The Rights of Man...

Chirac Proposes Ban on Head Scarves: France must reaffirm its secularism, president says. Law would limit religious garb in schools, per the L.A. Times. PARIS — President Jacques Chirac proposed a law Wednesday to ban Muslim head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes in public schools, stepping into a divisive cultural conflict by reaffirming the secularism at the core of the French national identity. You gotta hand it to the French. They are cutting edge when it comes to addressing issues of prime concern. This act is being done to supposedly affirm the separation of "religion and state," promote tolerance, women's rights, and national values. Note how secularists think here - the idea of the separation of religion and state (it's not church and state anymore) permits the government to ban religious garb from schools - ostensibly because the schools are government run. Promoting tolerance? Where's the reasoning there? Do they think that simply because a person is not dressed in a certain manner that no one will be able to recognize their religious persuasion? I doubt it. They'll find that just taking away someone's clothes is not sufficient - they'll have to limit other religious activities they deem to be obstructing national values. It's said that Europe is not only post-Christian but purely secular. Could acts like these be considered the logical outcome of such a worldview? Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Ethics, compared the basis for the worldviews of the founding fathers for both the French and the American Revolutions. Here's an excerpt, "The American democracy is not founded upon the emancipated man but, quite on the contrary, upon the kingdom of God and the limitation of all earthly powers by the sovereignty of God. It is indeed significant when, in contrast to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, American historians can say that the federal constitution was written by men who were conscious of original sin and of the wickedness of the human heart."