The First Amendment actually reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …The First Amendment is the only one which clearly limits its reach to Congress. In Everson v. Board of Education the Supreme Court actually referred back to Muddock v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in its claim that the First Amendment was made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth. The reasoning of the Court in Muddock is specious. No attempt was made to show how "Congress" somehow mutated into "states". It just makes a broad statement:
The First Amendment, which the Fourteenth makes applicable to the states, declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ....'The reasoning of the Court however can be found in how it addresses the question of taxation in regard to religious freedom:
It may be said, however, that ours is a too narrow, technical and legalistic approach to the problem of state taxation of the activities of church and press; that we should look not to the expressed or historical meaning of the First Amendment but to the broad principles of free speech and free exercise of religion which pervade our national way of life. It may be that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees these principles rather than the more definite concept expressed in the First Amendment. This would mean that as a Court, we should determine what sort of liberty it is that the due process clause of [319 U.S. 105, 129] the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees against state restrictions on speech and church.This search for broad meaning rather than what the Constitution actually says is gate through which the Philosopher-Kings of the Court have marched in order to impose what they think is good government and turned what was suppose to be a limited federal government to the all-powerful monster we have today. Stare decisis be damned. It is time that these bogus rulings of the Court be challenged and overturned.
In Everson v. Board of Education the Supreme Court actually referred back to Muddock v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in its claim that the First Amendment was made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth. The reasoning of the Court in Muddock is specious.The problem is that it doesn't matter if it's specious or not. If it's the accepted legal holding by the Supreme Court, then that's all she wrote until a) it's overturned or b) Marbury vs. Madison goes out the window. While I would hope for B, I know it's not going to happen, so we have to operate by what is rather than what we wish it were.
Stare decisis be damned. It is time that these bogus rulings of the Court be challenged and overturned.I don't disagree that they need to be challenged and overturned. But we have to use persuasive legal arguments if we want that done.