Thanksgiving - A Violation of Church and State?

Townhall.com ^ | November 25, 2008 | Chuck Norris

[andy58-in-nh]

The vast ignorance of people who were educated in modern public schools is ASTOUNDING.

[SumProVita]

“The vast ignorance of people who were educated in modern public schools is ASTOUNDING.”

I totally agree....as I taught in public schools earlier in my career.

[gaggs]

George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789 contained a number of references to God.

Evaluation: George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789

If only we had men of Washington's character today,

[veritas2002]

I think that every museum that is government owned or funded should be required to remove works of fine art that have a religious subject so that the principle of separation of Church and state is not violated. Once the paintings and other artifacts are moved, they should be returned to the Catholic Church from where they originally came.

[weegee]

Michelle Obama told us there would be a day when our traditions and history would have to change (revisionist history is a Socialist concept).

One day we with thank Karl Marx for the wonders of his book on fairness and redistribution of wealth.

[weegee]

Incan gold, Mesopotamiam religious figures, Roman and Greek statuary and pottery. ALL of it should go back.

Fill our nation’s museums with black canvasas of black utter black painted by Rothko. And hang them upside down because our European betters know better than the artist.

[weegee]

The public wanted to know what kind of puppy the Obamas would be getting. The public wanted to know what schools the obamakids were going to go to when they move into the White House. I wanted to know what CHURCH he will be attending and if he’s FINALLY going to be baptized.

[andy58-in-nh]

I feel for you. There are many smart and dedicated educators who have given up their careers rather than suffer through the politically-correct fluff and soul-deadening conformity that characterize too many of our public schools.

[SumProVita]

Thanks, but I honestly felt that I achieved terrific results with my students in public school. At present, I can do the same, except that I work in the private education arena. ;-)

[andy58-in-nh]

Thanks for your work: we need as many smart, dedicated and intellectually honest teachers as we can get today. There is so much nonsense and noise in this world to overcome.

[Ancesthntr]

Go ahead, Newsweek/Washington Post maroons, propose to eliminate Thanksgiving.

Really.

Go ahead.

Do it.

Either you’ll lose much of your much-reduced readership (much-reduced thanks to your similarly bone-headed editorials of the past and your failure to accurately and completely report the news), or you’ll be shown for the cowardly chicken droppings that your are.

Come on - DO IT!

[bird4four4]

Thanksgiving is un-PC. Please use the term 'harvest celebration'. /sarc

(unfortunately this probably won't be sarcasm in the near socialist future.)

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

The "establishment" clause refers to making one denomination the official government church. It doesn't have anything to do with belief in God in general or Christianity in general which are presupposed by the whole concept. Washington's initiative to give thanks to God was in the same tradition as opening congress with prayers, chaplains for the Continental Army, taking the oath of office on a Bible, etc. Washington and Lincoln assume that Americans believe in God. The "establishment" clause is not designed to prevent Americans from expressing belief in God, from saying prayers in public, or talking about faith or God in Congress, schools, or on street corners. It only has to do with one denomination of Christianity being made the official government church and that being a requirement for citizenship rights or tax preferments. It wasn't designed to ban Christianity in general or faith in general from public life. So a U.S. President merely saying that people should have a day off to offer prayers of thanksgiving to God does not favor, say, Presbyterians or Methodists over Episcopalians, Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, Quakers, or Congregationalists.

The "establishment" clause also refers only to Congress, not the president. Thanksgiving is not an "establishment" of religion in the legal sense referred to in the Constitution because no one denomination is favored or given preferment over others. The "establishment" clause also does not refer to atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, or non-Christians being protected from hearing religious speech or public prayers or seeing Nativity displays in public. None of those things are the "establishment" of one denomination as a state church. It refers to the legal issue of establishment regarding Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Catholics as existed in England and the American colonies in the controversies following the Reformation. It's not a Christianity vs. atheism or secular humanism issue as liberals have tried to spin it.

The "wall of separation of Church and State" specifically refers to the controversy in Virginia between Baptists and Episcopalians as Thomas Jefferson understood the issue. Two different groups who both believed in God, Jesus, and the Bible. None of those things were considered as banned since Congress and schools had Bibles, Christian chaplains, and public prayers in the 1700s and 1800s. Anyone who wants to ban Jesus, the Bible, prayers, or Thanksgiving from American public life needs to find something other than the "establishment" clause in the U.S. Constitution which does not apply to those things.

[Jacquerie]

It is sad that unelected men in robes can . . . We are losing this great country a little more each year.

Quite right. The very branch of government designed to be the last bulwark protecting our liberties has become the first abuser of them.

It is largely nonsense that Scotus serves as a check against the other branches. It has been handmaiden to the destruction of our Constitutional liberties.