i think you feel confusion because what i'm working on is not the argument on the face, but the underlying presuppositions which produce the disconnect.
i know you don't call them religious values, because it is sitting in a blind spot enabled by your worldview. you take the moral framework for granted, but moral claims are always in the realm of religion.
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any government that is not publicly and explicitly religious in such a way that God (or the Church) is the top of the hierarchy results in relegation of religion to the private sphere and requires religion to accept a secular state as the prime authority.
the only quibble i would make is that it isn't that it is the church OR the state at the top of the hierarchy - historically they have their spheres and check each other.
but other than that,
yes! this is not an opinion, this is historical fact. this was an explicit thing about of enlightenment political philosophy - produced by the basic axiom that man has natural rights, and that government authority comes from the bottom (individual) up. but this is never defended, just stated.
for example, locke wrote "the commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for procuring, preserving, and advancing their civil interests...civil interests i call life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things." and "no private person has any right, in any manner, to prejudice another person in his civil enjoyments, because he is of another church or religion. all the rights and fanchises that belong to him as a Man, or as a denizen, are inviolably to be preserved to him. These are not the Business of Religion." in other words, the only role of the commonwealth is advancing civil interests; these aren't part of religion. and because lcoke takes human these rights as given (without justification!) because you're man, not because of any specific religious claim, the commonwealth becomes totalizing, because religion isn't pat of those interests. but note that the actual justification that man has rights is just assumed. why does man have those rights?
or spinoza - i mean super radical that man is sovereign, and sovereignty is transferred from men to the state, and that's why the state is sovereign. when you transfer your rights to the state, then the state is absolutely sovereign. he avoids the unproven rights and just goes on a theory of power, but this produces an even more radical conclusion: "those (and only those) who have sovereignty have jurisdiction over everything, and that 'all law' depends solely on their decision, I meant not only civil law but also law concerning sacred matters. For they must interpret and defend this law also." he continues that the thesis that "Divine right, i.e. the right concerning sacred matters, depends absolutely on the decree of the supreme civil powers, who are its interpreters and defenders....is (1) true, (2) good for the security of the State, and (3) good for the increase of piety."
not just them. Voltaire, montesuieu, diderot, etc. all said this. your quote is almost a perfect summary of the explicit political program of enlightenment philosophers: religion must accept the secular state as the sole public sovereign and retreat to the private sphere.
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Or even more simple - Any government that is not a total theocracy is an oppression against religion.
no, that doesn't follow. the fact that the government becomes total is a fact of secular governance. we can easily see this by asking: what checks the state? what actual authority is there to tell the state that they're wrong? there's not one, not from a systemic perspective. you'll probably say "the people!" duh because youre a modernist and all you're doing is reiterating locke / spinoza and you arrive back at the same conclusion that when the people give their rights to the state the state becomes absolute.
the opposite of a secular state is not a theocracy. medieval societies were not theocracies. in fact, a theocracy is a modernist and reactionary form of government in opposition to a secular state!
a secular state may become a oppressive, but it doesn't have to be. but even if it isn't oppressive, that doesn't mean it isn't totalizing.
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You, along with many of the Christians on this board have adopted this rigid position that any government value that is not explicitly and exactly your religious value equates to the oppression and relegation of your religion. Okay - so say it bluntly. What do you want? Do you wish for the US to adopt the Theocracy of Zobel? Cuz anything short of that puts something else at the top of the hierarchy.
ok, now that we've demonstrated you've established a false dichotomy (secular vs theocracy) we can address this bit of pearl clutching. no, i don't want a theocracy. the puritan theocracy canceled christmas, that sucks. nobody likes that.
the problem is, a secular state is totalizing and has no check. without a check, you get unfounded opinions on what morality actually is. in some you get a liberal, capitalist state like the US. in other states you get nationalism - because a state that unapologetically looks out for the interest of its people is like spinoza's raison d'etre! when you say the greatness of the state us the best good, you get mussolini style fascism. combine that with eugenics you get nazis. china took like the worst of the above approach and combined mussolini's fascism but without the spiritual critique of liberalism, so you have a nationalist historically restorative one party economic control for national power while making marx's nightmare of humans tied to production much realer than the west ever did -- except the CCP still owns the factory and there's somehow still a bourgeouisie. womp womp.
and best of all, there's
no foundation on which you can stand to critique any of these other than pointing to locke and saying "nuh uh! we do
so have rights!" china explicity opposes the western philosophy here, by the way.
what i want is to take the step to say: man doesn't have natural rights from nowhere. we aren't equal in some weird abstract sense while not being equal in others because of Reason (and if you disagree with me, you're just Unreasonable). man has dignity and worth and value because of two reasons: he was created in the image of God, and that creator God joined the divine nature to the human nature, elevating it irrevocably. once we start there, we can actually come up with a theory of government that follows, a vision of the Good we can agree on, but it is based on a divine revelation from above.
til then, when some other group gets enough power (nationalist or muslim or whatever!) to turn the secular government in a different direction, there's literally no way you can say they're right or wrong. because
religion is where morality comes from, and
religion is explicitly relegated to the private square in a secular state.
thank you for coming to my ted talk.
