Let me try!
Is it any less Africa if there are no more black people?
Is it any less Israel if there are no more Jewish people?
Wow. So many options open up when you think about it like that.
Secular humanism has been accepted as a religion for First amendment purposes.
Non theistic Buddhism is still considered a religion.
Worldview might be a better term for us to use in understanding people's first amendment rights. And also the idea that there is no neutral worldview. E.g. "secularism" is directly hostile to many religious viewpoints, and to the degree that its proponents use it to oppose religion, secularism becomes a religion/worldview/belief system.
Germany shut down all their nuclear power plants. The Amish don't use tractors or whatever. I guess we could have AI free countries. The last bastions of true humanity or something.
The old gods lost their power because they had been conquered by the Spirit of Christ.
It's a danger to beware of, that people might start to listen to LLMs like they have the gospel truth on morality and spiritual matters. But they're just an image of a man given breath and speech, without true wisdom. Man took sand and copper and formed the simulation of a mind. If we then bow down to it and obey it, we're fools.
The elected office of sheriff, being a law enforcement office, can push back at the county level to overreaching state government, in a similar way to how state government through states' rights can push back against an encroaching federal government. It's a power of government that is closer to the people and more accountable to them, theoretically. Not to say it can't be abused but it can also serve a valuable role in checks and balances. Look up the principle of the Lesser Magistrate.
Sheriffs can push back but how often they do? Many sheriffs in the US are strongly aligned with Trump making it very difficult to see how they will push back against him. It’s more likely that they will push back against the state governors who are pushing back against the federal government
"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."
It's a long-standing trait of adulthood to be able to reflect and integrate the sometimes painful training of childhood as being necessary for producing the mindsets and behaviors of to function in society.
I am like 99% sure that quote is referring to self discipline and rigor in study and has absolutely nothing at all to do with your parents slapping you.
That Soviet constitution (like all communist movements that I know of) sounds utopian and unrealistic.
The American Framers, many coming from a worldview that saw humans as inherently sinful and corruptable, built as many safeguards into the system as possible to prevent that human nature from running unchecked.
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