Posted on 12/04/2001 5:38:59 PM PST by H.Akston
Only "Congress" is truly restricted by the 1st Amendment. It's up to the people of each State to restrict each of their State governments from establishing a religion, in their State's Constitution. Of course, if they chose not to do so and a religion gets established by say, HYPOTHETICALLY, Vermont's legislature, would it really bother the rest of us? Wouldn't they be free to do so? If not why not? What is tyrannical to some is not tyrannical to others. Now if Vermont's hypothetical religion deprived people of life liberty or property without due process of Law, then the Feds could step in under the 5th Amendment or the 14th. I would see no harm though, in Vermont declaring the state religion to be for example, Christianity. True Christianity could not be tyrannical. Of course problems could arise with interpretations of what, say, charity means. But liberty is not always neat.
This may be a right NEVER exercised by a State, but it's important to recognize the right, and that it exists. People don't have enough respect for the autonomy of the States - or for the 10th Amendment, which guarantees powers to the people in them that the Constitution does not delegate to the Federal Government or that the Constitution itself doesn't prohibit. The Constitution only prohibits Congress from abridging free speech or establishing a religion. States still have the power to do so, unless restrained by some other means, such as a State constitution.
I wonder which state would become the first Muslim state? New Jersey, maybe? How long before they declared jihad on neighboring states? I can't think of a better way to tear this country apart than to have states establishing their own religions.
"Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history. "
-James Madison
"And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
-James Madison
Here [in the Virginia statute for religious liberty] the separation between the authority of human laws, and the natural rights of Man excepted from the grant on which all authority is founded, is traced as distinctly as words can admit, and the limits to this authority established with as much solemnity as the forms of legislation can express. The law has the further advantage of having been the result of a formal appeal to the sense of the Community and a deliberate sanction of a vast majority, comprizing [sic] every sect of Christians in the State. This act is a true standard of Religious liberty; its principle the great barrier agst [against] usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected & no longer, these will be safe. Every provision for them short of this principle, will be found to leave crevices, at least thro' which bigotry may introduce persecution; a monster, that feeding & thriving on its own venom, gradually swells to a size and strength overwhelming all laws divine & human.
-(James Madison, "Monopolies. Perpetuities. Corporations. Ecclesiastical Endowments," as reprinted in Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's Detatched Memoranda," William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4 [October, 1946], pp. 554-555. The "Detatched Memoranda" is a manuscript, written sometime after Madison left office in 1817, in Madison's own hand, with notes he made in preparation for the arrangement and publication of his public papers, a task he did not complete before his death in 1836.)
This assertion [that Madison was committed to total and complete separation of church and state] would be challenged by the nonpreferentialists, who agree with Justice Rehnquist's dissent in the Jaffree case. Contrasted with the analysis set forth above, Rehnquist insisted that Madison's "original language Ônor shall any national religion be established' obviously does not conform to the Ôwall of separation' between church and state which latter day commentators have ascribed to him." Rehnquist believes Madison was seeking merely to restrict Congress from establishing a particular national church. There are three problems with this contention. First, nothing in Madison's acts or words support such a proposition. Indeed, his opposition to the General Assessment Bill in Virginia, detailed in the "Memorial and Remonstrance," contradicts Rehnquist directly. Secondly, all of Madison's writings after 1789 support the Court's twentieth-century understanding of the term "wall of separation." Third, the reference to Madison's use of "national" simply misses his definition of the word. Madison had an expansive intention when he used the term national. He believed that "religious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgiving and fasts ... imply and certainly nourish the erroneous idea of a national religion." He commented in a similar way about chaplains for the House and Senate. Historical evidence lends no support to the Rehnquist thesis. And clearly Jefferson, even though absent from the First Congress, seems a far more secure source of "original intent" than Justice Rehnquist.
-(Robert S. Alley, ed., The Supreme Court on Church and State, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 13.)
That was his personal opinion.
Expanded on here:
"Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered."
-James Madison
Atheistic tyranny seeks idealistic control of your body and your means of livlihood. Religion seeks control over your soul and would regulate what you do with your body and livelihood to save your soul, happily destroying any guarantees of physical liberty, such as those found in the Constitution, to that end. Example: war on drugs.
Check out Islamic regimes. Religious tyrannies may not outright kill your body, but they kill any reason you have to live while letting you live.
As I write this, I've been a Christian for many years. I would hate to see any Christian sect run a government. I have nothing aginst evangelicals, for instance, and admire their faith in many ways, but I think the worse tyranny mankind has seen would come about under evangelical dictatorial government.
The taking of life by a state would not be allowed under the fifth amendment. The penalty for a jihad would be death. False Islam could be weeded out this way, and help cleanse a little bit of it from the earth for the benefit of mankind. As for tearing this country apart, unity is not as important as Liberty.
His 250th birth year is almost up!
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.