does not understand the issue and how both Paul and Barr handles Lofton. He constantly exposes himself as being bigoted against “consevatives”, whom he false describes as being bigoted. There can be sore conservatives that are bigoted, but nearly not all and just as with libertarian, there are also different definitions about what
“conservatism: means. Both Barr and Paul stand on the constitution, as Baldwin also BTW. There is a difference between church and state, but there can never be a total separation or a total unification. Paul understands the complexity well. Within the Christian theology there are different models. Luther saw very much a two kingdom role, the heavan and secular state, while others like Calvin stressed the kingdom of God (of both). Ultimately it is a way of speaking and using words. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein witht he “linguistic turn” had profound insights. On the homosexuals in the military and elsewhere, both Paul and Barr – as Christians – have the right insight. Here is Lofton’s interview with Paul on homosexuality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIeW0DY64bE

It is a complicated issue. I believe some can really be born (genetically) as homosexuals, while others “develop” it later. I symphathize with the first
group, not the second group. In the Bible there are only two passages dealing with homosexuality. One can say we are ALL born in sin, homosexuality is one sin. Homosexuals – those that are born this way (disnter, as you one of them?) can also be Christians and they can also be good people. It is wrong of Lofton and others to despise them. I can cite a passage win Matthew etc. where Lofton should really ask himself if he is such a good person, one should always be humble.. which also amplies tolerance (which is a central libertarian principle)..and there especially Paul sets the example to me.

Lofton is wrong that there are few Christian Libertarians, but some in the LP are also wrong to demise all Christians and open their eyes to viewing Christian beliefs as positive freedom in love and develop a sort of solidarity
This is the thing that Rothbard saw vs. Rand and others, that the LP should be a populist (in the good sense) political movement, not a debating society. It is best to be a political party with strong internal debating and factions. Good debate is always stimulating and opens up new perspectives, and then one should be tolerant of other views…

Eventually, he’ll be the cause of his own demise.

It’s pretty clear that you have no understanding of the differences between fact, personal opinion, and relating a personal experience, and it is equally obvious that you get hyper-offended by someone who has found Catholicism personally lacking and moved on to something else and has the guts to say it. My complaint is with the Church itself and its practices and policies, not the teachings of the Christ. You, however, seem to have overdosed on the Vatican Kool-Aid, which is why you get offended. That hyper-offensiveness indicates you have a great insecurity about your own beliefs, because if you were secure in those beliefs, then you wouldn’t be so hyper-offended! In other words, if you truly Believed, then what I say would make no difference. But it does make a difference to you, based on your shrill reactions, so you need to look at yourself before you start to berate others. I’m comfortable in my spirituality, and it’s pretty clear you aren’t.

And no, you didn’t “manage to reach right into the heart of all that arrogant posturing and kick the literal shit out of all of that phony, blame-the-Church self-pity you advertise as the basis of your fantasied
intellectual development”. Why not? Because A) there was no arrogance, B) it wasn’t posturing, C) it isn’t phony or self-pity, it was SARCASM, D) it isn’t blame-the-church, it’s the church presented a message that was incompatible with the message of its own professed leader (which is a viewpoint shared by many around the world!), E) my intellectual development is not fantasized (but there’s no way to prove that without looking arrogant), and F) The only one posturing and ranting here like a fool is YOU.

If you couldn’t comprehend what I wrote, then you are the one with the problem. Making an implicit KKK reference just proves the point. Calling me a racist, either directly or indirectly, is an insult and patently false. I’ve never called for the disbanding or destruction of the Catholic Church as those hooded clowns do. What I have said, and was apparently lost on you, was that the Vatican way was not for me. Well, guess what, Lowell, it also not the way for billions of others as well! They, too, have different spiritual paths. So do us all a favor and go rage on them for a while, and preferably not here.

And what you can complain about me concerning theology wouldn’t fill a thimble of water at the beachfront. I CHALLENGE YOU to do that Black Elk Exercise, to get outside you own box. Do you have the brains and the guts and the open mind to put up, or will you do us all a favor and just shut up?

Some Christian you are…

I apologize to everyone else. It’s people like Lowell, who can’t seem to understand that everyone has to follow their own path and that people will disagree on those path specifics, who give the rest of the crowd a bad name. I make no such conclusions here, since almost everyone else here can engage in rational discussion and thought. He also fails to understand that none of us truly know if we have the right path, and if there is a Judgement after our life in this plane ends, then and only then will we know the answer. In the meantime all we can do is our best.

And that’s not arrogance, John, it’s the cold, hard facts of reality.

Did I just manage to reach right into the heart of all that arrogant posturing and kick the literal shit out of all of that phony, blame-the-Church self-pity you advertise as the basis of your fantasied
intellectual development, Seebeck? I mean twenty plus paragraphs of the most vacuous incomprehension and all you can manage here is to whine mournfully about how you’ve been treated? Why you haven’t even the most infinitesimal clue of what it was that I’d referrenced concerning theology earlier, that’s rather more than evident. Its time for you to take off that anti-Catholic bedsheet you make a business of parading around in, little man. Take it off or I’ll take it off for you every time I see you wearing it.

The secular system of laws in our Constitution were put in place by our founders to be just that … Secular !! Secular does not mean Progressive !! There is a minimum set of laws [our unalienable natural rights] that allow us to coexist peacefully and still believe as we each see appropriate. That is the set of laws we live by … to compel someone to go beyond that breaks down the secularism and leads to the very sectarian religious strife we see everywhere in the world—- like Iraq.

Lenin sought to speed up the pace of his revolution, which was stalled, and decided a Vanguard Party was necessary to lead the masses who weren’t quite smart or ambitious enough to know what was best for them.

you wrote: “While most people in our society would doubtless agree in condemning the likes of Lenin, Hitler or Mussolini, the extent to which their way of thinking has intermingled with our own is seldom noticed. The linkages, however, are plainly there—and stem directly from the moral relativism that is said to be the basis of our freedom.”

I agree wholeheartedly—- two books I highly recommend on the very subject of Nazism and Fascism … and fascism’s American counterpart, Progressivism

“Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg published just this past Jan—-a must-read !!
—- this is the best book I’ve read on the history of fascism in America. It debunks the leftist argument that fascism is a movement of the right—- fascism has always been a product of the left, evovling from National Socialism. The Communists defined Fascism in Italty as being ‘right’ of their view of proper socialsim, which was International Communism. Leftisats adopted the definition and perverted it to include American conservatism, even libertarianism—- which is a toital crock of BS as American conservatism and libertarianism are in no way socilaist movements.

second

“The Ominous Parallels” by Leonard Peikoff, Published in 1982 reprinted 1993, a great philosophical-historical analysis of the development of Nazism and Fascism as a natural outcome of 19th century German philosophy, and how it relates to America.

And I will emphasize again, those are my opinions. People can REPSECTFULLY disagree with them.

The principles on which this nation was based … the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness coupled with a very slightly alienable right to own private property [as covered in our 5th amendment] are the product of millenia of trial and error… which basically sums to tradition … which were developed and propagated by men of reason who learned that they have a choice between those actions which are detrimental to man and his well-being, and those things that are beneficial to man and his continued existence and happiness.”

Hitler’s version was that the masses could attain what is best for them “only under the leadership of those whom Nature has endowed with special gifts”; Lenin opined that “the will of a class is at times best expressed by a dictator.”

While most people in our society would doubtless agree in condemning the likes of Lenin, Hitler or Mussolini, the extent to which their way of thinking has intermingled with our own is seldom noticed. The linkages, however, are plainly there—and stem directly from the moral relativism that is said to be the basis of our freedom.

“Ah, yes, the quintessentially adolescent Michael Seebeck, the only commentator here quite supercilious enough to hold up the tragedy of his personal intellectual development as an example for others to follow. If there’s anything worse than a former Catholic arrogant enough to imagine that he’s “grown” out the faith, its one like you, Seebeck, who never quite understood the faith well enough to grasp what he supposedly “grew” beyond in the first place.”

First, the namecalling from the get-go undermines you. You are what you speak.

Second, my own development over my own life is no tragedy. It is a triumph! It is never a tragedy for one to learn and grow and become a better person, throwing off one’s own chains and exceeding their limitations.

Third, perhaps, I never did understand it.

I never did understand why I was indoctrinated without any choice by a control-freak divorcee-mother into a religious viewpoint that projects the idea that some unprovable deity created everything, including us, set up rules for us to live by that we have the choice to follow them, but will ultimately fail in them (predestination to “sin”) since we can’t possibly know what the predestined plan that deity has for us.

I never did understand why when that inevitable failure came (called “sin”) we had to seek something called “reconciliation” from some guy in funny robes who claimed to know what that deity wanted when they really didn’t know either, all so we could again engage in the ritual cannibalism (Eat My Body, Drink My Blood) called Eucharist.

I never did understand why we had to try to live by (and always eventually fail to live by) these rules in order to maybe not wind up in some spiritual netherworld called Limbo/Purgatory while waiting on the benevolence of others to decide my own fate to get into some place called Heaven or wind up in some other place called Hell, all of which are unproven to exist and cannot be found on any map, for some life after this one that is also unproven (not to mention the inherent logical contradiction that our free will leads us into a position of being at the mercy and control of others in this alleged afterlife!).

Even as an acolyte I never understood the ritual cannibalism, the rote memorization of prayers that robbed them of any meaning, and the perpetual focus of the Church not on the words and teaching of the Christ but the words and teachings of Paul and the endless obsession with money, unborns, and birth control by older men who had no concept of marriage, family, or their supposed vow of poverty.

I never understood why my best Christian role model, an honorable and loving man who DID understand these things from a much better and more positive perspective because he was a Lutheran pastor, husband, father, and my grandfather, was taken from me by God when I was three. If there’s any tragedy here, that’s it.

But I tried to understand it. I read the Catechism. I read the Bible. I took religious classes. I talked with ministers. I talked with good Christian laypersons. But I failed. I didn’t understand it, and the more I studied it the less I understood it and the more I realized it didn;t make any sense TO ME.

So I moved on to something I could understand, the simple concept of live your life the best you can, appreciate what you have, help others, and hope for the best. In other words, the two commandments of the Christ. I found them to be universally applicable in all religions, not just Christianity. I found words to live by there, but I found that the Christian part of it was just one means of many to express it. So I investigated those other means until I found one that connected with me, in the same way that Born-Again Christians feel that connection when they are Born Again.

BTW, it was never the concept or the message of the Christ. It was the bureaucracy and structure of the church that was the problem.

“Now, if you knew anything at all about Catholicism, Seebeck, you’d realize that the Church has never held to a doctrine of predestinationism.”

As a 35-year-old man with a background as a Confirmed Catholic and Catholic college graduate, I say bullshit. I heard every freaking Sunday “God has a plan for us”, “God knows what we’re going to do before we do it” and all of that. If that’s not Catholic predestination, then WTF is? And we supposedly had “original sin” like it’s some sort of passed-down genetic defect whether we wanted it or not. How is that not predestination?

“The theological question to which you refer here rather so sloppily and amateurishly was hotly debated among experts for centuries without the Church ever having coming down in favor of one position or another.”

Again, I call bullshit. The Church has ALWAYS come down on the side that bolsters its own membership and political power. The Church is not intellectually honest enough to do otherwise. If it were then it would not stick to the antiquated positions it has held for centuries without acknowledging the evolution and advances of society and civilization. Remember, it took the Vatican how long to finally admit what Galileo, Kepler, Brahe, and Newton (and Copernicus before them) all knew and what science knows is true? (over 360 years!)

Engage yourself in an intellectual exercise if you can muster it: Cross-reference the symbolism in the Ghost Dance vision of Black Elk (Black Elk Speaks, by John Neidhart), who had never seen, heard, or read a Bible in his life, with the symbolism in John’s visions of the Apocalypse in Revelations. The results should startle you. I did it as a senior term paper on the New Testament while in college (I got an A+ on it, too!). It changed my life for the better and showed me there was a helluvalot more out there than just Christianity, Judiasm, etc. It moved me to a broader spiritual experience and perspective, and it put me on the way to discovering the more positive path I have now, one without fear of doing wrong, but confidence and hope in doing right.

“Only in the last century was the question recast in terms that surpassed the limitations the earlier discussion had encountered. I’d tell you more about it, but that would be like offering a flower to Beavis and Butthead.”

More insults, and you neglect your undertanding of history. The question was addressed by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas long before any of us were born. The “recast” of the question in recent times has nothing to do with suprassing earlier limitations, but instead had to do with an attempt (that failed) to move the Church out of the Dark Ages and into the modern world.

“A little recommendation before you pop off again about what you think you know about Catholicism, pal: Learn it, and don’t ever again presume to talk down to it. I’ll be here to make sure you don’t, count on it.”

In other words, you will claim the papal bull pulpit (aptly named) to question my own personal experiences and background, me, the child of a catholic and Protestant and grandson of a Lutheran pastor, who was a far more honorable man than you can even aspire to be?

That will be hilarious. Mine has been a journey of discovery.

I feel kind of sorry for you that you have to resort to insults and cannot address another’s points rationally and reasonably, and that you seem incapable of respecting the views of others.

So much for Christ’s Second Commandment, I guess.

And why Lofton seems to be fascinated by the masturbation habits of Allen Ginsburg, well we’ll never know. Perhaps there’s a libertarian in him somewhere.

He has omitted the tyrannies that have arisen under the semblance of religion. Since the acceptance of religion has also often led to despotism, tyranny, and totalitarianism under the dictatorship of ‘The Church”, the logic of his hypthesis fails … i.e., denial or acceptance of religion is not the prime factor in the development of despots, tyrannies, and totalitarian regimes. Some other dominant factor must indeed exist.

******************
“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

*********************

The principles on which this nation was based … the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness coupled with a very slightly alienable right to own private property [as covered in our 5th amendment] are the product of millenia of trial and error… which basically sums to tradition … which were developed and propagated by men of reason who learned that they have a choice between those actions which are detrimental to man and his well-being, and those things that are beneficial to man and his continued existence and happiness. Only the insane would choose unhappiness, death, and death as the ‘proper’ order of existence … and no rational person is bound to follow the rantings of an insane man.

Not all the tenets of the various religions are included in America’s nation’s founding principles [which derive from natural law]—- many of the specific codes of the various religions are excluded, as those tenets are logically inconsistent with the founding principles of America … and of man. From those simple founding principles, which are fundamental to the nature of man and his existence as man, a complete system of ethics and politics is derived. The ethics and politics are dependent on the fundamental principles and determined by those prionciples, the principles are NOT a consequence of the ethics and politics. Once a society chooses to permit and protect by law the ownership of private property by individuals, and accepts John Locke’s principle that an individual owns his/her own body [as out Founding Fathers accepted it], then there exists only a very narrow and specific set of ethics, laws, and economic system that allows for the sustenance of those founding principles. Statism, collectivism, socialism of any form are not compatible with those principles, be they from Marxist or Fascist ideologues or religious dogmatists.

If people who believe in the various religions wish to impose upon themselves additional codes of conduct beyond those required by the ethics/politics derived from our founding [and pre-existing] unalienable principles, then those people may freely choose to abide by those additonal restraints on their own personal behavior. They MAY NOT however, require or compel any other human anywhere to abide by those additional constraints. That is the free choice of each individual.