The ACRU Blog

That was excellent. Currently reading Bloom's Closing of the American Mind as well as involved in courses from Mises.org. The sad discovery is that the curriculum in high school (early 70s) and university through grad school were somewhat surreptitiously pushing these very notions of the Frankfurt school on us. Naturally, we weren't aware because we had been the real victims, if you will (a term I don't like using) of having "educators" who never really provided any balancing viewpoint. The lack of philosophy, the push away from the Great Books made our brains mushy and receptive to the implantation of any culture. Ironically, in the Mises courses, I have to understand Marx before I can grasp Mises' critique of him. By default, in order to do real thinking and scholarly investigation, the study of one begs the study of its opposite. How we can deny that in classrooms today, and even worse, how students can quickly accept verdicts pro or contra to certain philosophies and economic systems without ever truly studying them is sad. Of course, when you are on the side of "good", there's that narcissism and self-satisfaction that just knowing you're good trumps knowing what you're talking about.

Thank you. This has tied much of my reading together and the course has awakened an interest in philosophy. You tied the Marcuse-Adorno and general Frankfurt School together nicely. The irony is, my undergraduate major was German, and I lived there for a long time. Naturally, most people think of Nazism as the true abyss of governments and human systems, but in the past years I've begun to realize that the toxicity of the skewed ideals that gave birth to the National Socialists has spread so far and still persists.

I liked aspects of the video but theirs a huge problem for me. I'm an atheist and the information you give on the boy scouts is all turned around backwards. I really think it hurts your case and makes me wonder if you didn't do your homework in other areas.

Did anyone making this movie ever stop to ask themselves, "If gays (and atheists) wish to destroy the boy scounts then why on earth would the wish to join it. After all their not fighting to ban the boy scouts but only to make the congressionally chartered organization less discrimanatory.

If the boy scout didn't have so many government ties my libertarian leanings would say, "If they want to be like the KKK then let them". Unfortunately, my taxes have indirectly funded the boy scounts and the BSA have used the government in the past as a legal club to prevent the formation of nondiscrimanatory childrens clubs, or the distruction of preexisting ones like the United States Boy Scouts (which predates BSA). That's something you should look into the history of. How to you right the past wrongs that the BSA which prevented nondiscrimanatory organizations from forming.

The discrimination that BSA practices has a real impact. My paritcular troop didn't care about individuals private beliefs. If they had then I would have been deprived of the many friends I made in the BSA. Friends who were NOT bigots against atheists. I lived in a rural area with great distances between small developments. I had a choice of only one kid my age and he was a jerk. So this wise decision on the part of my troop gave a child social opportunities that he wouldn't otherwise of had.

You can read about the government tax/government monopoly support issues here.

Doesn't seem like the link worked so here it is: http://www.bsa-discrimination.org/html/taxes_and_bsa.html

Wow, should have proofread my post. "Theirs" lots of spelling errors and typos which may cause a "distruction" of my reputation.

I had another thought. Based on the name of this organization, the ACRU, one would think that it was going to fight for everyone's rights even us atheists and gays.

I think it is fine for private organizations to discriminate, in-so-far as the discrimination is directly related to the mission of the organization, and the organization doesn't use coercion, direct or indirect, to prevent competitors.

So I'm not against an insurance company discriminating against smokers (by making the pay more). I would be against a real estate company discriminating against gay renters.

I'm not against the boy scouts excluding atheists in-so-far as the boy scouts itself served the purpose of teaching religion. I don't think that is the case however. I was in the boy scouts and their activities were not religious services. It seems to me that the reason that the boy scouts exclude atheists is because they are basing it on a bigoted view of atheists, and not the activities involved.

Now one might argue, "Well correct the Boy Scouts doesn't serve the purpose of teaching a particular religion but does serve the purpose of building moral character and so atheists are excluded." However, this claim is based on the assumption that all atheists are immoral. Now certainly some atheists are immoral, for instance communists who believe that no human has the right to private property, which is the equivalent of saying "People can steal from other people", are immoral. This isn't true for all atheists, the reason being that atheism isn't a belief system. It's the lack of a belief in a particular deity. The ancient Romans referred to Christians as atheists because they didn't believe it the various Roman gods. So we are today all atheists with regard to those deities. Furthermore, one cannot determine the moral beliefs of an individual based on what deity they don't believe in. There is a wide range of moral philosophies that are congruent with a lack of belief in a god. In fact the reverse is also true, if your higher-power, your god, tells you that slavery is proper, as say Allah does, then in fact you believe an immoral precept on the basis of your theism.

Since morality has little to do with the actual belief in god then the even if the purpose of the boy scouts was to teach morality then it couldn't exclude atheists on those grounds.

These ideas of the boy scouts seem silly in other regards. If their purpose is to teach morality then you'd think the first thing they'd want to do is reach those in the most need (according to their principles). One could understand excluding authority figures on these grounds but why exclude the atheist children? You see I have little problem having my children be exposed to authority figures who are theists. I don't because I'm quite confident that my moral beliefs can stand up to any theistic arguments. Why the fear in the reverse direction? Are they afraid a kid is going to out debate an adult? It's not like there were any debates in the first place. We didn't hold moral discussions in boy scouts, we learned how to tie knots, and go camping. Most of the other pledges made, if you exclude the god stuff, are things most atheists are for. Bravery and cleanliness are virtues regardless of whether there is a god or not.

You should be getting from this comment that I do not believe the right to "freedom of association" trumps all other rights. I don't think a grocery store, which has a primary purpose of selling foods, has the right to exclude blacks, gays, Jews, or atheists. To claim this as a right is to say that some people have the right to starve others if they happen to be in the majority, or happen to have gained a monopoly on food production and distribution. How can that be right? How can it be right for a black man to have sold his agricultural land over to a white man in order to pursue a different career than farmer, only to have the white guy turn around and say, I'm not selling you any food, and worse yet, I'm not selling this land to any black people. Isn't that a form of fraud? The racist in this case is acting as if he and the black man can operate on the basis of reciprocal altruism and shared interest when he's buying the land, and yet that was not his intention at all, no instead it was to take advantage when he got the upper hand.

Either blacks, atheists, and other minorities are equal in authority in our society or they are not. If they are then there is no reason to exclude them from activities merely on the basis of the fact that they are minorities. Leaving exclusion up to mere whim allows for such rights violating activities. There must be a rational reason for the exclusion. I can think of no rational reason for not selling a carrot to a black man or an atheist.

This certainly leaves the religious free to discriminate in areas where it makes sense. It hardly makes sense for a atheist to be a Catholic priest, and one can certainly exclude on that basis, in reverse, it doesn't make sense for a creationist to be teaching biology. I don't think you are going to find many atheists however flocking to your churches and trying to become priests. The same doesn't seem to hold in reverse.

I think it fine if fundamentalists don't want to have their kids learn the science of biology but I think it a fraud for a creationist to be teaching it. So I don't think kids should be forced into these classes, but likewise I don't think creationists can offer alternative courses and call them science classes. That's just false advertising, and fraud. Let them call it creationism and be done with it.

So I hope you see that there are ways for us to proceed that are in harmony with everyone's rights and with rational behavior. Does it have to be precisely as I have described it here? No, I'm not sure I'm that good a communicator, nor that I have thought of every aspect. I do think however I have shown that a system that allows for total hegemony of "right to assembly" over other rights is the wrong thing to do. Also I think I have shown that any group discrimination needs to be based on reason. At least I think I have shown this to the reasonable.

Brian,

You prove the point of the film.

The groups and the ideology mentioned in the film exist only to tear down others. They don't represent any institution that is within the mainstream of society. Berkeley, California, "Studies" programs and the ACLU do not farm, build or make anything. Neither do their adherents. The Boy Scouts is populated by people from all walks of life and so they are a prime target.

The Boy Scouts' ties to the government and the associated subsidies you allege exist in other places: PBS, various "art" foundations, research universities, etc. Unseemly government subsidies are legion on both sides of the political divide - including Libertarian.

Gary,

That's a invalid comparision. Firstly, I don't support PBS, government subsidies for the arts, etc. Secondly, those organizations do not discriminate on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, race, etc. So what's your point.

It's further silliness to say that the I prove the point of the film since I am highly un-PC and anticommunist.

Your last sentence makes no sense whatsoever since there isn't only two sides as the words "both sides" implies. Furthermore, yhou claim that libertarian causes get government subsidies. Where on earth did you get that notion? Your list is a bunch of liberal not libertarian organizations. Perhaps you can provide a link or article where libertarians are both receiving subsidies and using those funds to discriminate against others.