Posted on 04/15/2005 4:56:59 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Chief Justice Roy Moore’s new book So Help Me God is a captivating and unflinching first-hand account of a man on the front lines of the battle between religious freedom and judicial tyranny. This Alabama Supreme Court Justice embodies the true definition of patriotism, inasmuch he has risked his career and reputation to stand by his oath of office and refuses to deny his allegiance to the Constitution and the laws of nature and nature’s God for the mere sake of catering to the frenetic, deep-seated anti-religious paranoia of the uber-secular left.
It was on June 9, 1993 that ACLU member Joel Sogol wrote to then-chief justice of Alabama Sonny Hornsby, threatening to sue anyone who continued the time-honored tradition of praying in court. After Roy Moore took office in 1994 and refused to bring a halt to the tradition, the ACLU stepped up their threats of suit over the prayer and, in addition, began hyperventilating over the Ten Commandments plaque Justice Moore had placed in his courtroom. At the beginning of the third month of Justice Moore’s first term of office on March 31, 1995, the ACLU filed suit in U.S. district court against him on the basis that he had illegally imposed his religious beliefs on others in the courtroom, denouncing the prayer as “a religious test.”
The ACLU apparently didn’t feel up to suing all 550 members of Congress and all nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court who have always begun their daily proceedings with prayers. It may even be a sobering revelation to them that our very first president noted in his inaugural address, “no people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States.” Nevertheless, it is doubtful that such words would bear much significance to a pathetic, subversive gang of rogue lawyers who have nothing better to do with their time than to bully public officials out of acknowledging their creator and to throw childish temper tantrums over harmless little plaques.
In a priceless act of civil disobedience, Justice Moore erected a 2½-ton granite Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the State Judicial Building. Moore would later write in his book that “[t]he display of God’s law was not done to make any bold statement, to intimidate or offend anyone, or to push any particular religion. It was simply a reminder that this country was established on a particular God and His divine, revealed laws; it reflected the Christian faith of our founders.”
Flabbergasted, on Halloween 2001, the ACLU ganged up with Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Southern Poverty Law Center to file suit over the monument. Demonstrating what loving people liberals can be, in a letter to the legal director of Americans United, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to Justice Moore as a “religious nut in partnership with a fanatical church.” (And showing how smart liberals can be, the letter was accidentally sent to Justice Moore’s attorney, Steve Melchior. Whoops!)
The case was set for trial on October 15, 2002. Less than a month after it ended, on November 18, 2002, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled against the Ten Commandments display, declaring it unconstitutional. In his ruling, Judge Myron stated: “[W]hile the Chief Justice is free to keep whatever religious beliefs he chooses, the state may not acknowledge the sovereignty of the Judeo-Christian God and attribute to that God our religious freedom.” Perhaps Judge Myron would be compelled to rethink his words if he actually bothered to read the Alabama State Constitution which Moore had sworn specifically to uphold, inasmuch as it reads in the preamble: “We, the people of the State of Alabama, in order to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the following Constitution and form of government for the State of Alabama” (emphasis added).
On March 2, 2005, the New York Times expressed its disapproval of similar displays in between the Capitol and the State Supreme Court in Texas, and in county courthouses in Kentucky, accusing the displays’ backers of not accepting the “separation of church and state” while explaining that “[t]he Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws respecting an establishment of a religion.” If nothing else, at least these circumstances have given liberals yet another excuse to evince their maniacal infatuation with the “separation of church and state,” a phrase which we are supposed to believe is somewhere in the Constitution.
If a liberal sneezed and you said “God bless you” he would begin spastically whining about the “separation of church and state.” To appreciate this situation from the perspective of the judicial supremacists, the ACLU lawyers and the New York Times editors, we will just have to pretend for a moment that a) the “separation of church and state” exists in the Constitution, b) Congress is somehow responsible for the placement of the Ten Commandments monuments, and c) the monuments in effect represent an establishment of a state religion.
There. Now it sort of makes sense.
To the contrary, however, the left’s beloved “separation of church and state” mantra originated not in the Constitution, but in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 (11 years after the First Amendment was incorporated into the Constitution) regarding their concerns that the Congregationalists may abuse their power to attain a favored position. Explicitly, Jefferson wrote: “[the] wall of separation between church and state…is a one-directional wall. It keeps the government from running the church, but makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government.”
The self-styled progressive elites have typically justified their anti-Christian bigotry by insinuating that religion must stay away from government, and any case in which it does not is an irrevocable step towards theocracy. Their interpretation of the language of the First Amendment demonstrates how little understanding they have of its actual implications.
By including the establishment clause in the Constitution, the framers were preventing the prospects of theocracy such as that which the Pilgrims purportedly fled from in England before settling on the North American shores. However, there is a reason why Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” (emphasis added). What Jefferson was taking into account was the imperative necessity of our leaders and authorities to recognize their inferiority to the divine laws of the solar system and their subordinance to a Higher Power, so as not to confuse themselves with that Higher Power and in due course assume a despotic, tyrannical precedence.
The functionality of our democracy is contingent upon the Hobbesian doctrine that man is inherently corrupt and therefore in need of some degree of governmental supervision. The notion of human fallibility is quintessential of the Judeo-Christian doctrines with which our founders specifically harmonized their vision of a free republic. The acknowledgement of that fallible nature is what distinguishes our system from communism – a system which presupposes that man is basically good, and therefore capable of upholding and preserving a utopian, Edinic society. It distinguishes our system as well from that of monarchism and fascism, both of which presuppose that there is such a thing as Divine Right, or human infallibility; that it is possible for a human leader to take on a godlike authority over his people and govern them in a flawless manner. But because our system recognizes that there is no such thing as human infallibility, our branches of power are balanced, and our leaders are appointed through a democratic process by which the majority of citizens decide who gets to represent them, and for how long.
Secularist liberals tend to accuse Christians of seeing things too much in “black and white,” yet they themselves have adopted a black and white perspective by declining to consider the fact that not everything boils down to the two options of theocracy and secularism. A system of government that is religious in nature does not automatically take on the form of theocracy. It does not mean that its subjects must be coerced into submission to a certain designated religious faith. Whether or not we as individuals decide to subject ourselves to personal dependence on religion, we must recognize that our freedom to do so or not do so at our own will is dependent on our democratic system, and our democratic system is dependent on religion.
It is on account of this brand of narcissistic judicial hubris, this denial of subordinance to a Higher Law that an innocent woman was allowed to be inhumanly starved to death recently, that activist judges have been able to recklessly redefine the institution of marriage, and that an unremitting fetal holocaust has been sanctioned by the highest levels of government for 32 years and counting. The more we forget that we are “one nation under God,” the more we will become “one nation under the State.” If this becomes the case, then our rights will become conditional and susceptible to abuse, rather than God-given and immune to meddling. As many could argue, resting our rights solely on the state is like building a house on sand. (Note to liberals: Please pardon the biblical reference.)
What do you think English common law is based on?
Wow! That's the first time I ever saw THAT part of Jefferson's letter. I wonder if the athiest Democrat scumbags of the ACLU would be kind enough to post that on their website?
You get my drift.
P.S. I freely admit to being 'influenced' by my leader: Christ
So much for the unalienable rights endowed by our Creator...
That's a crass simplification. You've been paying far too much attention to the theocrat propagandists.
You're right, the Founding Fathers were greatly influenced by the Enlightenment, but they left much of English common law in place, which is why I asked you what *that* is based on. Remember, by the time of the Revolutionary War, the English Civil War had already been fought & the monarchy had lost.
The English crown had laws in place pertaining to private property. It's not like the Revolutionary War ended & the Founding Fathers figured the new country owned all of the property in the new nation & then went about selling it all to worthy American citizens. Property that was owned under the laws of the English crown stayed in the same people's hands at the end of the Revolutionary War, cept for those who were Loyalists & got booted out of the country.
Common law covered a lot more things than ownership of property. Much of what we think of as civil law is pretty much of a continuation of portions of English common law.
England is one of the oldest Christian regions in the world, and no doubt much of English Common Law is based on that.
After the Romans left, the Danes took over & ran the country & the place of their origin was still squarely pagan. While there were pockets of Christian subjects in merry aulde England, the nation was not a Christian nation in any kind of official capacity even though it had shown up there early. Charlemagn is credited with Christianizing much of Europe.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
and also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_%28legal_system%29
That's the traditional theocrat view of the first amendment. It's not very well supported by the federalist papers, the correspondence between various founding fathers, and such. Making it out to be so is pretty much like trying to prove that the second amendment is a collective right. You can find a few scattered quotes out of context, but not anything consistent. You really have to drink the right wing Christian Koolaid to believe it.
That said, I agree that secular humanism is a religion. Keep it separate from government!
It's simply true. They make statements about the "necessity of the Christian religion" that would put the faith of our contemporary cafeteria Christians to shame in comparison.
That's the best description of the ACLU I've seen yet- LOL.
God Bless Roy Moore. The stand he made called attention to the very serious problem we have with our Judiciary branch. Sorry it had to cost him so much. His judicial career was one of the first casualties of the war against PC and Judicial Tyranny. But it was instrumental in getting the attention of Americans. I know many, many people were surprised/shocked that he lost his job over a simple plaque of the Ten Commandments.
I'm looking forward to reading his book.
I wish all the Republicans could have the same intestinal fortitude he has and Tom Delay has.
After witnessing the State sponsored execution of an innocent, disabled person (Terri Schindler-the first casualty of the war against Judicial Tyranny) based on hearsay evidence at best- How can anyone NOT see the magnitude of the problem here? There simply is no more important issue than this.
I wish all Republicans who don't have the will to fight, would resign right now, and let the people elect those who have what it takes to overcome this massive obstacle and threat to our freedom.
I imagine Roy Moore and others will be a big help in solving our Judicial Tyranny problem, since they have experienced it first hand.
"traditional theocrat view" ? - Try a simple English language READING of it, instead of an interpreted 'view' of it.
It was engineered to operate in a moral and religious atmosphere which was unabashedly Christian, where the judges and the officers and the legislators were not afraid to state that their guiding light was the faith that they understood as being as universal to them as water is to fish. What parameters the founding fathers would have set up for, say, an atheistic or a Muslim society is unknown, because they were not faced with that problem. One thing is known, and that is for the bible to have been hushed up in the houses of government the way it is now, or at best "contextualized" into secular obscurity, would have been unthinkable.
You could try the same thing. There's nothing about Christianity in our founding documents (save for the date) so how could that possibly prove that we were Christians by law? Anyway, I'm not going to support the Christian right's point of view about the religious nature of our laws. I can see for myself that they're vulnerable to manipulation from unscrupulous people. It's obvious to me, in fact. I don't see how they can miss it, except that some of them really do want to get powers that they don't deserve to have.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.