I couldn’t come up for a better title to this post than that of the article I take this opportunity to link to by John Zmirak. Published at FrontPageMag back in 2002, “The Home of the Free: Switzerland” is a must-read still today. (I found this article linked in a recent Zmirak article at Taki’s Magazine.
As Zmirak explains, America’s Founders looked to the Swiss — and specifically “the Helvetic Republic” — as the best example in setting up our own republic. But it was the Swiss, and not the Americans, who have since best followed the precepts of the U.S. Constitution, and self-consciously so. We’d do well here in America to now follow the Swiss model — and our own Constitution.
Every day it becomes more and more clear why the Libertarian Party picked Bob Barr as their standard-bearer for the presidential election. He is on major television news shows now on nearly a daily basis. Zogby has him polling at 6% nationally – one poll has him as high as 8% – and he is pulling double-digits in several states.
Meanwhile, McCain puts everyone to sleep (while giving nightmares to true limited government conservatives) and Obama scares the heck out of anyone who looks closely enough at his past affiliations and current policy proposals.
IOW, Barr may win me over yet. And performances like this one yesterday in an interview on America’s Nightly Scorecard on the Fox Business Channel are why:
I started to give post a few selections, but I trust the linked title is intriguing enough to encourage the reader to click on through. It is well worth the full read.
Contemporary religion in America is a “salad bar where people heap on upbeat beliefs they like and often leave the veggies–like doctrines–behind.” According to a Pew Forum Religion & Public Life’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey released this past week, there are so many ways of seeing God that “the highest authority is now the lowest common denominator.”
• The survey found that 92% of American adults believe in God, and 58% say they pray at least once a day. But only 51% believe this “God” is actually “personal.”
• 78% overall say there are “absolute standards of right and wrong,” but only 29% rely on their religion to delineate these standards. The majority (52%) turn to “practical experience and common sense,” with 9% relying on philosophy and reason, and 5% on scientific information.
• 74% say “there is a heaven, where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded,” but far fewer (59%) say there’s a “hell, where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished.”
• 70%, including a majority of all major Christian and non-Christian religious groups, say “many religions can lead to eternal life.”
• 68% say “there’s more than one true way to interpret the teachings” of their faith.
• 50% say “homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society.”
• Only 9% believe education should be in any way “related to” their faith.
• Only 44% are concerned to “preserve their faith’s traditional beliefs and practices.” Meanwhile, most Catholics (67%), Jews (65%), mainline Christians (56%) and Muslims (51%) say their religion should either “adjust to new circumstances” or “adopt modern beliefs and practices.”
• One in four Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox Christians expressed some doubts about God’s existence, as did 60% of all Jews. But at the same time, 21% of self-identified Atheists said they believe in God or a universal spirit, with 8% “absolutely certain” of it.
Not surprisingly, the study’s authors say there’s a “stunning” lack of alignment between the beliefs and practices of most Americans and their professed faiths. Thus, they concluded that religion in America is “three thousand miles wide but only three inches deep.”
Of all the examples given, I find the fact that “only 9% believe education should be in any way ‘related to’ their faith” the most distressing — and damning.
The sort of “faith” proclaimed by most Americans — including it appears most “Christians” — is no faith at all. Rather, it’s mere preferential figments of their imagininations.
