The scores of millions of people killed by secular governments is simply a historical fact. If you don’t believe this, pick up The Little Black Book of Communism.
No amount of ad hominem, personal attacks against me or others can erase the legacy of death and control by secular governments in the modern era.
Also, instead of attempting to paint me as a bigot, try fully reading my original post where I said this is spreading to the middle class.
Creating strawmen arguments is fun, no doubt, but really is a waste of your valuable time. [/quote]
I don’t think that calling an argument bigoted is necessarily ad hominem (as long as it is bigoted). The definitions for bigotry are pretty explicit. I don’t say this because Gandalf is right. He is pretty uniformly weak in his lefty arguments.
Also, as I have said before, turning the blog into a book club is lame. One can always claim any silly theory (including a flat earth) and then reference a book that other blog readers have not (and sometimes should not) read. Also, relying on readings of specific books as an epistemological primary source has inherent weaknesses. This is why militant wahabism tends to be a poor way of improving one’s life (just ask the Taliban).
Regarding your specific assertions (which seem mostly based on the book you repeatedly reference), lets discuss those. You seem to be conflating the concept of secularity and anti-religious bigotry. Secularity is generally defined as something that is not specifically (or that is separate from) religious. Most public institutions in the United States are explicitly secular. In the US religion is considered a protected class. This means that religion must be reasonably accommodated and not discriminated against.
The distinction you are making with reference to your text (your Quran if you will-humor ar ar) is that many post-Lenin communist movements have an explicit hatred or distrust of religion. Some of the best examples are seminal works describing religion as pacifying or addicting. Mao’s work “Am I a liberal?” comes to mind.
However, the weakness in this conflation is in the domain of the pious Communist. China has more religious people (who support their empire) than we do. Cuba has major problems but encourages religion (primarily in unofficial ways). While I am less familiar with them, I strongly suspect that most of the Latin American leftist experience is steeped in religion.
Where the argument that you reference succeeds is in some of the early versions of political communism. Russian, Chinese, and some parts of European Communism were very anti religious.
The underlying problem with the conflation that you make is that legally enforced redistribution of wealth is not seen by most as antithetical to belief in the supernatural. For example, welfare is not particularly anti-christian.
also: I am intentionally not addressing the primary thesis of the book in this post.
