It appears that Judge Moore’s display fails the Lemon test.
Yes, this sums up how I feel about his actions, and his defense of his actions on TV.
[His manner] should have no bearing on the facts of the case.
No, it's his political manner that's bothering me. He's making a religious freedom defense where I think one should be made on a secular basis. I need to be convinced of a secular reason to support his time consuming and divisive actions. Because it is so totally Judeo-Christian, I don't believe he'd ever succeed. So his refusal to remove the icon is not practical, it's not defensible in my view, and it's not contributing to anyone's real freedoms. It might actually be the opposite.
One pro-Moore poster brought up Islamic respect for the 10 commandments as proof that they are multicultural, but this only makes it more clear why Americans are best served by agnostic legal procedures. I have no interest in bringing Islamic sensibilities into the court room, and based on the evils of Sharia law, I'm sure most Christians would agree. Yet to some muslims, a Christian justification wouldn't give them a sense of justice. Justice in a democratic republic has to come from the law itself. I think that is the power of the Enlightenment. Laws stand on their own without religious justifications in a democracy!
We can ask how Moore's illegal behavior contributes to civic discourse? I can't anything useful in what he's doing, yet he insists on TV that proving that America a Christian nation is a part of his public, Consitututional duty. I can't agree, and so I'm unable to find any value in the time and energy he's sapping out of our legal system.
Thompson goes to great lengths to delve into Judge Moore’s faith and his motivations. From this, one can possibly infer that Judge Moore has been found guilty of thought crime.
I'm reacting to this on my own interpretation of Moore's comments on TV, not the legal decision that is ejecting the sculpture, and not Moore's justifications in his appeals. He said that he needs to do this to uphold the Constitution. I can't agree with that statement, and I find it so impractical that I no longer care why or how he tried to argue for keeping the memorial in the building. He's trying to usurp my Constitution to mean something other than what it should mean, and he wants to use this case as a way to solidify a national consensus to that effect. No way can I support that.
I do not find any reason for your fear that you will not be eligible for public service as a result of your status as a non-Christian.
Issuses of constitutionality are lofty and abstract. I find that his assertions that this is a Christian nation to be so forceful and so arbitrary, that if supported by any Supreme court or circuit court ruling, could well imply that one needed to be Christian in order to serve in government. That's just my reaction to his comments on TV, but until proven otherwise, I am happy to see him lose this case.
Second, it is not in the interest of you or anyone else in this country to live in fear of the ACLU and too keep our heads down in fear that we will be sued. To be sure, that is the position of many, including schools, churches and municipalities. But it should not be the attitude of free men.
Here is where we diverge most widely. You extrapolate from all of this drama and say that your freedoms are being threatened by our legal system's openness to societal change due to suits and filings and so forth. I suppose this is the proverbial "activist court." I don't like an activist court, or at least not a lot of what we've seen, either. But social justice has a lot to do with averages. How does the average case treat the plantif and the accused? How do randomly selected rulings measure up to the spirit of our Constitution? Our legal system is protecting many people today from many injustices, while today it limits the iconography that a Christian judge can bring into his professional practice, many other days it spares people from having Moore's own rulings from being justified in purely Christian terms. Justice is arbitrary. Justice is frustrating to many. But until you change the Constitution or elect different people who appoint judges who rule in different ways, I believe these rulings are acceptable, and talk of revolting against them incurs no sympathy from me.
Your reference to Judge Moore as a “buffoon” is unworthy of the rest of your comments. For the same reason I will not refer to you as an anti-Christian bigot. I hope that your slip does not reveal a hidden antipathy to people of faith.
His interview on CNBC definitely gave me the impression that he was a buffoon, and that he was grandstanding on this issue to gain attention and sympathy for a position that is untennable under current American laws. That is why I can't support him, not because of his personal beliefs. I feel he wants to force them on his constituents based completely on what he said on TV in his interview on CNBC. I don't know for certain, but I'm convinced that this is the same reason why he is facing legal rejection today.
Bless your heart, risk, but you argument completely collapses as this point.
I can prove my assertion:
1. Whom did the Founders regard as Sovereign? Before you answer with your own opinion, please elucidate the historical facts about Whom the Founders regarded as Sovereign.
2. Every law has as it's root the enforcement by force of some moral precept. The question though is, what is that moral basis? My point here is there is no logical, justifiable moral basis for any law that is contrary to God's law. If you want to make a case for such a law, go ahead and try. I can and will provide provide an adequate respone. I predict that you will be unable to provide a consistent moral basis for anything other.
3. Your statement above leaves no room for inalienable rights, a principle firmly established in our organic documents.
4. Your statement above is on it's face contradictory to written statements of the Founders.
Cordially,