Religious Freedom

The event that prompts this post is, I'll admit, a bit outdated. Remember that raid on the Fundamentalist Mormon sect (known as FLDS)? Let me recap for a second in case you forgot. A teenage girl called an anonymous tipline to say that she had been abused on the ranch (Yearning for Zion, I believe it is called, if you'd like to wikipedia it). Alright, so that was good, right? She worked up the courage to call out whomever this asshole who abused her was, and hopefully he will be thrown in jail.
But no. Instead, the next day, the powers that be invade the ranch, and take over 400 children away from their families! Because of a phone call?
Think about a regular community, like Traer, or in Ohio like Berea. A girl is abused and calls the proper authorities. Would the police raid every home in the town and take away all legal minors? Hell no!

What I am saying is that I am with the FLDS on that case--apparently the Supreme Court of the state of Texas was, too. One phone call does not warrant taking hundreds of children away from their home. It was, clearly, an issue of religious discrimination. People think the FLDS is bizarre (which it is), and maybe even barbaric, because they allow polygamy, and they pretty openly think men are better than women. Not to mention, they tried to go off and live on their own! How dare they!
Well listen, the fact is, just like freedom of speech, when you have a country with freedom of religion, you have to let the weirdos in.
The state claimed their right to take away the children, because they feared them being 'socialized' to become abusive. The courts rejected this as too broad.

Ok, so thats my opinion on that case. But it brings up some interesting questions about freedom of religion that I just don't know the answer to.
Freedom of speech laws have had many famous court cases to sort how far it goes. Basically anything that isn't obscene (as defined by the Law) is free. But what about freedom of religion? It seems intuitive that we would want a vast range of freedom of religion--but then cases like the FLDS weaken those intuitions. Religious pacifists don't have to fight in wars; this seems fair. Can a religion be openly racist? I would say that should probably be allowed, for similar reasons as freedom of speech. Where do we set the limits? Any suggestions? We can play it safe up in abstract theory land to simplify things.

The second question I have is about organized religions vs. non-organized religions. If the law is willing to grant religious people exceptions from obligations, which they ought to, why can't irreligious people have the same perks? Ok yes, you shouldn't get to avoid draft because its inconvenient, but that isn't exactly what I'm saying.
What I am saying is that, I don't belong to any religious group. But I have ethical standards I take just as seriously as devoutly religious people. Why should I be legally obliged to do something I consider unethical, if religious people don't? And how many members does a church need to have before their beliefs are accepted?
Certainly we can imagine strange religions which would bring serious problems--like a religion which had a compulsory communion of LSD or another illegal substance. The government has let this type of thing go with certain Native American religions; why couldn't a new start-up religion be just as valid?
I'm not asking these questions in order to cheat the system--I'm just trying to consider a principled way to give equal rights to all religious and non-religious people, regardless of their particular faith's popularity, normality, or age. And this question is proving more difficult than I thought it would be. Any takers?

The Thin Line between Tolerance and Relativism

Though I consider myself a Democratic Socialist, there is something frightening to me about the increasing liberalness of our society. But let me first justify that comment. I am looking at the big picture here; and it seems clear to me that from generation to generation our nation, and most of the world, is becoming more liberal. From emancipation, to civil rights, to near universal suffrage. I mean, our parents generation would have had legal troubles with marrying someone of a different race. That is fucked up. But we've gone a long way. Sure, there are a lot of people who are still against interracial marriage today--but these tend to be older people, raised in a different cultural climate.
Homosexuals will probably be able to get married soon. Who knows, maybe in a few more generations the government will just get out of the marriage business completely. People wouldn't be punished via taxation for their decision to remain single.
But I am happy about all these changes. I've just read J.S. Mill's "On Liberty", and I'm really pumped up about liberalism. I am sure I will be on the liberal side of things for at least a few more years.
So what is it that frightens me about modern society? You ready for this? Relativism.

One of the most wonderful things about living in an industrialized nation on Earth today as opposed to 100+ years ago, besides educational opportunities and 40-hour workweeks (Thank you liberalism!), is our tolerance for those unlike us. No, not everyone is tolerant. And most people aren't tolerant of everything. But more and more people are becoming tolerant of other people who hold different views and live different lifestyles than themselves. This is beautiful! Diversity is wonderful. Freedom is all about living your life as you please--deciding what is best for yourself, deciding what sources you can get your information from, deciding where to work, what to put into your body*, etc.
The problem is that I hear more and more people from my generation faltering. They somehow make the logical gap from tolerance for others to relativism about truth. The implicit argument makes enough sense:
1. I shouldn't judge people for disagreeing with me about what is true or moral, because I don't know any better than they do.
2. But I certainly know a lot about what is true and moral.
/:. 3. So, what is 'true for me' must be different than what is 'true' for someone else.

The problem with this argument is premise 2. The whole idea behind tolerance, as I see it, is that we DON'T know what we think we know. I think that most of us would admit that we probably have some false beliefs. And we would admit we aren't sure which of these beliefs we are wrong about. So, we ought to have tolerance of others based on our acknowledged ignorance. The problem is that people want to have it both ways. They want to be tolerant AND arrogant. They refuse to admit their own ignorance.
Take religion--this is a prime example. Let's say Sally is a Christian, and Sarah is Jewish. Sally is tolerant. But is she tolerant for the right reasons?
The wrong reason: Sally thinks that both her and Sarah have true religious beliefs. She believes Christ is the son of God is 'true for her', and Sarah's not believing so is 'true for Sarah'.
The right reason: Sally realizes that such a deep metaphysical question such as those about religion are unknowable by humanity. She acknowledges that her belief in Christianity is a 'leap of faith', and as such, is fallible. Epistemically, she is in the same position as Sarah, so she respects her differing beliefs.

I see this relativism all over the place. And I see the logical slip that causes it. And its an easy mistake to make. So how can we perpetuate tolerance while retaining absolutism about truth?

Ideolocide

If Stephen Colbert can have 'truthiness', then I can have 'ideolocide'.
I invent the word 'ideolocide' at the risk of looking like a fool, because it seems to me there probably already is a word for what I am thinking of, but I just don't know what that word is.
'Ideolocide' shall be defined as the attempted destruction of an ideology--this is not to be confused with 'genocide', which could be broadly construed as the attempted destruction of a political group (though I think most of us traditionally think of it as a race or culture being destroyed).
So ideolocide is the attempted elimination of an idea, or group of ideas.
Ideolocide is seemingly what the 'war on terror' is attempting to do: Destroy the idea of religious fanatacism. I want to talk about this from two directions: 1. Is ideolocide possible? 2. Is ideolocide ethical?

1. Is ideolocide possible?
I'm not really sure if the possibility of ideolocide is a necessary precursor to an attempted ideolocide; after all, the Bush administration has suggested that the war on terror is unending. This is sort of strange--the idea of a war being, in principle, 'unwinnable'. (The logical positivists certainly would have argued it to be meaningless.) Nevertheless, it being strange certainly doesn't disqualify it.
So what would have to happen for an ideolocide to be a success? Well, for starters, we would have to eliminate the idea/ideology in its believer's heads. This could seemingly be done by killing and/or brainwashing all believers.
This isn't all, of course. To complete an ideolocide, we would also need to brainwash (or, rationally convince) anyone who would 'contemplate' believing the idea/ideology in the future. This would probably involve some sort of education program, which would have to be reinstated worldwide. Even if we were only attempting a national ideolocide, our education program would need to be worldwide--ideas can cross borders, regardless of how isolationist a nation may be.
This education program might not be quite as tough as it seems. All we would need to do is create a culture which would render the idea/ideology unthinkable. Certainly there have been cultures historically who have rendered certain ideologies unthinkable: In the middle ages, for example, atheism was considered so unthinkable that people actually considered atheism an impossible belief--they thought God's existence was so self-evident that anyone who denied it was delusional.
So, something like this is what we would need to put into place to make an ideolocide successful.
Also, let's not forget: we would need to eliminate any literature which spoke of the idea/ideology. We couldn't just eliminate literature which promoted or condoned the idea/ideology, but anything which could spark the idea in a critical reader's mind. Now I'm not sure this would be possible, at least for any ideas we find threatening. To eliminate religious fanatacism, we would have to eliminate all religious books! This seems impossible. We could burn millions of books, but chances are quite high that copies would remain, in hiding. Soviet Russia tried to do this, with minimal success--and that was just nationwide. A worldwide attempt at this would probably be impossible.
So it seems rather clear that what would have to be done for a successful ideolocide is impossible. For it is not just a matter of killing or brainwashing a group of people, but of killing or brainwashing anyone who would even critically examine an idea/ideology without rejecting it out of hand.

Nevertheless, it still may be argued that an attempted or partial ideolocide would be helpful, even if it could never be completed. So let us address our second question:
2. Is ideolocide ethical?
Ok, so I think it would be trivial to say ideolocide is unethical with respect to certain ideas/ideologies. That it not the question I have in mind. What I want to ask is, is ideolocide ever ethical? or, Is ideolocide unethical in principle?
I think the best way to ask this question is to look at a morally reprehensible idea, such as "The Aryan Race is the master race", and ask whether an attempted ideolocide of that is ethical.
I think it is clear to a Kantian that ideolocide is unethical, as it involves categorically unethical acts: Killing, Brainwashing (Taking away the free will of another rational being), destruction of knowledge (Because, after all, even if the idea/ideology itself was false, some of the things which don't promote the idea/ideology itself but still mention it would certainly contain valuable information.)
But hey, who is a Kantian anymore anyway?
What about to a utilitarian? Well, this seems like the best route to take for an ideolocide advocate. It basically reduces the question to this: Are there any circumstances in which the attempted destruction of an idea/ideology would create more pleasure/less pain than failing to destroy an idea/ideology would?
And it seems, at least to me, that there could be certain extreme situations in which the answer to this question would be 'Yes', and thus, ideolocide would not be wrong in principle.
But don't worry, hippies, this doesn't open up the floodgates. Because think about what would have to be taken into account when we do our utilitarian calculation:
1. Severely reduced freedom, worldwide, of education, religion, speech, press.
2. Imprisonment and 'reeducation' program to anyone who attempted to exercise freedoms. If this failed (or if there was risk their idea/ideology could be spread to others) it seems like death would be the only other solution.
3. Not only would you have to punish anyone who exercised freedoms of speech, but you would have to somehow destroy the idea from their heads. This couldn't even be a matter of convincing them not to hold the ideology--it would be a matter of eliminating the ideology completely and all traces of it.
4. A limitation of freedom would be a) fascism, and b) The suppression involved in the attempted ideolocide would drive people to develop negative ideologies toward the state, risking rebellion.
5. The risk of a slippery slope; resulting in the attempted ideolocide of any ideas/ideologies that disagreed with official state policy.

As we can see, this world resembles something close to Orwell's 1984. It is hard to imagine a situation which would necessitate ideolocide, short of threat of the genocide of the entire human race.
And, in terrorism, I fail to see this. Terrorists do want to kill people, but not everyone. And the amount of people we would have to kill to commit ideolocide of Islamic fascism would probably be around the same amount of people they would have to kill of ours to succeed. Not to mention, the fascism we would have to attempt would probably be just as bad as Islamic fascism, short of it being based in religion. So it doesn't seem like ideolocide in this situation fits the bill of 'ethical', even to a utilitarian. Stooping to the level of an enemy, or even to a level above that of an enemy that is still morally reprehensible, is not worth fighting an indestructible ideology. It seems the best thing to do is to attempt to protect ourselves, and attempt to show that our ideology is better than the Islamic fundamentalists'. Patience and self-protection. And yeah, we can protect those that are with us on this fight as well. But protection at the cost of giving up our ethics would be wrong, as is, in my opinion, the attempted ideolocide of religious fundamentalism.
Conservatives think that the free market should guide us as far as products, supply and demand, and economics goes. So why do they want the government to limit the marketplace of ideas? Certainly the threatening and unethical ones will be weeded out, right?