‘Patently Anti-Religious’: Tim Walz Has History Of Restricting Faith-Based Institutions

[chevyontheriver]

We’ll have to agree to disagree on this because nothing could make me vote for Trump/Vance.

Um, er, who said I was voting for Trump/Vance? Is your thinking so binary that my thinking Walz is too dictatorial means I am gonna vote for Trump and Vance. The Democrats have given us a really inadequate candidate pairing. Do I have to vote for them because the Republicans gave us an inadequate pairing? Or maybe we should find someone at least adequate to vote for.

I'll say it one more time. Detrich von Hildebrand (look him up and look up his political theory) tried hard to get the German populace out of their thinking that you had to vote Communist to stop the National Socialists OR vote National Socialist to stop the Communists. That was the mindset in late Weimar Germany. You had to vote for one to stop the other. The middle ground disappeared. It wasn't that people really wanted the National Socialists by any huge margin. They just voted for the bad guys because they were not the other bad guys. So ... they got the bad guys. The other bad guys would also have been terrible, as any German who survived the Stazi could tell you.

And voting for bad guys does something in the heads of voters. It pre-conditions them to accepting the bad things those bad guys they voted for start doing. It's operant conditioning. The bad guy you vote for becomes your guy, and you start approving bad things you would otherwise never approve of. The way out of this trap is to not vote for bad guys in the first place.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Ok. While I don’t agree with Harris/Walz on everything I’ll be voting for them unless I think there‘s a chance somebody else I agree with has a chance of winning.

Nobody else decent has a chance if most people will be voting for one bad candidate to stop the other bad candidate. The rational thing is to not vote for a bad candidate. It is not rational to vote for a bad candidate to stop another bad candidate. Voting for a bad candidate vacuums out the remaining oxygen in the room any good candidates need to win. So we end up with one of two bad candidates as winner. The reality is we are going to get a bad president. The big parties failed us (again) by giving us bad candidates. And we just keep voting for their picks. So why should the parties change? We vote for their picks in huge numbers so why not? It's time both big parties suffer some consequences of putting up such awful candidates. Ain't gonna happen this year with so many people committed already to voting for one bad candidate or the other.

At least Trump was foisted on us by a collusion of Hillary and big media. Hillary and Bill and the Donald and Melania were all (semi-) tight buddies until somebody talked The Donald into running for president. They needed to figure out how to get a weak candidate in there considering the strengths of the pool of Republicans already in the primary race. And the media got behind him in 2015 and 2016 until he won enough primaries that he had the Republican nomination. Then they turned on him on a dime. He was supposed to be defeated by the same media that made him, getting Hillary in as president. But Hillary was always so bad that she was unelectable, and Trump was savvy enough to win despite the media barrage against him (once he was the nominee). This was propaganda in action, but it didn't quite work. Hillary and the media unwittingly gave us Trump as president. And the media have not stopped propagandizing against him since he beat their candidate.

Back to Walz. I see picking him for VP as a move towards totalitarianism, a particular totalitarianism of the left like they have in Nicaragua. He scares me maybe more than Trump does. No, he does scare me more than Trump does. We used to think Minnesota politics was something special. And it was. That was back in the day when the Minnesota Democrats merged with the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party to form the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor-Party, back when lots of Democrats in other states were segregationists or had no real issue with segregation. The DFL was championed by Hubert H. Humphrey, a pro-labor, pro-farmer, anti-Communist, good government, look out for the little guy, racial harmony, happy warrior (his term) kind of guy. The pro-abortion stuff crept in later along with the LGBTQ stuff. I had a front row seat to see that all creep in as an active Democrat who ended up being frozen out of the party Humphrey forged in the previous generation. Walz, and before him governor Mark Dayton, changed that party into something Humphrey would have never recognized. Something my grandfather, also a DFL founder, couldn't recognize as anything else but alien. Something I had to leave behind because their values were contrary to decency. Oh, and they really really didn't want me either to resist their agenda. They had no room for dissent in their ranks.

 

[AlexB23]

Yeah, I like Chevy a lot and respect him.

Same. He is a good guy. We need more sensible moderates here such as him in 2024.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Happy for you! Not everyone gets to move from bad places.

I hope more of America will not turn into Minnesota, or San Francisco, one day ...

Minnesota got on the toboggan and slid down the hill. They have enough snow there to do that. Lots of the rest of the country just gets into shopping carts to go down the hill. It does seem like most everybody wants to go down the hill.

Toboggans can be lots of fun. I had one once. You load up a bunch of people and off you go down the hill. Some minimal steering, but once you push off you are committed to going down the hill. On a bad descent people can bail out into the snow though. That's what we need to do as a country. We're going down, straight for the trees. Best to bail out. Maybe the toboggan won't crack when it hits the trees. Mine did. And that was the end of that one.

 

[mourningdove~]

Back to Walz. I see picking him for VP as a move towards totalitarianism, a particular totalitarianism of the left like they have in Nicaragua.

Yes, this is what I see coming also ...
and I don't know if there is any stopping it now.

Only God.

 

[FireDragon76]

People in churches are generally in closer contact for longer periods than in retail establishments. There were probably sound medical reasons for this.
I am imagining the free college credits were at state universities. Did the religious schools comply with all the regulations the university imposed regarding textbooks, special certifications for teachers/adjuncts, etc.? Often religious schools want the funding but are unwilling to follow the rules. If a state U grants credits the course must mirror the course they teach.

People generally sing in churches or synagogues, and that put people especially at risk.

The ten person rule was probably so Jews had the minimum for a minyan, a quorum necessary to conduct a synagogue service. There is no minimum for a Christian service.

 

[FireDragon76]

Are they trying to say that Lutherans are anti-religious? Waltz a Lutheran.

As a former Lutheran myself, I see that as a positive. We've had too few Lutherans as politicians.

Lutherans don't put religion on a pedestal, in my experience, so that might explain where he is coming from. They don't believe the Church is some super-duper institution above society and immune from the same considerations we'ld give to any other institution.

 

[okay]

Sounds like his lockdown policies were similar to those in many other states. We were dealing with a deadly new disease, so had to make public health decisions without much information. From the headline I was expecting something waaay more than that.

 

[Fantine]

Different people might look differently at how COVID actions might be anti-religious.
Some people look at vaccine mandates as anti-religious. I can't remember exactly but I think it has something to do with embryonic stem cells years ago being part of the particular process of how vaccines are made. (If you know exactly, feel free to add to our knowledge.)
On the other hand, some people, believing in "love your neighbor as yourself," believe not getting vaccinated or masking is anti-religious. (I am in this group.)
However, I know a hospital chaplain who was let go for being unvaccinated--when he had a medical condition where his doctors told him vaccination would be dangerous (and the hospital was Catholic.)
I think we can see from these illustrations that many factors go into people's "perceptions" of what is anti-religious or not.
I believe Gov. Walz' motivation was saving lives, so I would put his actions in the loving his neighbor category.

 

[RileyG]

There are STILL people driving around masked, alone, in their cars, with their mouths covered, and their noses open to the fresh air. Such masking does NOTHING except to instill a false sense of safety. Most masks were not effective anyhow unless you carefully wore an N95 mask that few of us even had access to. Masking was a virtue signalling joke. And the folks who told us to do it knew it.

A very brief shutdown in the earliest days made some sense, back when there was some possibility of containment. But some people claimed there was racism in that. So, OK, containment failed. So we tripled down on containment. Except for big box stores, where the Covid could not spread for some reason.

It was a silly season that lasted way too long.

Yup. It was nothing but fear mothering.

 

[chevyontheriver]

I believe Gov. Walz' motivation was saving lives, so I would put his actions in the loving his neighbor category.

Lots of people have great motivations and end up doing bad things. Oliver Cromwell became a dictator to promote the rule of the people of England over despots.

 

[LizaMarie]

Nobody else decent has a chance if most people will be voting for one bad candidate to stop the other bad candidate. The rational thing is to not vote for a bad candidate. It is not rational to vote for a bad candidate to stop another bad candidate. Voting for a bad candidate vacuums out the remaining oxygen in the room any good candidates need to win. So we end up with one of two bad candidates as winner. The reality is we are going to get a bad president. The big parties failed us (again) by giving us bad candidates. And we just keep voting for their picks. So why should the parties change? We vote for their picks in huge numbers so why not? It's time both big parties suffer some consequences of putting up such awful candidates. Ain't gonna happen this year with so many people committed already to voting for one bad candidate or the other.

100% this. I used to even argue myself that we had to pick one or the other, now I have completely changed that view. When I see finally in 2024 how we got here with awful candidates that I can't really in conscience vote for.
And If I had a nickle for every time someone said to me recently- You have to vote for so and so to stop so and so or for the Fascist so we don't go communist- or for the communist so we don't go fascist I'd be rich.

 

[LizaMarie]

Um, er, who said I was voting for Trump/Vance? Is your thinking so binary that my thinking Walz is too dictatorial means I am gonna vote for Trump and Vance. The Democrats have given us a really inadequate candidate pairing. Do I have to vote for them because the Republicans gave us an inadequate pairing? Or maybe we should find someone at least adequate to vote for.

I'll say it one more time. Detrich von Hildebrand (look him up and look up his political theory) tried hard to get the German populace out of their thinking that you had to vote Communist to stop the National Socialists OR vote National Socialist to stop the Communists. That was the mindset in late Weimar Germany. You had to vote for one to stop the other. The middle ground disappeared. It wasn't that people really wanted the National Socialists by any huge margin. They just voted for the bad guys because they were not the other bad guys. So ... they got the bad guys. The other bad guys would also have been terrible, as any German who survived the Stazi could tell you.

And voting for bad guys does something in the heads of voters. It pre-conditions them to accepting the bad things those bad guys they voted for start doing. It's operant conditioning. The bad guy you vote for becomes your guy, and you start approving bad things you would otherwise never approve of. The way out of this trap is to not vote for bad guys in the first place.

I'm reading a book (Bonhoffer) about this very issue.

 

[FaithT]

Yup. It was nothing but fear mothering.

I wore a mask and didn’t and don’t want someone with Covid breathing on me.

 

[RileyG]

I wore a mask and didn’t and don’t want someone with Covid breathing on me.

Agreed. It just went on for far too long is what I meant.

 

[FaithT]

Agreed. It just went on for far too long is what I meant.

Yes it did. But someone I went to grade school with had both parents die from Covid within a week of each other and another woman I went to grade school with lost her mom to Covid around that same time.

 

[AlexB23]

Yes it did. But someone I went to grade school with had both parents die from Covid within a week of each other and another woman I went to grade school with lost her mom to Covid around that same time.

I prayed for your two friends' parents.

That is why I wore my mask in public indoor spaces a lot even into 2024, not to protect myself, but to protect others (my immune system is so strong, I can barely tell when I am sick). On January 2025, I will no longer wear my mask at work, except on planes and in grocery stores.

 

[Hank77]

‘Patently Anti-Religious’: Tim Walz Has History Of Restricting Faith-Based Institutions​

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has faced multiple lawsuits for allegedly infringing on religious liberty during his time as Minnesota governor.

Walz encountered legal challenges for lockdown policies that religious organizations argued were discriminatory, placing stricter requirements on churches than businesses. He also encountered pushback after signing a law that stripped faith-based schools of funding for a program that offers free college credits to high school students.

Walz determined in a May 13, 2020, executive order that retailers would be allowed to reopen at 50% capacity, but left religious gatherings capped at ten people. After Catholic and Lutheran churches in the state announced plans to resume meeting in-person regardless of the governor’s order, he negotiated to allow religious groups to operate at 25% capacity, according to the Star Tribune.

Two churches nevertheless moved forward with their lawsuit over discriminatory treatment. Walz settled in May 2021 after the state’s motion to dismiss was denied, agreeing to treat religious gatherings the same as “the least restricted secular business regulated by the order.”

Three churches backed by the Thomas More Society also filed a lawsuit in August 2020 arguing Walz violated their religious liberties by mandating masks, limiting capacity and requiring social distancing.

“Governor Walz, a former teacher, gets an F in religious liberties,” Thomas More Society special counsel Erick Kaardal said in a press release at the time.

The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld in May Walz’s declaration of a peacetime emergency in response to COVID-19, according to the Upper Midwest Law Center.

Becket senior counsel Diana Thomson called the state’s decision to exclude faith-based schools “patently anti-religious.”

‘Patently Anti-Religious’: Tim Walz Has History Of Restricting Faith-Based Institutions

Democratic vice president pick Tim Walz has faced multiple lawsuits for infringing on religious liberty during his time as Minnesota governor.

dailycaller.com

“We are grateful that Governor Walz entered into respectful dialogue with us, recognized the spiritual needs of our faithful, and agreed that it is possible to resume worship services safely and responsibly,” said Archbishop Bernard Hebda, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. “Hopefully, our experience of constructive dialogue can serve as a roadmap for churches across the country suffering from similar inequities, whether intended or unintended, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are grateful that Becket and Sidley Austin LLP helped us to guard our first freedom—religious freedom—so that Catholics can receive the Eucharist and be strengthened in their response to the challenges of this trying time.”

The Archbishop is a wise man. Hopefully, many people will adopt his Christian attitude and his capacity to foster constructive relationships.

 

[chevyontheriver]

I'm reading a book (Bonhoffer) about this very issue.

Is that the Metaxis biography by chance?

 

[Fantine]

Lots of people have great motivations and end up doing bad things. Oliver Cromwell became a dictator to promote the rule of the people of England over despots.

You do know we are talking about preventing the spread of a pandemic, don't you?
And that his safety regulations gave Minnesota the fourth lowest death rate in the country?
Hardly a "bad thing."