United States v Roy Moore: The Most Important States' Rights Case in Decades

An Open Letter in Support of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's Defense of the Most Important Religious Liberty and States' Rights Test Case in Decades

(Please forward this important message to friends, family members, and fellow American Patriots)

A monument of the Ten Commandments placed in the rotunda of Alabama's Supreme Court building by Chief Justice Roy Moore, is the front line of the war over the First, Ninth and Tenth Amendment restrictions on the central government by our Constitution's Bill of Rights. Ordered by a federal court to remove the monument by August 20, Justice Moore has been warned by U.S. District and Appellate Courts that his states' rights argument will not be tolerated.

Judge Moore, of course, is rightly defending the original intent of the Founders, who drafted and approved the Bill of Rights, against erroneous interpretation by an activist Leftjudiciary, even as he prepares his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. This case is a major test case for states' rights and the so-called church-state "separation clause," and ultimately will determine the fundamental nature of government and the Constitution. To assess the importance of this case, consider this evaluation from 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ed Carnes, who ruled against Chief Justice Moore: "If Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument were allowed to stand, it would mean a massive revision of how the courts have interpreted the First Amendment for years." Indeed, it would.

Join fellow Patriots signing this Open Letter in support of Justice Moore, First Amendment rights, limited government and the sovereignty of the several states as guaranteed by our Constitution.

If you don't have Web access, please send a blank e-mail to: Each e-mail sent to this address will be counted as one signature for the petition.

(Circulation of this petition is being sponsored by The Federalist, the most widely read conservative e-journal on the Internet. If you have not already joined the ranks of Patriots receiving The Federalist, we encourage you to do so. This highly acclaimed conservative digest of news, policy and opinion will be delivered FREE by e-mail to your inbox each week. Simply link to --http://www.federalist.com/subscribe/patriots.asp If you don't have Web access, send a blank e-mail to and you will be subscribed automatically.)

"The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers." --Thomas Jefferson

I just attended the rally. I was very dissappointed.

The issues are the same as those that caused "The War against Southern Independence":

I am a lawyer. The essential question is, "Can a Federal Judge order a State Supreme Court Justice to violate the State Constitution?"

The Alabama State Constitution recognises God's law as sovereign. The united States has become a secular humanist nation. The doctrine of "seperation of church and state" is a myth. It applies only to Congress, not the states.

As a result of America's Lenin , Mr.Lincoln, the Courts seek to apply that to the states. Alabama, like South Carolina, still believes in the "division of powers, guarrenteed under the "old Constitution"

The organisers of the rally ran off thousands of supporters by "banning" the Confederate flag.

In the Columbia, 2001 rally, we had in excess of 10,000 folks to support the Confederate flag. We, Southrons, see the flag as a symbol of us, as a people. The rally organisers, especially a Mr. Kennedy, made it clear that the "Confederate flag would not be welcome".

State by state, hundreds of supporters withdrew. The organisers misunderstood the inter-relation between fundamental Christian activists, and Confederate flag activists.

Quietly, silently, they just decided not to attend.

I attended the rally. We planned to rent 3 buses to attend. When we received the word that our flags were unwelcome, the contingent was reduced to a few cars.

At the rally, the organisers tried to suppress any symbol of Southern resistance and States Rights. A VMI Graduate, with a clump of balloons, flying a Confederate and Alabama flag, was told he had to leave.

The problem with the rally was, the organisers ran off their best friends.

The rest of the Country describes the South as the "Bible Belt" with contempt. The "Christian Coallition's" rally fell from 15,000 to 3,000 participants, because they excluded the 12,000 Southrons, who would have participated, if they had not excluded our symbols.

Southern Christians were insulted by Mr. Kennedy, and the organisers. It is a lesson the Christian Co-allition should learn. The South is the Bible Belt. We look to preachers to lead us. We shun those who do not.

Jerry Falwell, and Mr. Kennedy, took a beating this weekend for their arrogance.

IHS

Larry

Having said the above; this is indeed a state's rights issue and it is up to the citizens of Alabama to decide on Judge Moore's stance. The Federal Government must butt out. This is a no brainer.

Sadly, it's not that simple. The federal courts have routinely interpreted the 14th Amendment for decades to mean that the guarantees of the Bill of Rights apply not only to the federal government, but to the states as well. That is because the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to prevent state governments from violating their own citizens' civil rights.

One civil right, enshrined in the First Amendment, protects citizens from having a religion imposed upon them, or being forced to obey the rules and/or dictates of a particular faith. The 14th Amendment thus extends this protection to citizens of the individual states.

Judge Moore has chosen, in his capacity as Chief Justice of Alabama, to declare that the Book of Exodus, or at least one translation of it, is the supreme law of the state of Alabama. He has thus declared that the dictates of the Judeo-Christian faith will be binding upon Alabamans, or at least that the state government of Alabama holds that the Judeo-Christian faith is the true faith.

This is precisely the same thing as an "establishment of religion" which the First Amendment forbids. The federal government has thus once again stepped in protect the citizens of a state against the unconstitutional actions of its government. A state constitution can be in violation of the federal constitution - if a state constitution declares that the state's government will be a monarchy, or reserves the right to conduct its own foreign policy, or that blacks cannot vote, or that the Judeo-Christian God is supreme in that state, then it is against the United States Constitution

It does not matter that the majority of Alabamans are Christian.

It does not matter that most of the framers of the Constitution were Christians.

It does not matter that many of our historical doctrines of law or fairness are based in Judeo-Christian culture.

It does not matter that courts in the distant past have declared that the Christian religion is the true faith.

The only thing that matters is that a state government cannot erect a stone and say "here is the true religion". That principle is the same one we are fighting against in Afghanistan and Iraq - that theocracy can never be a legitimate government, even if it has the strong backing of its citizens.

I'm a Christian, and I'm a conservative. And the ACLU is exactly right on this one.

The Blackout of 2003 Is In Montgomery, Not In New York And Cleveland

By Chuck Baldwin
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/chuckwagon.html

Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon
August 19, 2003 All weekend, the major media saturated America's news outlets with the story of the massive power outage in parts of New England and the Midwest. While this is a major story, it pales into insignificance when compared to those events currently unfolding in Montgomery, Alabama. What is happening at the Alabama capitol will literally determine the future of this country for the foreseeable future. Yet, the establishment press has virtually blacked out the story.

The issue is simple, albeit profound. Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore is refusing to remove a monument containing the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Supreme Court building as ordered by a federal judge. His defiance is justified, yea, constitutionally required!

For one thing, Moore is acting within the constitution of the State of Alabama, which he took an oath to support. Furthermore, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the federal government from interfering in these matters and actually guarantees Moore's, and everyone else's, freedom in this regard.

It is more than ironic that the same U.S. Supreme Court that would deny the Alabama Supreme Court the right to display a monument to the Ten Commandments in its building has the very same Ten Commandments engraved conspicuously in the wall above the U.S. Chief Justice in the federal Supreme Court building! Talk about hypocrisy! However, the fundamental issue in this case is even more significant than these truths.

The real issue is this: is America founded upon and subservient to the laws of God? Judge Moore and America's Founding Fathers say yes. Today's federal courts say no. That, in a nutshell, is the bottom line of this whole fight. Will America acknowledge its dependence and subservience to God, or will it declare itself to be above God's laws and declare the state to be god? That is what the Moore case is going to decide.

Any thinking person should immediately recognize that the outcome of the Judge Moore case is going to determine the course and direction, not to mention results and ramifications, of this country for at least the next 50 years.

If the U.S. Supreme Court, to which this case is being appealed, rules against Moore, it will have ruled that America is not founded upon the laws of God and, therefore, is not subject to God's laws. At that moment, America will have officially repudiated its founding principles and will have officially become a godless state. That is what hangs in the balance for this country.

As significant as the Moore case is to the future of America, the major media continues its deliberate blackout of the story. Beyond that, the vast majority of our elected representatives are also mute and dumb on the subject. Where are all of the so-called conservative Republicans? They have run like roaches from the light to avoid this issue! Furthermore, where is President Bush on this fight? His silence on the subject is deafening!

One thing is sure: Judge Moore, like America's great patriots of old, has drawn a line in the sand for this country. There can be no neutrality and no compromise.

However, if the American people want to come to the assistance of Judge Moore, they are going to have to do it without the help and assistance of the major media, our elected leaders, and even without the help of the vast majority of our religious leaders. There's a blackout in 2003 all right, but it's not in New York or Cleveland; it's in Montgomery, Alabama.

© Chuck Baldwin

NOTE:
These commentaries are copyrighted and may be reposted or republished without charge providing the publication does not charge for subscriptions or advertising and providing the publication reposts the column intact with full credit given including Chuck's web site: www.chuckbaldwinlive.com. If the publication charges for subscriptions or advertising, the publication must contact chuck@chuckbaldwinlive.com for permission to use this column.

TO SUBSCRIBE to these columns, send an email to: majordomo@chuckbaldwinlive.com with the words "subscribe chuckwagon" in the body of the message. TO UNSUBSCRIBE, type "unsubscribe chuckwagon" in the body of the message.

Moore is not your typical judge. After graduating from West Point he served for five years in Vietnam before entering law school at the University of Alabama. Prior to his first judicial appointment in 1992, he studied full-contact karate, won his first kick boxing match, and completed a five-month trek across the Australian outback.

Though he has traveled widely, Moore has never strayed from his roots in Etowah County, Alabama. Growing up in what he called a “poor Christian home” and admiring a father who “lived what he believed,” Moore learned to honor God, cherish family, and love his country. Following law school, he served as deputy district attorney in Etowah County and later established his own private practice. In 1992, he was appointed Circuit Judge of the 16th Judicial Circuit, where he gained notoriety for displaying a plaque of the Ten Commandments. Then in 2000, Moore was elected to serve as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. A devout Christian and father of four children, Moore is not surprised by the controversy that has surrounded his public service. “When you do what you believe, you are going to run into problems,” he says.

Recently, PBS commentator Bill Moyers commented on Christian conservatives like Moore. “[F]or the first time in the memory of anyone alive,” he writes in a commentary posted on PBS’ website, “the entire federal government—the Congress, the Executive, the Judiciary—is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate.” The root cause of Moyers’ concern appears to be Christians who take their role in politics seriously: “And if you like God in government,” he added, “get ready for the Rapture. These folks don’t even mind you referring to the GOP as the party of God. Why else would the new House Majority Leader [Tom DeLay] say that the Almighty is using him to promote ‘a Biblical worldview’ in American politics?”

What Moyers and others liberals are so bothered about is not Christianity, but true Christianity, biblical Christianity, activist Christianity. Moore’s opponents—three Alabama attorneys represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State—see references to God on a monument as a threat to the establishment of the official state religion, atheism. Morris Dees, the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, even went so far as to call Moore “a religious nut.” After all, Moore is a man who, wearing his judge’s robes, can often be found citing one of his trademark poems: “Choosing godless judges, we’ve thrown reason out the door/Too soft to put a killer in a well-deserved tomb, but brave enough to kill that child before it leaves the womb/ . . . you think that God’s not angry that this land is a moral slum?”

One of Moore’s attorneys, Herbert Titus, the former dean of the law school at Regent University, said Moore’s judicial philosophy is really quite simple. Moore believes that there is a “moral foundation of law with the acknowledgment that God is the source of that foundation.”

Moore could not be more right. The sad truth is that most Americans, brainwashed by the government school system, don’t even know that the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution had no concept of the so-called “separation of church and state” that is so prevalent in today’s court system. As William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, has stated, “The separation of church and state is a metaphor based on bad history and worse law. It has made a positive chaos out of judgments, and it should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.”

When the First Amendment was being debated, the phrase “separation of church and state” was never used by the 90 men who framed it. “The First Amendment restricts only Congress,” says Dr. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries and founder of the Center for Reclaiming America. “It was created to restrain the federal government.” Many Founding Fathers, including Patrick Henry and George Washington, refused to sign the Constitution unless it had a set of protections for the people against a potentially all-powerful federal government.

“Once we let the government believe it is the source of our liberties, we are never safe,” says Dr. Kennedy. The Declaration of Independence states the purpose of government very clearly—to secure God-given “unalienable rights.” That is the primary justification Thomas Jefferson gave for having government. Thus, apart from a recognition of God-given rights, there is no legitimate foundation for government. Indeed, government cannot be secular, because government’s purpose is to secure rights—and blessings—that come from God. And if government cannot be secular, why should we expect our elected officials to be secular?
Dr. Kennedy’s description of the true Christian statesman bears repeating here.

· First and foremost, a Christian statesman is one who repents of his sins, believes the gospel, trusts in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and invites God by His Spirit to dwell in his heart.

· Secondly, a true Christian statesman seeks to live a life guided by God’s Word and desires to make his days count for the kingdom of God.

· Finally, a true Christian statesman is one whose public and private conduct is guided by a bedrock set of principles that will not be compromised for personal or political gain. Such a person rises above partisan politics and makes the overall welfare of a nation his first priority.

In short, says Dr. Kennedy, a Christian statesman is someone whose commitment to Christ and love of country compel him to stand for truth and righteousness in government. Such a person recognizes that individuals (as well as nations) will ultimately give an account to God and are dependent on Him for prosperity and success.
Need a good picture of a Christian statesman? Then take a look at Roy Moore.

And to Justice Moore I say, “Keep on fighting the good fight.” You are not alone. As another fearless defender of the Constitution once said: “In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength” (Robert E. Lee).

by David Alan Black

http://www.southerncaucus.org/213.htm

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.