The Democratic Party: Home of the Non-Religious Left (Wonder Land)

PLANO, Texas -- Soon after its decision in Lawrence on private sexual acts between consenting adults of the same gender, the Supreme Court this week decided that next year its bucketful of gasoline for the eternal flames of America's "culture wars" will be to decide the constitutionality of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In creating a government designed as a blessing to people yet unborn (i.e., us), the framers of the Constituiton took a long view of the future. Today conservatives of that tradition assay to similarly take the long view into the future. And it is impossible to take a long view of the future without reference to a long historical view of the past.

The framers did not make an explicitly theistic government, but patently intended that we should have a government which did not exert itself to control, coerce, or coopt our efforts to pass religious traditions and institutions down through the generations.

That is actually part and parcel of the broader First Amendment project to assure that the government did not assay to coerce the opinions of the people in any regard other than to prevent them (by means short of a constituttional amendment) from instituting a religiously/politically coercive government. And indeed historically religion has been important to the legitimacy of government.

The project of the Non-Religious Left is to delegitimate Christian (i.e., traditional, highly influential religious) institutions. That project would (does) have the effect of delegitimating tradition generally. And it is not the parchment it is written on but only the tradition of respect for it which gives the U.S. Constitution any force whatsoever. It is after all scarcely the case that no other country has the U.S. Constitution; since the words of the document have been in the public domain for centuries they all do. But only in the U.S. is there a tradition of respect for that document as "the law of the land."

Hence the title of Ann Coulter's latest book--Treason relates strongly to the effect of the project of the left not "merely" on Christian observance but on respect for the limited-government strictures of the Constitution--and ultimately on the respect of the government for we-the-people and our posterity.

Leftism is betrayal of our own posterity--it is disgraceful in principle and in fact. And the conceit that journalism is or should be "objective"--thus respected more than the Constitution--is the fatuous fallacy which lies at its root as a systematic influence in America. The idea that journalism should be enabled by the government--eg, by censoring the people in order to create clear broadcast channels for specially connected FCC licensees--and respected by the people with the trust associated with the Constitution itself--is directly counter to the First Amendment.

Journalism calls itself "the press", not simply applying "First Amendment protection" to inself alone but insinuating that there is no right to deviate from the line which is convenient for journalists to adhere to. No right, ultimately, for the Supreme Court to recognize any difference between what is convenient for journalism, and the meaning of the Constitution. That is the implication of a "campaign finance reform" which gives print and broadcast journalism license to wage politics while muzzling those which the cabal of self-anointed "objective journalists" does not accept into its Establishment.

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