Reply #53: You are advocating Platonic Republicanism.

[Leopolds Ghost]

Ironically, after Katrina you suggested that large swaths of New Orleans will not be redeveloped because they are floodplain, regardless of the property rights of the (what you are now labelling) "ignorant religious people" who used to live there. If you still believe that, fair enough. But it makes me question the contention that atheism is inherently progressive.

A prominent environmentalist who lives up the street from me, an otherwise great guy who wrote a book predicting the disaster, would agree with the notion of ignoring the property rights of the ignorant people who, blinded by their superstitious notions, chose to live on a floodplain.

Thus proving that enlightened meritocracy by atheists and Plato's "philosophers" (technocrats) is not all it's cut out to be.

That's why I call myself a "radical Christian" (http://jesusradicals.com)
since I regularly encounter atheists on the left who detest notions
of "radical" anything, especially social justice (chiefly because it
would affect their comfort level), and my affluent, non-religious
neighbors have just as much contempt for the working class masses
as anyone else in the upper middle class. In other words, they are
social libertarians, not leftists.

Why put them in charge? They are no more progressive than the average
liberal Christian (who outnumber fundamentalists, BTW, so your premise
is incorrect.)

Thus leading me to agree
with Michael Lind and Thomas Frank that the problem is class,
not religion. Do you want two parties of the overclass?
That is what you will get with one fascist (allegedly "fundamentalist")
party and one avowedly atheist party.

Religious radicals on the LEFT instituted Separation of Church and
State because it was part of their religious and political beliefs,
after centuries of persecution for their religious beliefs.