Well certainly dear YHAOS — no one of a certain age has forgotten the constitutional meaning of "establishment." But I am a member of perhaps the last generation of school kids who actually was taught American history, from well before the Revolutionary War and the Founding Period, right up to the then-present.
Particularly we learned the Constitution and the other founding documents. Which taught us the frame or structure of our government of delegated and separated powers; and of its fundamental principles and values, not least of which is the principle of public sovereignty; i.e., We the People are the Principal; the government is the Agent, and all its few puny powers it receives from its Principal, as specified in the Constitution. It has no other powers: The Agent may not act/exert himself on his own behalf.
I have very strong doubts that kids are getting anything like that nowadays. I digress — sorry.
In in the past, I've had conversations with people, mainly fellow FReepers, intelligent people one presumes, who have taken the position that "establishment" means something quite different from the way you and I understand that term.
According to this view, if, say a local community of whatever kind — say, a college or a sports team; or a social or fraternal club; or a church, etc. —sanctions, say, a non-denominational prayer, or even a moment of silence, in a public school, public building, or public function; or puts up a creche on the public square at Christmas (or even on private property as some recent court cases seem to suggest); or allows displays of the Ten Commandments in court houses (though it's emblazoned on the facade at the Supreme Court itself); that community is "establishing religion" — which these geniuses point out is forbidden under the First Amendment.
But what I still don't get is why the local community would be penalized, when the First Amendment prohibition applies to Congress alone: "Congress shall make no law...." As for the people of the United States, they have a perfectly legitimate right, guaranteed by the free exercise clause, to "exercise" expressions of their religious beliefs, anywhere they want to within reason. Period. [cf. Amendments IX and X too]
So here again we see the case of a word whose historical meaning has been utterly changed, actually inverted, in ways amenable to new ideological presuppositions, favored by our self-selected "public intellectuals" — for example, such as (in the political sphere) Sunstein, E. Immanuel, et al.; on the so-called "science side," we have such as the hateful Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Monod, Lewontin — oh, the list goes on. And then from "belles lettres" we have the utterly degenerate and ignoble Christopher Hitchens....
Our enemies, thus, do not have to discuss the idea of the historical meaning of "the establishment of religion"; they can simply co-opt the word, and turn it into something else — something more "useful" to them, given the "annointed vision" they are in process of implementing — involving their new definition of man as the creature that has been liberated (finally) from God and all moral constraint. Only in this way can we say that man is really "free."
Many evolutionists in the crowd seem quite persuaded by such reasoning I gather. They seem to consider the total debauch of spiritual man as some kind of necessary step up the evolutionary ladder....
This, of course, is deeply subversive of the traditional values and mores of American society. I have to take it as a direct personal threat.
To your last point, dear YHAOS, it seems to me there is something very special, different, about the kind of political ideologies and tactics that are in use today. They seem especially perverse and evil as compared with, say, the sophists and politicos of ancient Athens. It's the difference between human libido dominandi — powerlust, with all its malignancy — and positive evil, evil embraced for its own sake.
Of course that's pretty speculative, my friend. Still, I am reminded that Saul Alinski traces his pedigree back to Antonio Gramsci; and Gramsci was an anarchist, a nihilist. Needless to say an atheist. A collateral line goes to Mikhail Bakunin, who was the same.
Now whose business do you suppose those two antiGod and antihuman monsters were all about? To me, they were working for the "father of lies," who taught them that "the ends justify the means," so lying is okay; and if the desired end is the total annihilation of the world as we know it, "just because we can do it," then we can blow everything God made to smithereens. And then we'd really be free!
I do believe these people were insane. I know Nietzche was insane when he died (complications of syphilis; to me, poor Nietsche was the guy that kicked off all this perversity, at least in its modern, seemingly more virulent iteration). And I do believe that their followers today are also totally insane.
See above for partial list.
Yet they are all respected intellectuals; the present Administration is stuffed with people like this, serving as close advisors; they head departments; they sit on courts. But perhaps more importantly, they sit in academe, in the foundations, and even on corporate boards. And the MSM are their lap dogs and slathering sycophants.
Admittedly, it's a "very fine kettle of fish" we have on our hands. :^)
A required class in every HS in the US should be:
Constitutions: US + Respective State
It is no accident that the Texas school book issue centered around excising US history prior to the build-up to the Civil War. That was the beginning of big government and spurious interpretation of a “living constitution.”
The all-important question throughout any constitution class should be: “What does it actually say?” and not “What does it mean?” The former is a grammar, reading comprehension question.
As a result, nowadays, most any thing or place funded by the public dare not mention God. No wonder our country is deeply troubled.
Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, knowing better, may have advocated the active pursuit of sin out of a simple lust for power, just as did the sophists of ancient Athens, but I submit that modern Liberals, even when in their earlier larval stage (in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s), were fully aware of the consequences arising from their behavior, and they don’t care. It’s no longer possible to escape the knowledge of their miscreant behavior. The stench of Nazi death camps, the despair of Soviet gulags, the horror of Dung’s pogroms, make it impossible to ignore.
Hence perhaps, xzins’ reference to “The all-important question throughout any constitution class should be: “What does it actually say?” and not “What does it mean?” Not that it would have had any effect on the evildoers, but it might have given pause to many of their ignorant and slavish followers.
Maybe I’m doing nothing more than saying what you’ve already said more elegantly.
”Of course that’s pretty speculative . . . ”
Likewise my response, dear betty