You're affirming the consequent. The narrow views offered by televangelist thought leaders and their ACLU arch enemies try to box our thought into a highly restrictive world of either/or. You argue, much as does the ACLU, that if America can't be an establishment of Christianity, then vestiges of our Christian culture must be expunged.
However, we can show that is a false premise. Christian and other religious symbols, even when displayed by themselves, need not be considered exclusive promotion of one religion or another. Sometimes a cross is just a cross. What it means in the minds of the perennially offended should have no bearing on our desires to remind ourselves of our cultural traditions. We should put the onus on the accuser (e.g. the ACLU) to prove that such displays of religiosity are forms of establishment. Sometimes it's impossible to show otherwise. But as with the Cima Road cross in the Mojave desert, the accuser should come under intense scrutiny. What is his agenda? For whom is he acting? How is the symbol to which he has drawn the court's attention truly a message of establishment? If we had judges with the intellectual strength to block attempts to change our culture through law, there would rarely be a situation where the ACLU and its analogs could get a word in edgewise.
Because so many people have bought into the notion of either/or, we end up with judges who can't see the forest for the trees. With your 700 Club filter on the facts, you would argue that they are revising our laws with judicial activism. What is more often the case is our ever more narrow interpretations of law as a defense against the "oppressed" and the "victim." This is about victimization worship, not secularization, and it is all due to our culture's hypersensitivity to being offended. We should more often than not ask ourselves why we should care at all. For example, What does it matter that a man who drives through the Mojave desert once every three years finds a lonely cross offensive? His personal concerns should be outweighed by the interests of others, who have historic, family, and religious interests in maintaining the memorial. After all, it is not a symbol of oppression to most Americans. Yet weak-kneed judges, who have bought into the same illogical rules of either/or that you have, put an impossible amount of weight on this manipulative figure's personal desires.
If you think we can solve the problems described above by declaring America to be legally Christian, you're sadly mistaken. Certain Christians who also like to be offended will then have the power to go around being affronted by all manner of secular trivia, and the courts will again be filled with suits against Halloween, popular music, written material, websites, pagan celebrations of the vernal equinox.
If you only get your news from the 700 Club or NewsMax, then every challenge to Judeo-Christian symbolism could appear to be an affront to your beliefs. But they have an agenda, and it's to gain political power for themselves, as well as access to your wallet. I'd hazard a guess that they're well into yours. But the backlash against a zealotry to establish a Christian nation by law only makes it harder for us to have a balanced view of our culture. You are well aware of the unconstitutional religious tests that are sometimes applied to our public officials. There wouldn't be any widespread support for such tests if the public weren't worried about the occasional demagogue who stands for a "Re-Christianizing" of America by law, either in secret or in the open.
The unintended consequences of what you propose would be sweeping. The religious civil wars of our European past are just one indication of the strife your ambitions would bring us. That strife, in the minds of our Founding Fathers, could be avoided by requiring government to stay out of the realm of religion. Strife between Catholics and Protestants was raging in Ireland at the time of our Revolution. At that time, Penal Laws were established, blocking land ownership and voting rights to Irish Catholics by the Imperialist Anglican invaders. Our Founding Fathers had history and current events to demonstrate to them that a very real crisis of religious strife had to be averted in America. Furthermore, they knew they would have to handle Jews and Muslims, as well as Hindus, Deists, atheists, agnostics, and pantheists.
Their solution was to bolt the first amendment into our Constitution with a proscription to official religion. And it has worked. Over time, our expectations of its meaning has changed, but it means exactly the same thing today that it did then: the government has absolutely no power to demonstrate a preference for one religious sect or another. Advocating religious establishment is an unintelligent solution to a problem that with just a little more discipline of thought can be solved without modifying the original intent of the Constitution, which (and on this we agree) was never intended to suppress religious sentiment or public expression of faith.
Indeed. The scenarios I have listed are the logical consequence of the interpretation of Separation as forbidding the government from endorsing a particular religious viewpoint. It does no such thing but in fact only forbids the government from establishing a certain denomination as the state church.
The government can direct prayers in school just as they can in Congress and on Thanksgiving. It can display the Ten Commandments, just as it can have crosses on public-owned graveyards, and it can proclaim the supremacy of God just as it does on the one dollar bill.
You argue, much as does the ACLU, that if America can't be an establishment of Christianity, then vestiges of our Christian culture must be expunged.
No I don't. You have falsely ascribed this position to me. That is why I asked you not to speak for me.
America is not an "establishment" of a religion, Christian or otherwise. The form of government of this Christian Nation is one based on biblical Christian principles as enshrined in British Common Law.
Christian and other religious symbols, even when displayed by themselves, need not be considered exclusive promotion of one religion or another.
They are Christian symbols and it is an absurd legal fiction to say that they are not, but this contradiction is necessary if the judicial tyrants are to claim that they don't violate the separation of God from government.
The enemies of the Churches and the State are working on the pledge right now. If they can ban Lincoln's Under God from the pledge then surely the money is next. The ACLU commies have to boil the frog slowly if they are going to ever deprive Christians of their freedom.
People such as yourself facilitate this.
If you think we can solve the problems described above by declaring America to be legally Christian, you're sadly mistaken.
I don't have to, because it already is.
If you only get your news from the 700 Club or NewsMax, then every challenge to Judeo-Christian symbolism could appear to be an affront to your beliefs. But they have an agenda, and it's to gain political power for themselves, as well as access to your wallet. I'd hazard a guess that they're well into yours.
I have to say, your view point seems like it was filtered through atheist sites like infidels.org and marxists.org.
But the backlash against a zealotry to establish a Christian nation by law only makes it harder for us to have a balanced view of our culture.
What you describe as zealotry is in fact a backlash against the federal judicial tyranny, who through a specious interpretation of the law made the government the enemy of religion exactly as the Founders feared. We are not trying to alter this nation into something it never was, we are only trying to take back the rights that dirty liberal Democrat scum took away from us and we will get them back.
You are well aware of the unconstitutional religious tests that are sometimes applied to our public officials.
When Pro-death penalty judges start whining that Republican are putting a religious test on them by keeping them off the bench, I will have no sympathy for them.
There wouldn't be any widespread support for such tests if the public weren't worried about the occasional demagogue who stands for a "Re-Christianizing" of America by law, either in secret or in the open.
Exactly. You make the ACLU agenda possible. Only by believing the propaganda of the ACLU could someone come to have such an irrational fear of Christians and their role in this Nation under God. I will return to you the favor you did me when you gave me the benefit of the doubt that I was deceived by the wicked running-dog Kapitalist televangelists. You are an ACLU dupe.