Quote:
Originally Posted by moe.ron
Not religious, but there has been governments, in the name of fighting terrorism, squashing rights. Killing indiscriminately, arresting people left and right for their religious believe and holding people for being in the wrong place and the wrong time, while exporting them to nations where they can be tortured. Find that as wrong, even more wrong then what Al-Qaeda have done. Whereas Al-Qaeda can and will be destroyed, these governments and their allies will only create another Al-Qaeda in the future.
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You find it more wrong that Al-Quada? or just as wrong and worse because you imagine it to be less easy to destroy?
If, as I suspect you do, you mean the US, I think you're claims are somewhat exaggerated and misrepresented. (I'm afraid that being at war does sometimes result in less discriminate killing than would be ideal, but while the actions of the US have been deeply flawed in individual cases, a perfect fight against terrorism is going to be tough to pull off.) I'd like the US to be more cautious and I'd like the US always to be making the case for a better way of life and doing things by not stooping to the methods used by our opponents. I'm pretty disgusted by some of our actions, and yet, I don't think that we'd be better off not doing anything at all. We've just got to be really careful about what we do.
I have conflicted attitudes about how much "tolerance" we should show to any religious believers. I don't think state funds should generally be spent on promoting the interest on one faith, and yet, I think our tradition of religious tolerance is a good one. I think we should try to honor matters of conscious as much as we can.
I think that a pharmacy chain that is willing to advertise that they will not carry certain forms of birth control or a taxi cab company that is willing to advertise that they won't accept passengers who are carrying alcohol are fine in the general marketplace. But I don't think that they should be able to seek state contracts that involve service to all customers (like an airport taxi line). I'm still working out what I think about catholic charity hospitals receiving state funds for some services like ER services but refusing to provide birth control or abortion services. (remember some of the charges against Joe Lieberman being "rape gurney Joe?")
I think we may lately be getting kind of confused about having "rights" to things simply because they aren't illegal. Should you have a legal expectation that you can get birth control at any pharmacy or can people who don't believe in certain forms of birth control have a legal expectation of working at and supporting business who share their values?
All that said, I think that it's going to be imperative that we resist any efforts to have separate legal systems or to allow certain churches to limit the civil rights of non-members generally out of a goofy effort to be "sensitive" to beliefs.