Jesus, that's quite the screed.
Christianity is the foundation of Liberalism, it teaches that every person has a soul and is made in the image of God.
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the natural rights, and both Christian, and Aristotelian philosophy, sure, the Early Church drew from Platonic thought, but it transitioned to Aristotle's philosophy in short order.
Liberals are committed to individualism, liberty, and equal rights and hold these rights to be intrinsic to the individual, following natural rights philosophy.
They believe these goals require a free economy with minimal to no government interference.
Liberty is a natural right, and is understood as the state of being free within society from control or oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.
The concept can be categorized in a threefold manner;
Moral liberties, those being freedom of moral choice, such as freedom of conscience.
Civil liberties, those being freedom of individuals as constituting members of a civil society, such as freedom of speech.
Political liberties, those being freedom of individuals in relation to the state, such as freedom of political association.
Liberty can be simplified as the status of the free man as opposed to that of the slave.
Aristotle defined the general essence of liberty as being one’s own person for one’s own sake rather than belonging to another.
What discriminates the slave from the free man, then, is not that he is restricted in his actions and subject to coercion but that everything he does is done to serve the interest of someone else.
Now, onto Natural Rights, jus naturale.
Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of a particular culture or government, and so are universal, fundamental and inalienable.
Meaning they cannot be repealed by human laws, though one can forfeit their enjoyment through one’s actions, such as by violating someone else’s rights.
Natural Law is a system of law based on a close observation of human nature, and based on values intrinsic to human nature that can be deduced and applied independently of positive law, or the privileges conferred by a state or society.
According to the theory of law called jus naturalism, all people have inherent rights, conferred not by act of legislation but by God, nature, or reason.
Natural law theory can also refer to theories of ethics, theories of politics, theories of civil law, and theories of religious morality.
In jurisprudence, natural law can be understood as the following;
That just laws are immanent in nature, that is, they can be discovered or found but not created by such things as a bill of rights.
That they can emerge by the natural process of resolving conflicts, as embodied by the evolutionary process of the common law; or that the meaning of law is such that its content cannot be determined except by reference to moral principles.
These meanings can either oppose or complement each other, although they share the common trait that they rely on inherence as opposed to design in finding just laws.
Natural Rights are as follows;
The Right to Preserve Life
All humans have the right to stay alive, and no government can ever take that right away, that doesn’t mean they can’t kill you, or try to.
This right extends to the right to defend yourself against people who cause you harm.
Most philosophers agree that the right to life is the most fundamental natural right.
The Right to Own Property
Every person has the right to own property, either by themselves or with other people.
No government can take this right from you, this again, does not mean they cannot create laws to rob you, this means the right to own property is always yours.
Some philosophers, including John Locke, believed that one’s ability to own property extended to their ownership of their own labor.
The Right to Make a Living.
Humans have the right to make a living.
Thomas Jefferson summarized this right as “the pursuit of happiness.”
This right reflects one’s right to economic liberty; the government cannot stop a person from making a living, and without the government and its laws people would still be able to freely trade with one another and make ends meat.
The Right to Have a Family
All people have the right to have a family.
Aquinas wrote extensively of this view, which maintains that one has a natural right to marry as a reflection of their natural liberty.
They may also have children without the consent of the government or state.
Natural rights refer to the rights given to all humans, simply for the sake of being human.
They are universal moral principles among all cultures and societies and can’t be reversed by government law.
For this reason, natural rights are called inalienable rights, meaning they cannot be taken away.
Natural rights are the basis of a social contract in society, they would exist even if the government didn’t.
As Saint Thomas Aquinas said, the main principle of natural law was that “good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided.”
All natural rights can exist without a government and its laws, though legal rights cannot, if someone is on a deserted island with a group of others, each person has the above natural rights, none of the legal rights exist, each person has the right to earn their keep, keep property, live freely, protect themselves, their property and others, and start a family, none of these things are reliant on governmental consent, only the consent of individuals.
If these individuals try to suppress the natural rights of another, then they can be opposed by the other thanks to the natural right to defense of oneself given via the right to preserve life and the right to liberty.
What I have described is Liberalism, the foundation of Conservatism and Libertarianism, whose foundations are found in Aristotelian and Christian philosophy.
I am an adherent of Liberalism, therefore I am a Liberal, and I beg you to provide evidence that I am not.
Incorrect, Modern historians state that Christianity did not cause the Dark Ages, in fact, most experts have rejected the phrase Dark Ages altogether.
They prefer to call this period the Early Middle Ages, and the actual collapse of Western European society was caused by political, economic, and military issues, not religion.
The Real Causes of the Collapse is as follows;
The drop in living standards and literacy after the 5th century happened because the Western Roman Empire fell apart.
Barbarian Invasions, wave after wave of outside tribes invaded Roman lands, breaking central government control.
Economic Collapse, long-distance trade stopped, cities shrank, and money became scarce.
Broken Infrastructure, Roman roads, aqueducts, and public schools fell into ruin without a central government to fix them.
Instead of destroying learning, Christian institutions became the only places that kept it alive;
Christian monks spent their lives meticulously copying ancient Greek and Roman texts, without them, works by thinkers like Aristotle and Cicero would be lost forever.
For centuries, monasteries and cathedrals were the only schools left in Western Europe, priests and monks had to know how to read and write to run the church.
In the late 700s, Charlemagne worked with Christian scholars to build new schools.
They created a standardized way of writing and pushed for better education.
The cathedral schools run by the church eventually grew into Europe's first universities, like Oxford and Paris.
The idea that the Church caused a thousand years of ignorance was actually invented centuries later, during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
Writers wanted to make their own eras look superior, so they created a narrative that ancient Rome was perfect, the Christian Middle Ages were dark and superstitious, and they were bringing back the light
So, you fell for propaganda.
Incorrect, the strength of the US comes from cultural hegemony, a strong background of ethics and Christian moral philosophy, without it the US wouldn't exist.
Hell, the US exists right now in a state the Founding Fathers never would have supported, but, I am not American, so I digress.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of Christian Nationalism, and Christianity.
Christian nationalism is an ideology merging Christian identity with national belonging, it asserts that a nation's history and civic identity are inextricably tied to Christianity, and it advocates for the government to protect or promote Christian values, principles, and influence in public life.
It represents the legitimate civic duty of religious citizens to ensure their faith-based values and principles are represented in the public square and policy-making.
This is something supported by early Liberal thinkers, such as John Locke, the term "separation of Church and State" does not mean what you think it does.
The phrase "wall of separation" comes from a private letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802.
The original context was the Danbury Baptists were worried that the government might interfere with their religious rights.
Jefferson used the metaphor to reassure them that the federal government was blocked from interfering with their church.
The "wall" was built to keep the government out of the church, not to erase religious expression or faith-based morality from public policy and the state.
When the Constitution was written, several individual states had their own official, taxpayer-funded state churches, like the Congregational Church in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
The Founders wanted to prevent a federal government from picking one specific Christian denomination, like the Church of England, and making it the mandatory national church.
The Founders never intended to ban generic Christian expressions, like prayer in schools, public nativity scenes, or faith-based laws, from public life.
The idea that the "separation of church and state" was meant only to stop a national church, and not to erase Christian culture from public life, aligns perfectly with John Locke's views.
Locke did not want a secular society devoid of God, he argued for two specific concepts, the separation of duties and the protection of religious speech.
Locke wrote that the government and the church have completely different jobs;
The State: Its only job is to protect "civil interests" like life, liberty, health, and property.
The Church: Its only job is the salvation of souls.
Because the state's power is based on force, Locke said the state is completely useless at saving souls, as a king cannot force someone to truly believe a religion.
Therefore, the state has no right to pick an official church or punish people over theology.
However, Locke did not believe a society could survive without a shared, foundational moral system rooted in God.
A nation cannot exist without a dominant culture, and it is not strengthened by refusing to assimilate those who enter it.
Correct, I am creating an implicit hierarchy of cultures, as the cultures that practice child brides, sex slavery, cannibalism, bestiality, etc etc, are inherently inferior to the one that does not allow for those practices.
We measure the objective superiority of a culture by what it produces, its history, and the character of its people, what it allows, what it forbids, etc etc.
Of course I'm culturally biased, I live in a culture that doesn't have designated shitting streets.
I state I am not advocating for racial supremacist views because I am not, culture dictates how you ought to be viewed, as it influences your behaviors, values, and so on, while race is just a biological reality.
Why should they only be allowed in our nations when they adhere to our values? Because we adhere to the age old adage, "when in Rome, do as the Romans do."
If you visit a country where it is polite to take off your shoes before entering a home, you do it, even if you do not do this at home, you follow their lead to show respect.
If you start a job at a new company where everyone dresses in suits, you dress in a suit too, you adapt your behavior to match the culture of your new environment.
The saying comes from an ancient Christian story involving Saint Augustine and Saint Ambrose in the 4th century.
Augustine noticed that church customs in Rome were different than in his hometown, Saint Ambrose advised him: "When I am at Rome, I fast on a Saturday; when I am at Milan, I do not. Follow the custom of the church where you happen to be."
Over time, this advice was shortened into the popular phrase we use today.
I consider Islam to be inferior to every culture, Islam has fostered a highly conquest driven society, built on slavery, exploitation, and the extraction of wealth, so why do you think I consider it inferior?
Perhaps it is because it is incompatible with the West, whose own cultures have built the greatest civilizations known to man, who have not only circumnavigated the globe, but created technologies that they only begin to adopt now, because while they were negotiating the optimal age to fuck a child bride, we were discovering the world, making breakthroughs in medicine, science and so on, all while being ruled by Christian morals, and ethics.
Oh, and we did it while repelling their constant Jihad, and invasions, strange how it's rather easy to prove the inferiority of a culture.
But hey, you want to preach moral cultural relativism, go to the Ganges and take a swig.
