I personally think we’ve done a very good job.”

But we have done so with the assumption that we were all (atheists included) created equal (by God)and endowed (by God) with certain inalienable rights. Take that belief away, and I think we should worry about the future of religious liberty among other things.

My question might be unanswerable. I don’t know what keeps a majority from becoming tyrannical when it believes that all rights are man-made and can be given and taken by the State.

I do also do not know why we can trust humans who operate solely by their own lights to believe all of us are equal and worthy of liberty. Human nature is not promising in that regard.

But that is not the theory of the US Constitution which, unlike, say, the German Grudgesetz or the French Constitution, contains no unamendable provisions.

This led Scalia J to say in an interview (Catholic News Service, June 14, 1996) that “The whole theory of democracy, my dear fellow, is that the majority rules, that is the whole theory of it. You protect minorities only because the majority determines that there are certain minorities or certain minority positions that deserve protection. Thus in the United States Constitution we have removed from the majoritarian system of democracy the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, and a few other freedoms that are named in the Bill of Rights. The whole purpose of that is that the people themselves, that is to say the majority, agree to the rights of the minority on those subjects — but not on other subjects…” and “The minority loses, except to the extent that the majority, in its document of government, has agreed to accord the minority rights.”

We, the people….

like it or not, we have governed ourselves. And it’s been that way since 1790.

I personally think we’ve done a very good job.

But religious people believe that many of our basic rights come from God and are therefore inalienable. That belief might persist for awhile out of inertia, but I don’t know why an atheistic majority would continue to put any stock in it. Then what?

Loathing abortion and not wanting to impose my values on someone else are not mutually exclusive. Let’s make it more personal. Suppose that I had a teenage daughter who got knocked up. What would I do?

I honestly don’t know but abortion would be among the choices to consider. It would be a wrenching decision with life-long implications either way. Just don’t call me “pro-abortion.”

By the way, it is – in most respects – the same decision process regardless of whether my daughter was raped or promiscuous. The obvious solution is to prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place.

When the most numerous and powerful constituency in the Democratic Party has no time for religion—and their adversaries are most easily identified by their commitment to religion—it’s not hard to see that they’ll try to bend it in a direction that serves their political interests.

I don’t see why the First Amendment needs a religious supermajority, or even majority, to protect religious liberty. If religious people ever make up a minority of American citizens, they will simply be in the same positions as the “nones” now are and have been since 1791.

I’m similarly baffled by Reno’s fears. Reno seems to acknowledge that people in power will pursue their own political interests. And Reno surely can’t deny that religious people have been in power since the nation’s founding. Should we assume that religious people have been acting inappropriately since the nation’s founding?

Yes, we should – but there’s not special reason to assume that they act more inappropriately than people who do not subscribe to any particular religion; similarly, I see no reason to assume that people who do not subscribe to any particular religion will behave in a peculiarly bad way.

It’s unclear to me what specific policies Reno fears a more secular government would pursue. Yes, I could imagine changes in tax laws and the growth of government expenditures on things that run contrary to certain religious principles. Perhaps government might become more intrusive regarding child-rearing – clarifying, for example, that Christian Scientist parents may be subject to prosecution for withholding certain life-saving treatments from their own minor children.

But is that it?

I loath abortion. However, I would not want the family of a pregnant 15 year-old to substitute my judgment for theirs.

Why not? If you hate it, why would you want them to do something you hate?

And don’t blame liberals if you don’t like Scalia’s opinion in Employment Division v Smith.

There is a missing logical step here.

Lets assume the first sentence is true. Wouldn’t pursuit of secular voters be a correct and ultimately winning political strategy? There is nothing inherently anti-religious about that.

Aren’t secular voters entitled to advocate their political positions?

I think the answer is “Yes.” Weren’t their positions also supported by equally large numbers of religous voters?

I think the answer to that question is also “Yes.”

It appears that, at worst, the Democratic party is not against all religious voters –just against the positions that a minority of religiously-motivated voters have advocated.

I’m not sure how a rejection of some political positions advanced by religiously-motivated voters translates into a “deliberate attack” on religion.