In response to this post, where I called McCain a douche.
Whatever one might say about what this nation ought to be, the fact is that the nation was established as a Christian nation. To the Founding Fathers, this would have gone witout saying - and it is quite clearly the case from the language they used throughout documents of the period, including the Declaration of Independance.
It was also true, however, that by this time in history the hold of Christianity had been greatly weakened, especially amongst those that followed the ideas of the philosophes. The American intellectuals of the day were keen to find the hand of the Christian God in nature, and considered the pursuit of science and understanding religious truth as one and the same. Thus they considered the nature of God to be knowable by observation and personal reflection, and were so thoroughly disgusted by the European wars in the pursuit of one or another version of the Christian God’s word that they incorporated into the US Constitution an amendment making lawful the free expression of a person’s faith, whatsoever it may be.
McCain is not a “douche” for expressing a simple fact. Likewise, I suspect those who are so adamant about pressing home the freedoms of expression and religious choice as outlined in the first amendment would not be so nearly as enthusiastic in defending the freedoms expressed in the second - consider that just a hunch. Indeed, might I speculate that calling McCain a “douche” might have political rather than philosophical or ethical motivations.
-DrCruel
