Hey kids, Let's Have Fun At After School Satan Club

[Ninurta]

@"Kenzo" @"Ninurta" 

Why not have a "Hitler After School Club" ?

No, no.  I don't mean a club to worship Hitler or promote Nazism.  This would be a club to teach children how to think for themselves, to approach life with an open mind, to work with others in positive collaboration, etc.  And it could include cute cartoons of Adolf at a lectern, and so forth.

Now.  Really.  Who here thinks that would not cause a HUGE stink in practically any community?  Most everybody would think that it would be nothing but a way of advertising Hitler and getting kids to look into him and what he was about.

It would be provocative.  Just as using Satan is provocative.  This "initiative" is not well intended.  It is emotionally manipulative, and when people react to the manipulation, they are labeled as "triggered".  And underlying that behavior is an assumption that the "rest of us" need to be provoked and manipulated because we're something less than those doing the provocation and manipulation.

Thumbs down.

Cheers

Indeed, why not? That would implicate the First Amendment as well, albeit on political free speech grounds rather than religious.

It would cause a stir just as this has. We only have to take a look at the Skokie, IL Nazi Rally to see just what a row would be created, and yet it would be perfectly legal as well as constitutionally sanctioned.

We run into trouble when we allow government to pick and choose what is and what isn't allowed to be put forth. In my mind, that's more a matter for the community to police rather than the government, and is to be countered via THEIR free speech rights rather than squelched by governmental edict.

As distasteful as both Satanism and Nazism are, they are still constitutionally sanctioned to protect the rights of the minority to have a voice. If we allow government to squelch them, where does that end? Today Satanism and Nazism may be subsumed, but what will tomorrow bring? Since we have allowed government to bury one religion and one political party, what others will get plowed under tomorrow? Will it next be Catholicism and Conservatism? After all, if we have already established that it is proper for government to regulate thought and it's expression...

So I think the proper response is for the People to exercise their own Free Speech rights, and raise their voice in opposition by making cogent arguments against what they find distasteful. They should make their opposition known by making logical counter-points against the philosophy being espoused rather than screaming for the government to do something about it. You kill ideas by showing them to be stupid in the open for all to see their folly, rather than trying to drive them underground where they can fester.

No, I believe it is not "well intended", but that is from my perspective, rather than theirs. I also do no believe it is well intended for Evangelicals to try to beat the souls out of their victims with their Bibles, but they differ with me in that assessment, and they believe it IS well intentioned. This is apparently simply a reaction to such soul-beating by Evangelicals, a more cerebral demand for "equal time" than most evangelicals are able to mount. This is a plan, a strategy, which Evangelicals for the most part are incapable of formulating, because they run on pure emotion, and emotive reaction, rather than thinking through a plan to overcome their opposition cerebrally.

Sun Tzu said that you beat an opponent in his mind, rather than on the battlefield. He is not beaten until you convince him he is. Once he is beaten in his mind, he is well and truly beaten, and will not rise up again since he believes it to be futile.

They will not win by asking Big Brother to do their countering for them. That is, to my way of thinking, a tacit admission of a lack of faith, a belief that they do not have a good enough argument to counter their opponents, so they would rather Big Brother do their pounding for them on this one. That is a slippery slope, for today it is the Satanists, but tomorrow it might well be the Evangelicals once that door is flung open.

It is a sad fact of life that some times, defending your enemies IS also defending yourself. My Dear Old Dad always stressed to me that some times, life is not gonna be fair, and Life does not care about that, at all. This is one of those times.

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