According to your view of the Constitution, would it be acceptable for a State to pass a law abridging a citizen's freedom of speech?
Are the right guaranteed to us under the Constitution derived from the Natural Rights of man, or from Government? If they derive from the Natural Rights of man, then none but a tyrannous government could abridge those rights. Our Constitution was NOT set up so that we would live under State tyranny, but so that we would live in freedom.
Our rights mean little if they are only guarded at the Federal level.
But I agree with you that teaching Creationism in public schools would be “an establishment of religion”, giving preference and the government seal of approval to one set of religious doctrine over others.
How about the secular humanist view that the world was created by a random event termed the Big Bang and that even if some sort of god did exist, he had absolutely no role in the event or subsequence turn of random events.
Everyone has a “creation” story. They differ in the details.
Scientologists believe that aliens populated the planet and bestowed on humans “imperfect” traits. There are some scientists who dress it up and say that life here came from Mars.
All you have to do is go back to the time of the founding.
There were official religions of various states,
and no one even mentioned these as violating the first amendment.
The states wouldn’t have ratified it if that is what it meant.
See Elk Grove.
Freedom of Speech is an individual right.
The establishment clause isn’t. It’s a right that was given to the states. Not to the people.
The Free Exercise clause is the individual right part.
Please, people, stop with the Natural Rights, Natural Law stuff. You get it, but the lawyers, myself included, have no real idea what you’re talking about.
It’s as if you want to understand the law, but find all the little complications too much, and decide to pretend that this Natural Law and Rights stuff is somehow relevant to the law today.
No one seems to touch at all on the the actual law. As it exists now, as it existed in 1947. None of that.
I’m saying that the 1st Amendment allows the teaching of Creationism. I’m not putting some Lemon test out there for that. I’m not concluding that creationism is impermissible.
I’m saying that Everson was wrong.
See Thomas in Elk Grove. Here’s the handy link to the Elk Grove thread I set up yesterday.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2610810/posts - elk grove
Serious conservatives should study Clarence Thomas here. Establishment clause jurisprudence is a mess.
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.
That’s what Clarence Thomas said. He actually gets to vote on what the Constitution says. What he said is not, technically “law”, because it’s a concurrence, but we want Justices who agree with him, so that he can write a majority opinion on the establishment clause, and overturn Everson.