Have I misunderstood what the establishment clause et al say about religion in America? It's clear Americans in general see their liberties and attributes thereof as representative of something bequeathed to them by a great and loving God and not as a victory for secularism - in fact a certain element in America would probably see secularism itself as a gift from God - and certainly there's an element that would judge secularism as evil, sinful and against the interests of the republic. So, yes, in a sense I've misinterpreted the meaning of secularism when it comes to America in general - it's possible the founding fathers would have understood the republic qua God in more enlightened philosophical terms, but America as a whole remains a fairly pious nation, or rather, tends to want to see itself in a context that blurs the line between secularism and religion when it comes to the founding principles of the nation.
Still, regardless, the evolution of secularism is fundamental to the Western tradition - it's virtually impossible to understand our sense of democracy, capitalism, individual rights and just laws without it - and that sets the West off very distinctly from Islam where Sharia is the defining context - and my whole point was that it's up to liberals to make that argument because conservatives are hindered by a base that puts everything in terms of a loving God - and what has disturbed me is the revelation that liberals are just as boxed in by their progressive ideology as conservatives are by their moralistic one - not that I was unaware of how left the left has swung - but to not be able to make the secularist argument here because you're afraid it runs against the progressive idealism espoused by Obama and his ilk? That has shocked me a bit - and it will lead to bad things - one extreme just provokes the animus of an opposing one as both fight for what the see as their survival - and so you get a church in Florida that plans to burn the Koran on the 9/11 anniversary - and the point is do I think this act is aimed at Muslims or liberals? I think the enemy here for this church is liberalism - this is the kind of insanity that ensues - the left failed to take up the realist, secularist argument when it came to the mosque, instead deciding to preach an extreme idealist left wing view that's at odds with the way a majority of Americans tend to see this issue, in fact seems disdainful of anyone expressing skepticism towards the Cordoba initiative - and thusly the god wackos on the right are emboldened.
The crazy thing is that skepticism is an intellectual attribute one could associate quite naturally with a classically liberal point of view - I would consider a great skeptic like Hume as a perfect example of a liberal in the classical sense - and the mosque problem opens itself up to a classical skeptical secularist critique - and instead liberals can't run away from the problem fast enough. Quite revealing - in fact I would go so far as to say that the mosque issue has revealed in a most glaring way just how empty and detached from reality modern liberalism is.
