From:
If you believe that people are basically good
Dec 31, 2002
by Dennis Prager
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/dennisprager/2002/12/31/165297.html

excerpts (not too long I hope):

No issue has a greater influence on determining your social and political views than whether you view human nature as basically good or not. In 20 years as a radio talk show host, I have dialogued with thousands of people, of both sexes and from virtually every religious, ethnic and national background. Very early on, I realized that perhaps the major reason for political and other disagreements I had with callers was that they believed people are basically good, and I did not. I believe that we are born with tendencies toward both good and evil. Yes, babies are born innocent, but not good. Why is this issue so important? First, if you believe people are born good, you will attribute evil to forces outside the individual. That is why, for example, our secular humanistic culture so often attributes evil to poverty.

[...]

if you believe that people are basically good, God and religion are morally unnecessary, even harmful. Why would basically good people need a God or religion to provide moral standards? Therefore, the crowd that believes in innate human goodness tends to either be secular or to reduce God and religion to social workers, providers of compassion rather than of moral standards and moral judgments. Fourth, if you believe people are basically good, you, of course, believe that you are good -- and therefore those who disagree with you must be bad, not merely wrong. You also believe that the more power that you and those you agree with have, the better the society will be. That is why such people are so committed to powerful government and to powerful judges. On the other hand, those of us who believe that people are not basically good do not want power concentrated in any one group, and are therefore profoundly suspicious of big government, big labor, big corporations, and even big religious institutions.

Well put!
btw, BrusselsJournal.com is an excellent place to read about episodes of Euro thought crime. Here is another example related to Christianity but they seem to come down hard on free thinkers in Europe over any number of issues.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/538
As an American, I've been astonished to learn how little freedom of (unpopular, non-politically-correct) expression there is in the EuroZone.

The secular extremists are just fascists with better manners - for now. As they continue to increase their grip on Europe and elsewhere, the relentless hatred of their ideology will become impossible to ignore. But I predict the MSM here will manage to do so. It is just possible that here in the United States we will have seen teh worst of the secular extremist attacks on liberty. If Alito gets on the SCOTUS, we may well be able to say that the high water mark of secular extremist power is passed and is receding.
The upside of this is that the United States and other remaining free areas of the world could pick up millions of new immigrants who are Christian, thoughtful and of European cultural background.

Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)

(If you haven't hissed a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Hang loose; don't shed your skin!)

URL:
Remember me unto the end of days? AyeNay!

Comments: (Sssselect text and bite a button to apply HTML tagssssss...)