Saturday, May 16, 2009

I believe all of the American colonies at the time of the Revolution allowed full religious freedom--even those colonies, like Virginia, which had an established state church. By the same token, the citizens of the United Kingdom today enjoy full religious freedom, notwithstanding the U.K.'s establishment of the Church of England as official state church.

Of course, you can take the position that establishment of any church infringes on full religious freedom, as it forces those who don't belong to the church to support it financially, via taxation. I whole-heartedly agree with that position. But, as an anarchist, I oppose all taxation as legalized extortion. Moreover, whether you're an anarchist or not, if you're going to oppose Virginia's or Britain's state churches on grounds of religious freedom, to be consistent you're going to have to oppose state schools, which force us to support them financially even as they inculcate the state's moral and religious values to our children.

I do not accept the namby-pamby secular humanism of the Royal Oak Public Schools. I pay hard-earned dollars to send my daughter to the local Whore of Babylon affiliate, whose benighted and obscurantist belief system is more in line with my own. Yet I'm compelled to support the namby-pamby secular humanism of the Royal Oak Public Schools. The state school system infringes on my personal and religious freedom.

As for Germany, I see the same namby-pamby secular humanism stifling religious freedom there. If I were a German libertarian, I would take small comfort in the disestablishment of German churches. Merely espousing unorthodox beliefs about World War II, the purity of the Allied cause or the justice of the Allies' firebombing of densely populated German civilian areas, can land you in the hoosegow in Germany. I'd stay in Pennsylvania even if the legislature were to establish Quakerism as state church--so long as I were free to worship in the church, synagogue, mosque or Wicca orchard grove of my choice.

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