76% reject the left's 'church and state' myth
December 11, 3:49 PMMacon County Conservative Examiner
Robert Moon
A new Rasmussen poll shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans (76%) support allowing religious symbols on public land. 83% think public schools should actively celebrate religious holidays.
This flies in the face of everything we are told by radical left-wing groups like the ACLU about where the American people stand on this issue. It also clarifies just how far out of the mainstream these liberal groups are...like the American Humanist Association, which recently launched its creepy 'No God? No Problem!' ad campaign nationwide for the holidays.
And, of course, this poll also shows that the American people openly defy the left's bigoted, Constitution-trampling war on Christianity.
Let's review:
"Separation of church and state" appears nowhere in the Constitution. Additionally, the Bill of Rights was drafted specifically to convince hesitant states that this new federal government would not trample their rights...including their religious rights. As with everything else in the Bill of Rights, the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment was a protection of the states vs. the federal government; it was a protection against a national religion.If people find it inappropriate for an Alabama judge to acknowledge our Judeo-Christian heritage with a Ten Commandments display in his courthouse, then, according to the Constitution, that is a matter for the people of Alabama to decide, not some federal court. The federal government even being involved constitutes an outright reversal of what was intended.
Some of the ratifying states actually even had official state religions at the time of the founding. Think about that.
Incidentally, click here to see which businesses are resisting the left's war on Christmas, and which ones are caving in.
18 hours ago
1 comment:
“Separation of church and state” is but a metaphor to describe the underlying principle of the First Amendment and the no-religious-test clause of the Constitution. While some try to pass off the Supreme Court's decisions as simply a misreading of Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, that letter has played but a small part in the Court's decisions. Perhaps even more than Jefferson, Madison influenced the Court's view. Madison, who had a central role in drafting the Constitution and First Amendment, confirmed that he understood them to "[s]trongly guard[] . . . the separation between Religion and Government." Madison, Detached Memoranda (~1820). He made plain, too, that they guarded against more than just laws creating state sponsored churches or imposing a state religion. Mindful that old habits die hard and that tendencies of citizens and politicians could and sometimes did lead them to entangle government and religion (e.g., "the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress" and "for the army and navy" and "[r]eligious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts"), he considered the question whether these were "consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom" and responded: "In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion."
While the First Amendment, as you observe, governs only the federal government, the Fourteenth Amendment governs the states, and its guarantees of individual rights, particularly the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and equal protection of the laws, effectively extend the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty to the states.
When discussing separation of church and state, it is critical to avoid the common mistake of conflating the "public square" with "government." The principle of separation of church and state does not purge religion from the public square--far from it. Indeed, the First Amendment's "free exercise" clause assures that each individual is free to exercise and express his or her religious views--publicly as well as privately. The Amendment constrains only the government not to promote or otherwise take steps toward establishment of religion.
As government can only act through the individuals comprising its ranks, when those individuals are performing their official duties (e.g., public school teachers instructing students in class), they effectively are the government and thus should conduct themselves in accordance with the First Amendment's constraints on government. When acting in their individual capacities, they are free to exercise their religions as they please. If their right to free exercise of religion extended even to their discharge of their official responsibilities, however, the First Amendment constraints on government establishment of religion would be eviscerated. While figuring out whether someone is speaking for the government may sometimes be difficult, making the distinction is critical.
Those running private businesses, of course, are free to highlight Christmas--or not--as they see fit.
The First Amendment embodies the simple, just idea that each of us should be free to exercise his or her religious views without expecting that the government will endorse or promote those views and without fearing that the government will endorse or promote the religious views of others. By keeping government and religion separate, the establishment clause serves to protect the freedom of all to exercise their religion. Reasonable people may differ, of course, on how these principles should be applied in particular situations, but the principles are hardly to be doubted. Moreover, they are good, sound principles that should be nurtured and defended, not attacked. Efforts to transform our secular government into some form of religion-government partnership should be resisted by every patriot.
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