[AuntB]

ONE NATION UNDER GOD

Bump!!

[lodwick]

Good job - bttt

[WakeUpChristian]

Call Federal Judge Alfred Goodwin and demand
that he immediately resign... (415) 556-9800

[hope]

A Bush-bot is far better than a rat-bot!:)

[JustAmy]

Bump to rid us of idiot liberal judges!!!

[RichInOC]

Even the LA Times thinks the Ninth Circuit messed up. Their editorial today referred to the decision as "a fundamentally silly ruling, which deserves to be tossed out, as was the initial suit...." In light of the 1943 Supreme Court ruling against requiring recitation of the pledge, and the simple fact that the phrase "under God" hasn't led to the establishment of a state religion, they also call the Newdow decision "a cure without an ailment." Just something you all, especially the California Freepers, might want to keep in mind as you write your legislators on this.

[BobFromNJ]

Bravo Jim! I couldn't agree more! Let's make this the last straw as we battle these liberal/socialist/anti-americans down to the last gasp we have !

BobfromNJ

[tpaine]

-- I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States Of America, and to the Constitutional Republics for which it stands.
One nation, one principle; - Life, Liberty, and Justice for all.

---

Could we all agree on a pledge like this one?

[ContraryMary]

I'm with you!

[RebelDawg]

Thank you Jim!

I know that I have been very critical of President Bush in the past but this ruling handed down by the 9th circuit court (as well as some incitefull posts by those who disagreed with me) has brought me back to the light!

Now don't expect me to go agreeing with every little thing that the President does. I still disagree with his immigration policies for one, but from now on you can count me in!

Thanks and God Bless the U.S.!

[kickstart]

I am amazed that people take the First Amendment to be so precise in its meaning, but the Second Amendment is too vague to mean an individual right to own firearms cannot be infringed.

[Temple Owl]

God bless you all and thank you for bearing with me. I love my country and I love my freedom more than life itself. I don't care what anyone says about me, or what labels they pin on me. From this day forward I am a Bush-bot and proud of it! I am going to help turn this thing around or I'm going down in flames trying.

Me too! But don't get so down. These people have been at it since the days of FDR. They are entrenched in all of the positions that you mentioned. But you and people like you have made a difference.

We have our setbacks, but for the first time since the '30s we are waking up. We are winning!!! And as I have said before on different threads, Thank God for George W. After eight years of filth, I feel clean again. Go Get 'em Jimbo!

[KDD]

This ruling ill served both religion and government.

It is not true that political candidates hate to confront moral issues. The fact is, they rush to warm themselves in the glow of moral sentiments. What they abhor is the work of actually sorting out any specific moral controversy. The language of ethics is soothing at the level of generalities, and frightening at the level of specifics. Politicians-aided and abetted by the press-seek the moral high ground of empathy, and we are all a bit relieved by the postponement of hard choices.

Can it be otherwise? Certainly the politicians have only limited room for maneuver. There is usually not much to be obtained by alienating the undecided voters who might well be the difference between victory and defeat. What candidate wouldn't trim his sails to the prevailing winds? President Clinton is a master of this formula for success: preserve your base while moving as far away from it as you can to maximize the undecided vote. Is this not what elections are ultimately all about?

For the rest of us, press and public, surely our interest in preserving comity is enough to discourage contemplation of the differences between us. When disagreements revolve around moral differences, the potential for explosion is high. Even from our point of view, little seems to be served by pushing disagreements to the limits. Far safer to smother them in the platitudes of "different strokes for different folks," "live and let live," and so on. This is, after all, what has preserved the liberal democratic peace.

But it is also what has given an air of pervasive unreality to our society. We have a right to arm ourselves to the teeth; we have a right to enjoy pornography; we have a right to burn the American flag; we have a right to abort our fetuses; we have a right to die. We have a right to be reckless, inconsiderate, immature, and downright crazy. At least up to a point. There are of course limits, especially when we can discern a measurable impact on the rights and welfare of others. They too must have the same maximal space for self-abandonment. Is there not something truly nutty about a society that defines itself in such terms?

No wonder we have such an ache for the certainties of a bygone era. Family values, individual responsibility, community building are code words for that deeper yearning. The more fractured and fractious the assertion of our rights to personal freedom, the more the idyllic integrity of a communitarian era beckons us. Who wouldn't be drawn by the wholesome images of family and neighbors pulling together through the ups and downs of life, rather than the cacophony of rights claimants that seems to dominate our own noisy public square? The only difficulty is that we haven't a clue about how to get from one to the other. Merely cutting back the government won't bring about a deeper change.

Neither will endless talk about the need for personal responsibility and a new ethos of civility within civil society. Without tackling our specific moral responsibilities such talk is empty rhetoric. Its vacuity is all the more painfully exposed when the moment of undifferentiated empathy has passed. If we fail in our obligation towards specific human beings, then we have discredited the humanitarian sentiments espoused. The problem is that concrete moral issues have been preempted by the liberal presumption of privacy, and the relentless extension of the liberal language of autonomy has removed a common moral framework from our society. Somewhere we have lost our hold on the sense that there is a moral order independent of our choices and wishes.

We can point to many suspects in history as the causes of this loss, but only their common character really matters. It is the fate of a liberal political tradition to progressively consume its own moral substance. By removing more and more of the controverted issues from the public sphere and placing them in the private realm, it conveys the inexorable sense that there is no common moral order. There are only the "values" we choose to apply to ourselves. All that matters is that we are legally right in asserting our rights claims, and the legal order is finally accepted as the only moral order.

The independent moral order has not been abolished, of course. The fact that pornographers pose as (moral) champions of the First Amendment may be the clearest evidence that we still have in our civil society some sense of morality, and within that inchoate germ of self-realization lies the best hope for a moral reawakening. The inescapability of an order of good and evil, which is not ours to command but by which we will eventually be measured, is a steady pressure on our individual consciences, and it is made manifest by the elaborateness of attempts to deny it.

The problem is to find a way to make this moral order a presence in the public square amidst the dominant ethos of relativism. The Republicans have the best prospects, because their traditionalist intuitions are closer to the answer most of us seek.

snip

Wherever the exercise of self-restraint begins, it has the inestimable value of forcing the recognition that we live within an order of limits. Our rights are not a poisonous brew destined to subvert any sense of difference between good and evil. We may not be able to define to our satisfaction where the line is to be drawn. But we can discern clearly its outer limits. The unambiguous recognition of such boundaries is an indispensable element in preserving the awareness of a moral order beyond our construction. Without that awareness we would eventually cease to regard respect for an order of mutual rights as itself something right.

An order of rights without right is simply that. Only if we recognize this do we have any chance of retaining contact with an order of right beyond rights. What we have a right to do may not in fact be right to do. The difference is crucial and it must be embedded in the law itself, because only then can we prevent the collapse of the morally right into the legally right. Acknowledging the limits of the law is indispensable to preserving the recognition of a moral order beyond it. Conversely, relieving legality of the burden of moral rightness is also indispensable to its preservation. The legal and the moral must remain distinct if they are to perform their roles of supporting and facilitating one another

Rights Without Right
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/fo rum/a39f7ad0d0b86.htm

[Brad’s Gramma]

I'm with you...110%.

[AndrewC]

Did I hear a battle cry?

[Copernicus]

Thoughts on the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thought 1 . God fearing Patriots and Conservatives do NOT Pledge Allegiance to a piece of CLOTH or a tangle of poorly defined concepts.

This is called IDOLATRY.

Thinking Conservatives pledge allegiance to God and BECAUSE of their pledge to God swear to protect and defend those institutions and principles critical to Human Events here on God's Earth.

To understand this concept compare and contrast the Pledge of Allegiance with the Boy Scout Oath or the Oath of Office required of the President as written in the Constitution to wit:

"I solemnly swear (or affirm) I that I will faithfully execute the office of the president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States.(so help me God)

Distinguish between this oath taken by a man whose allegiance is pledged to God and who seeks to honor God with his vow to serve faithfully and well on Earth and the Pledge of Allegiance to the "flag and the republic for which it stands" (whatever that means!)

This also happens to be the oath administered to members of the United States Military and the vow I took when I joined the Navy.

I must honor that oath by my respectful disagreement with those people who somehow confuse idolatry with an attack on religious belief.

Thought 2. This tempest in a teapot is a direct result of leviathan Government abrogating unto itself the education of the nation through the device of a monolithic Public School establishment.

It is inconceivable the government court system would do anything other than rule for the benefit of the government in the government run school system.

Anyone unhappy with the 9th Circuit ruling should seek to shut down the government monopoly over education immediately.

Impeachment of judges, public street protests, letters to the editor are both useless and meaningless if the Public School Monopoly survives unaltered.

It has been said many times before: "The Government governs best that governs least". This is especially true in regard to the education of the young.

Best regards to all, .

[Jen]

Reporting for duty and ready for battle, General. God bless you!

[lds23]

You have hit the nail on the head, sir.

[Taxman]

BRAVO ZULU! Well said, Jim.

Lets Roll, Conservatives!

[Michael2001]

You know a month ago I would have disagreed with you and said that there was no difference between the Dems and the Repubs any more. I still have some issues with the Republicans, but the Dems are so far out in left field that we really have no other choice, and the Republicans are still a much better choice.

What changed my mind?:

http://www.freerepublic.com/fo cus/news/704689/posts?q=1& &page=1

Apparently Joey Lieberman thinks that the solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, is to bring more Palestinians into the United States (gee I wonder what the outcome of that will be).

If this guy gets elected, God help us all. I'll be voting Repub