"Religious freedom" is an oxymoron

In every conflict, as emotions get involved, the participants tend to descend to the lowest common denominator. Conflicts may begin about issues, but the rise of emotions triggers a descent into personal attack and mean-spiritedness. As a result, all participants fight on the level of the lowest attack. The values about which we fought are set aside for the sake of "winning" the battle. As we behave so do our values change to match our behavior. We become that which we hate.

When we go to war with religious bigots, the worst danger is that we become like those we fight. Their worst brings out our worst; their intolerance for us becomes matched by our intolerance for them. In the end, we fight them on the lowest common denominator, which is their emotionally-based intolerance for us and for freedom.

Mark Twain (I think) said something like "My right to swing my fist stops at your nose." He points out succinctly and validly that all freedom we grant one another is limited. It is limited by the need to avoid impinging on the liberty of others. In other words, our freedom is constrained by rules which maximize the total amount of liberty and freedom for our group. These rules are difficult to balance, and the balance we wish to attain changes from time to time. It is only in America, however, that we have placed the maximal balance of personal freedom with group rights at the very top of our list, our highest value. Whatever else we believe, we are a free people and we believe that freedom for everyone is the highest personal value. We have a right to be proud of that.

When we have found that we were not acting in accordance with the highest principles of freedom, we have changed our behaviors and our laws to bring us back into balance. No other country has done what we have done. We have even extended our values to provide that balance of freedom to defeated enemies. We have had failures, but we have righted many of them and are righting more. We move in the direction of increasing maximal personal freedom for everyone within our range of influence.

Freedom is a higher value than religion, in that freedom includes the right to disagree with religious beliefs of any kind. When any religion asserts that its beliefs have a higher priority than our freedom, we have a problem. Can we allow any religion to assert its right to limit the freedom of non-members? When a religion is allowed to limit my freedom, its fist no longer stops at my nose, and our freedom has diminished.

What is now happening in our own military in Iraq is concerning for a number of reasons. I refer, of course, to the demonstrations of intolerance by Christians for non-Christians within the military, including persecution, harassment and bullying. The temptation to descend to the lowest common denominator is increasing. In fighting religious fanatics, there is the urge to descend to that level, matching their intolerance with our own. As a result, we are no longer entirely fighting for freedom, for the assertion of the importance of individual rights, but for whether our form of intolerance is better than their form of intolerance.

As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."