Red State Rabble on Enemy Recognition

I really appreciate the post Uniting Against the Common Enemy. As I said in an earlier post, I don’t expect others to back off about their positions on various issues. But we also don’t need to have those additional disagreements prevent us from cooperating on issues about which we do agree.

I particularly like the following:

RSR is fighting against those authoritarians who would impose their religious views on the rest of us. We don’t believe giving church-goers two days to dismantle the entire apparatus of their religious belief — or else — constitutes a workable strategy.

We’re not interested in philosophical purity, either.

Bravo! And as a religious person I’m with you 100% in preventing anyone from imposing religious views on anyone else. I know that there are some other Christians who do want to impose their beliefs through the law, and I will fight against them both inside the “large tent” of Christianity, and in the political arena.

We want to work closely with activists like Ken Miller to defend science education in public schools. Moreover, we respect him for his many contributions to that struggle. In fact, it’s hard to think of many people who’ve done more. We frankly don’t care what his religious views are. It’s his actions that count in our book.

Excellent point again. I just had to quote it to emphasize it.

For our part, RSR is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with people of faith who want to defend America’s secular institutions from attacks by the radical right.

And I’m happy to work with you on that. The radical right doesn’t like people like me any more than people like you. We can stand together to defend freedom.

In the discussion of sides, I think we should consider two substanstial positions: Freedom–free inquiry, freedom from compulsion in religious and philosophical issues, and authoritarianism, especially of the religious sort. In that fight, those who are interested in freedom share a common interest that I think overpowers everything else, and we need to stick together on those points.