Posted on 12/30/2021 7:29:46 AM PST by Kaslin
For almost 30 years, a group called Wreaths Across America has honored America’s military dead by voluntarily placing wreaths at their graves.
But just in time for Christmas this year, a secularist legal group raised a stink about this attempt to honor the memory of America’s fallen. And they’ve also (temporarily) shut down Bible verses on military dog-tags. They did this because of their false, but popular, misreading of the First Amendment.
In an interview with Fox News(12/14/21) Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom foundation, said that placing the wreaths is “like carpet-bombing…That looks like it's a Christian gang sign, that you're creating territory that is a Christian territory.”
Weinstein also issued a statement saying, "On December 18, the graves of all veterans in our country’s 155 national cemeteries and numerous other locations where American veterans are buried, will be indiscriminately decorated with Christmas wreaths by the organization Wreaths Across America. The grave sites of Christians and non-Christians alike will be adorned with this hijacked-from-paganism symbol of Christianity---circular and made of evergreen to symbolize everlasting life through Jesus Christ---whether the families of the deceased veterans like it or not."
However, Karen Worcester, executive director of Wreaths Across America, told Fox News that they do have a policy of not putting a wreath on graves with a Star of David.
Weinstein’s group has also complained about a ministry that has made millions of dog tags with Bible verses on them. The Pentagon has now announced they will pull the plug on this ministry.
First Liberty Institute, which fights for religious freedom in the courts of our land and in the courts of public opinion, writes about the ministry: “Shields of Strength replica dog tags bear various symbols, emblems, and logos from each branch of service (Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines) on one side and an inspirational scripture verse or reference on the other.”
But Weinstein sent a complaint to the Pentagon, which led to a cease-and-desist letter to stop the dog tags. Thankfully, First Liberty Institute has sued the Defense Department for violating First Amendment freedoms by blocking the tags.
Weinstein’s crusade against wreaths and Scripture verses on the dog tags is part of a long-standing secularist assault on the First Amendment, which has been quite successful.
They have converted the first clause in the First Amendment, which was historically understood to mean that there is to be no national denomination in America into a virtual “search and destroy mission against any sneaky vestiges of religion,” to borrow a phrase from a Christian law professor.
America’s founders did not intend to banish God or Biblical influence from the public arena.
But secularists, like Weinstein, have turned America’s religious freedom on its head. The founders gave us freedom of religion---which incorporates the views of those who don’t believe. What Weinstein and company want is freedom from religion, which grants only freedom for the unbeliever, but not the believer.
The secularists invoke Thomas Jefferson as if this were his wish. As I’ve written before, it was only by the Supreme Court distorting one of his letters in 1947 that effectively changed “no establishment of religion” to “the separation of church and state.”
But Jefferson would not agree with this wholesale attempt to purge God from America’s public life, including the military---which, by the way, has been hiring chaplains at taxpayers’ expense since before we even became a country.
In his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written in 1777 and adopted in 1786, Jefferson said that Jesus is the reason we should honor diversity of religious opinion in this country.
He wrote, “Almighty God hath created the mind free… all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion" [emphasis added].
He went on to say, “the holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was his Almighty power to do.”
He is referring here to Jesus Christ, and portions of this quote are chiseled into the wall of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.
This is no small point. Jesus is the reason that people in this country are free to believe or not believe, argued Jefferson in this document that has often been called a forerunner to the First Amendment. It is to God, not the state, that we will all answer.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the ACLU, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and similar organizations claim to be protecting liberty. But their work is to actually destroy the precious liberties explicitly protected in the First Amendment.
It sounds like the retarded little Mikey could use a good swift boot in the ass. The little b*tch needs to find a real job and quit being a pain in the ass to normal people.
Im a 73 yo veteran.. If I die before the LORD Jesus Christ
returns I probably will be buried in our local National Cemetery...Please feel free to place one of those wreaths on my grave at Christmas time ...I feel honored just thinking about that ...
Does Mikey celebrate ANY holiday...Christmas is for CHRISTIANS...sheesh...go start your own celebration called Idiots Day and no one will care
Did I miss how many followers this Mikey has backing up his assumptions, or is he a lone mouth in the dark shouting for attention?
I’m not sure what significance Jefferson has one way or the other since he had nothing to do with the drafting of the first amendment.
He has a phone, fax machine is all, a one man band.
It is unfortunate that so many people have dedicated their lives to opposing Christ and Christianity. They have no idea what is in store for them unless they repent.
My husband was a 84 year old veteran who served almost 22 years in the Army. He passed away on November 12, of this year. His ashes rest at the Kentucky veterans cemetery at Fort Campbell, Ky BLVD
Thanksgiving Proclamation
[New York, 3 October 1789]
By the President of the United States of America. a Proclamation.
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed—to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789. Zp Go: Washington
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0091
Real freedom comes from knowing Jesus. John 8:36. These people don’t realize how much they are in bondage.
I spent 21 years active duty, 2 years department of the army, and 12 years DOD. If I and my family wish to be recognized to rekindle a kinship with this great country and the people that felt like they do, it is my business, not theirs. And if it pleases others to do this act, then I am still serving. As far as I’m concerned, I won’t be around to have a say if it is removed. But I will instruct my family to react to the erasing of this process by suing anyone that tries.
How people want to make themselves feel by this rejoining of the country and their hearts has nothing to do with an outside source. I would be for marking any of the gravesites of the fallen that wish to be honored with this process. Then the socialist, religious baiting piece of excrement has no say in it all. Game over meadow muffin.
wy69
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