posted
How does someone wearing a peice of religious headgear make the schools non-secular?
A yamulka's not OK, but a baseball cap for a soccer team is?
Add a cross to the cap and now it's not?
Make the cross part of the logo for a band and it's OK again?
The schools don't require uniforms - they ban clothing based on its meaning to the wearer. There's no way to say this policy reflects individual liberty.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Dagonee has a point. In banning crosses, head-scarves etc. how do they enforce such things without people arguing that "It's just a decoration/fashion." When does religion end and 'just wearing it' start? When is a cross merely two long thing rectangles laid on top of one another?
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I'm not trying to claim the 10 Comandments were just decoration. However, courts have upheld public display of paintings where the comandments were a part of a larger, non-religious scene.
My point was that the only way to enforce the French law is to deliberately try to limit religious expression - there's no way to couch the law as merely regulating students' dress without admitting that it is targetted at religious expression.
posted
So, if opposition to Al Qaeda makes someone heroic -- as many conservative commentators have claimed -- does that mean that French school officials are now heroes?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Okay, so, just to clarify: opposition to Al Qaeda is only noble if it's done in appropriate ways and for appropriate reasons? Because, y'know, Ann Coulter might find that a treasonous statement. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
And what makes opposition effective, exactly? Does a previously ineffective opposition BECOME noble if it suddenly starts working?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Tom, you should really stop trying to explain what conservatives think or believe. You're really not very good at it.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I am merely pointing out that many conservatives have made the argument that our opposition to Al Qaeda -- and the details thereof -- are morally exempt from questioning, as the mere act of opposition is itself noble. Ann Coulter and John Lileks, in particular, have both said that liberals are outright treasonous for questioning the methods of the president's struggle against this organization, because -- as Lileks says in one of his most recent articles -- any opposition to an evil force is a noble one.
If this is not the case, and merely being opposed to evil does not in fact make someone heroic, merely dissenting to the forms of that opposition does not make someone ignoble -- contrary, again, to the claims of several popular conservative pundits.
I don't expect YOU to be a big fan of Coulter, but I know there ARE fans of Coulter out here -- and, consequently, I'm glad to see a conservative helping me make my argument against her views.
posted
I've always interpreted those columns slightly differently - that the enemy is such that certain measures that may not be justifiable in other circumstances are justifiable against al Qeada. Certainly that's a debatable point, but it's quite different than saying that anything is justifiable. But I don't regularly read either one, so I might have missed the ones you're talking about.
posted
Nope. But, surely, not all Afghani fighters opposing our invasion of that country supported Al Qaeda, either. Yet, oddly, suggesting otherwise is considered unpatriotic.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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