From: Linda
Subject: Selfish Students Pray in Unison

Linda comments on the story of selfish students taking over graduation ceremonies for the sake of their personal religious rituals:

This is a personal issue for me, as I live in Munford--within hearing distance of the cheering that broke out the night the students recited the prayer. I attended, graduated and prayed at Munford High School. I fully understand this issue.

Actually, what Linda means is that she fully understands the issue from the perspective of the selfish students who didn’t care about what their actions meant to religious minorities — and, since Linda has no understanding of the perspective of minorities, she completely supports the selfish students. She doesn’t think that they should have taken the perspectives of others into account. She calls this “courageous.”

 

At the time I attend Munford we had a wonderful American History teacher who I am not so sure would have approved of the actions that took place that evening. However, I do believe that the students who choose to express their religious convictions that evening did so as the founders of our nation would have wanted.

Why would the founders have wanted Christians students to selfishly take over a government ceremony in order to use it for their own religious rituals? I suppose it’s possible that some of them would have approved — some even owned slaves, which just helps to demonstrate that they weren’t perfect. That, however, isn’t an argument for the actions of these students being legal or moral. Unfortunately, this is the only sort of argument Linda is able to provide.

 

Our nation was built by those who stood up against oppressive governments; not by those who sat quietly in their seats and kept their beliefs to themselves.

Since when is it “oppressive” for the government to refuse to allow government ceremonies, designed for the sake of all students, to be taken over for the religious wishes of just one group? We aren’t dealing here with a case of “oppressed” students standing up for their rights against an “oppressive” government. Instead, we have a case where students felt they were denied the privilege to take over a government ceremony for their religion and so decided to take matters into their own hands and appropriate the ceremony on an unofficial basis.

 

Do we truly want freedom of speech? Then allow our students to speak freely.

Freedom of speech is very important; however, everyone knows that there isn’t an absolute right to freedom of speech. Does anyone dispute the fact that if someone had stood up and started shouting during the valedictorian’s speech, they would have been forcibly removed? Of course not — that’s precisely what would have happened. And why? Don’t we truly want freedom of speech? Certainly we want that, but not every moment and manner of expression is equally protected. Sometimes, it’s just wrong to take over an event for your own purposes. It’s rude and selfish — and that’s precisely what we’re talking about here.

Linda is basically defending an action that wouldn’t be tolerated in any other context because she personally approves of the religious ideology behind it. That makes her not only unethical, but also hypocritical.

 

Yes, this time they stood up for Christianity and maybe that is not a cause you support but I remember reading about other students who came to the south to support civil rights and had they listened to your arguments, they would have stayed in there homes and thought what is going on there is wrong-- but I’ll keep my thoughts and opinions to myself.

Well, obviously Linda isn’t going to keep her thoughts and opinions to herself — nor would I tell her to. I wonder why she felt the need to say this? I would, however, tell her to be able to rationally and empirically support those thoughts and opinions.

For example, I think that she should be able to defend this analogy she has constructed. Where is the similarity, given how in the current situation we have the government refusing to favor one group over others but in the southern situation we had people protesting it when the government was favoring one group over others.

She just doesn’t see that the analogy is precisely the opposite of what she are claiming.

 

Just so you know I have friends that are Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Jewish,. I myself am Christian- I never try to force my religion on my friends but when I go out to eat I always pray. If I am the only Christian, I will pray silently but if my daughter is with me or there are other Christians we usually say this prayer out loud. My friends are not uncomfortable with this.

I don’t personally care if Linda prays out loud — so long as she doesn’t interrupting what others are doing. Would Linda start praying out loud in the middle of a theater performance? How about in the middle of a wedding ceremony or a funeral eulogy? Such acts would be very rude. What those selfish students did would have been about as wrong if they and all started reading out of an atheist philosophy book, the GOP party platform, or from the back of a cereal box.

 

Tolerance is what we should all be expressing not anger--tolerance for all religions and people. I have attempted to learn from my non-Christian friends-- and some of them have attempted to learn from me. I think that by showing them respect and tolerance of our differences I am setting a fine example of Christian love and friendship.

Yes, we should all be expressing tolerance — and that’s precisely what those Christians were not doing. Therefore, if Linda truly supports these Christians’ actions, then she doesn’t truly support tolerance. At least, she doesn’t support tolerance when it inhibits her and other Christians from asserting their social and political superiority over other groups. On the other hand, when “tolerance” means that minorities must submit to her and other Christians, I think that she’d be all for it.

 

What a great opportunity those non-Christian students had to show that they too could be tolerant of those different than themselves. What a great opportunity they choose to let pass them by.

Notice how Linda doesn’t believe that the Christian students had an opportunity to show that they could be tolerant of those different from themselves — not an opportunity that they “chose to let pass them by” nor an opportunity which they took advantage of. There was no such opportunity because, in the minds of Christians like Linda, they have no obligation to be “tolerant” — they are in the majority and therefore should be permitted to do whatever they want.

Only minorities have an obligation to be tolerant, which basically means allowing the majority Christians to do as they will. If they stand up to challenge this and demand that the government treat everyone equally, this is basically the same as oppressing Christians and failing to show them “tolerance” (in other circumstances, the correct word would be “obsequiousness”)

 

I am always proud of people who stand up for themselves and their rights in our free nation.

Those students didn’t have a “right” to take over a graduation ceremony for a personal religious ritual.

 

I am proud of the Graduating Class of Munford High School. I hope I would have had the courage to do just as they did.

First, Linda express “pride” is self-righteous, self-absorbed, selfish people. Second, Linda doesn’t have the slightest idea what courage is. In fact, Linda make a mockery of the concept. It didn’t take “courage” for such a large majority of students to stand up and express the same religious sentiment. Linda might as well praise the “courage” of white students to “stand up” to being forced to have a black student in their midst. Shouldn’t black students be “tolerant” of whites who think it’s immoral to for the races to mix?

Real courage was found in the one student who challenged the attempt to institute official prayers despite the fear of retaliation. Linda’s religion teaches her to think of herself as a martyr, but such ploys don’t work in a nation where she’s part of a majority which has abused its power for decades in order to assault, intimidate, and oppress religious minorities.

I wonder if Linda is equally "proud" of the "courage" exhibited by the Christians in Delaware who chased a Jewish family out of the community for challenging school board prayers. The self-righteous, mob-mentality of the Christians there is no different from what was expressed in Munford — it just didn’t get a chance to go quite a far.

Linda talks about others being “tolerant” of Christians, but Christians like her have no idea what tolerance is — for them, “tolerance” is minorities learning to keep their mouths shut and submitting like dhimmis to the Christian regime while the only “tolerance” they have to show others is to allow them to exist. Treating them like full equals in the social and political sphere is simply out of the question.

Don't believe me? I stumbled across this comment by D. Ox on something totally unrelated:

Real tolerance? Means either learn to tolerate the majority culture you move to or are born into or go somewhere else. That's reality. Every society depends on having a coherent culture. That's NOT a POGROM, it's just reality.

Of course, options like making changes in the "majority culture," that the political institutions should reflect more than the "majority culture," or that a nation's culture should not be defined to include only the "majority" are completely ignored. "Tolerance" is just another form of "submission" which minorities display towards the majority; the majority, in turn, has no obligation to "tolerate" anything — whatever is part of the majority culture must be submitted to. Thus blacks must "tolerate" the segregation imposed on them by whites, women must "tolerate" being denied the right to vote, and non-Christians must "tolerate" how some Christians abuse their positions of power to get the government to endorse their religious beliefs.

Frankly, it makes me sick.

 

Note: the above message from Linda was originally posted a comment here. I am using it as a Mailbag feature because blog comments are a similar sort of feedback to email comments and, after all, I do receive copies of these comments in my email.

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