wyndhy,
Wow! Gotta love it!
I’m pleased that you welcome honest debate. I do try to base my arguments on independently corroborated data, using them to warrant the inferences supporting my positions. I try to avoid shooting from the hip. I accept that this does limit how vivid my prose may be. An age related failing perhaps.
I read your paragraph in re the developments in Black Jack City as acknowledging that there is no reason to assume that these actions had a religious agenda.
Accepting your definition of dogma above, it is not immediately obvious to me what dogmas are being realized in law. If you are not referring to laws, but merely the enabling of faith based organizations to compete in the effort to direct federal aid, then, as you have said, the next administration will either return to tradition or it will not. It is, I suggest, the responsibility of those who care about the future to work to ensure that this experiment is not part of the set of beliefs implemented by the next administration.
I agree with you that this initiative began as a personal expression of his own belief that churches must take a bigger role in the stabilization of our society, though not that they needed money to do so, only that they are on occasion better adapted to do so than a federal bureaucracy. Yes I know that in doing so we are speculating about what goes on in GWB’s mind, but it is all in fun, no? It is also, I think a sop thrown to some of his voters.
Again, I suggest that this is transient and will pass away with many other unique and special features that he has graced our nation with over these last few years. I remember the huge brouhaha that surrounded GWB’s predecessor when it came to light that he was cheating on his wife – and on company time at that! This will pass also.
Yes, I am convinced that attempting to exclude the interior activity (religious beliefs) of the electorate from the external activity (politics) of the electorate is doomed to failure. I suggest that history supports that conclusion. If we can agree on that, then the question becomes one of “what is the best way to do so”, rather than “how shall we prevent it from happening”? Keep in mind that
any policy, when implemented, turns the transgressors into criminals.
In re the attempts of religious leaders to influence policy: there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing so, insofar as that does not lead to the establishment of a state religion or towards suppression of another. Their voices are as valid a part of the national debate as are yours and mine.