I think most interesting is that Henry's voice called out for the defeat of our Constitution. And on a related note, your arguments all hinge on quotes, comments, and assertions about the founding fathers and their biographers, but in no way shape or form the Constitution itself. These arguments raged then, and for good reason, your camp lost.
Henry advocated a bill in the Commonwealth of Virginia which would have established tax-supported churches. James Madison, author of our Constitution's first amendment, successfully defeated Henry's proposal, and instead lobbied for a bill forbidding such conduct on the part of the state. At one point, Madison proposed:
We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority. --Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 1785
So we were having this argument to one degree or another back at the founding of our country and our states. Your camp lost then, too. While Madison's bill failed to pass, Henry's also lost. And no Virginia church tax was adopted based on Henry's proposal! Thomas Jefferson authored a religious freedom bill which finally did pass the next year, and had no support for church taxes and no establishment of Christianity for the state of Virginia.
This is one area where I differ with the Bush administration: the faith based ministries, in order to maintain their respect for separation of church and state (their words), all faiths are purportedly supported. That means our tax dollars are going to Mosques. The Bush administration is clearly appeasing the Christian nationalists. This program may eventually be struck down by the Supreme Court, and I hope that it is. I would like to be free to choose where my own dollars do the most good, or not, depending on what I can afford. I'd rather not pay taxes for the support of mosques.
President Bush and his cabinet would benefit from reading Madison's comments. But at least they recognize the phrase "separation of church and state," unlike your revolutionary and revisionist camp. I quote georgewbush.com: And so the faith-based initiative that I've launched recognizes the need there be separation of church and state -- the state should never be the church, and the church certainly should never be the state. But the state should never fear the good works of the church.
I look at this proposal as a humane, intelligent, and hopeful one. I happen to disagree with it, but it in no way attempts to establish Christianity as our state religion. I'm grateful to our president for at least trying to find a reasonable path between the ACLU and the John Birch Society. They should be applauded for that, not ridiculed.
Finally, your arguments devolve into quotes that may have not been uttered, text from outside the Constitution, and tired ideas rehashed from the JBS and other anti-communist groups that were convenience crutches for fighting the atheist underpinnings of Marx's theories. But they abandon our most important principle of religious freedom: if the state attempts to establish a given religion, a new form of tyranny occurs.
But you stay with the JBS's formula. I don't think you're willing to go beyond it. In any case, the Supreme Court is on my side. The President is on my side. The founding fathers are on my side. And many sincere Christians are on my side. I have no idea how sincere you are. From your comments here, I have my doubts. You're more interested in a state religion than in a personal religion. I think Christ had serious trouble with Israel's Pharisees, driving them out of the public temple where they were making a mockery of God with their money changing and incessant doctrinal babbling.
Aren't you a faithless Pharisee who is more interested in dead politics than men's spiritual souls? How can we trust your devotion, in fact outright worship of the state as an icon for your God? Oh I'm sure you will continue to minister to the televangelist faithful, but many Americas won't succumb to the false claims they and their TV huckster evangelists sell us.
Other states had established churches. Can you explain why these did not violate the Constitution if your and the ACLU's interpretation of separation is correct? Under our Federalist system, Virginia was allowed to go its own way and have no establishment, while other states did have establishments. This was exactly the purpose of the First Amendment.
Justice Thomas on Elk Grove v Newdow - Quite simply, the Establishment Clause is best understood as a federalism provision--it protects state establishments from federal interference but does not protect any individual right.Moreover, incorporation of this putative individual right leads to a peculiar outcome: It would prohibit precisely what the Establishment Clause was intended to protect--state establishments of religion.
(noting that "the Fourteenth Amendment has somehow absorbed the Establishment Clause, although it is not without irony that a constitutional provision evidently designed to leave the States free to go their own way should now have become a restriction upon their autonomy")
the faith based ministries, in order to maintain their respect for separation of church and state (their words), all faiths are purportedly supported. That means our tax dollars are going to Mosques. The Bush administration is clearly appeasing the Christian nationalists. This program may eventually be struck down by the Supreme Court, and I hope that it is.
I guess you finally realized how silly it was of you to cite the President's faith-based initiatives as proof that he believes in the separation of religion from the state.
You are now "affirming the consequent" of your own assertions. If no preference for any one religion is allowed then all religions must be represented.
If we used the definition of Separation as understood by the Founders, there would be no requirement to represent all faiths equally. Your problem is that you are an equal opportunity hater. You think it's just as wrong to give money to Christian initiatives as to the Muslims.
I hope you will still vote for President Bush now that I have alerted you to the dire threat of his "appeasement" of his base, the Christian Right.
In any case, the Supreme Court is on my side. The President is on my side. The founding fathers are on my side.
the ACLU is on your side. The KKK is on your side. CPUSA is on your side. marxists.org is on your side. The Supreme Court is on your side (the leftist majority anyway). But the President and the Founders are on my side. The President will put more people on the Supreme Court like Justice Rehnquist, who ruled:
During the ratification debate in the Virginia Convention, Madison had actually opposed the idea of any Bill of Rights. His sponsorship of the Amendments in the House was obviously not that of a zealous believer in the necessity of the Religion Clauses, but of one who felt it might do some good, could do no harm, and would satisfy those who had ratified the Constitution on the condition that Congress propose a Bill of Rights.(3) His original language "nor shall any national religion be established" obviously does not conform to the "wall of separation" between church and State idea which latter-day commentators have ascribed to him. His explanation on the floor of the meaning of his language--"that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law" is of the same ilk. When he replied to Huntington in the debate over the proposal which came from the Select Committee of the House, he urged that the language "no religion shall be established by law" should be amended by inserting the word "national" in front of the word "religion."It seems indisputable from these glimpses of Madison's thinking, as reflected by actions on the floor of the House in 1789, that he saw the Amendment as designed to prohibit the establishment of a national religion, and perhaps to prevent discrimination among sects. He did not see it as requiring neutrality on the part of government between religion and irreligion. Thus the Court's opinion in Everson--while correct in bracketing Madison and Jefferson together in their exertions in their home State leading to the enactment of the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty--is totally incorrect in suggesting that Madison carried these views onto the floor of the United States House of Representatives when he proposed the language which would ultimately become the Bill of Rights.
None of the other Members of Congress who spoke during the August 15th debate expressed the slightest indication that they thought the language before them from the Select Committee, or the evil to be aimed at, would require that the Government be absolutely neutral as between religion and irreligion. The evil to be aimed at, so far as those who spoke who concerned, appears to have been the establishment of a national church, and perhaps the preference of one religious sect over another; but it was definitely not concerned about whether the Government might aid all religions evenhandedly.
The Establishment Clause did not require government neutrality between religion and irreligion nor did it prohibit the Federal Government from providing nondiscriminatory aid to religion. There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the "wall of separation" that was constitutionalized in Everson.
The "wall of separation between church and State" is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.
You see, the legal groundwork to overturn your mistaken interpretation of the Constitution has already been laid by conservatives on the court. The leftist Orwellian definition of freedom which allows unelected bigoted judges ban school prayer and forcibly remove the Ten Commandments from public property will soon be a closed chapter in our history, a sad memory of a time like the times of slavery, when the people allowed "judges" the right to substitute their own prejudices against certain groups for Constitutional freedom under God.