http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2005/10/11/20051011wacyoung11.html
Young: Freedom they can't hack
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Tuesday, October 11, 2005
John Young Opinion page editor
First Amendment is real foe for 'commandments' crowd
They don't get it. And they never will.
“It” is freedom of religion.
Like conditioned canines contained by an electric fence, a large number of
Americans will never understand the intellectual freedoms enumerated in the
Bill of Rights. They will never accept the limits placed on government,
limits upheld over and over again by the Supreme Court.
They will always believe that the role of government, like that electric
fence, is to tell people where to stand on matters of faith.
It's sadly ironic, because most of them will turn around and say they
believe in less government. They'll say they oppose an intrusive state.
They'll say that liberty is at the very root of their belief system.
But on those matters most personal and most fundamental, they choose
government as a vehicle to lead people on paths of right-eousness and
religiosity.
That which scholars call freedom of religion is confused by too many
Americans government authority, or the prerogative of a majority to impose
its beliefs on everyone. A garden-variety theocracy would suit them fine,
assuming the theosophy is theirs.
Government and God
The Trib's Terri Jo Ryan recently reported on the second annual survey by
the Council for America's First Freedom. It found that half those
interviewed said the separation between religion and government should
either be less strictly interpreted (27 percent) or was not necessary at
all (23 percent).
For a story of that sort, one has few better resources than Baylor
University's J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies.
Director Derek Davis said that lack of grounding in the essence of
religious freedom leads a lot of Americans to say they support it, while
supporting just the opposite.
That surely explains why the survey found that half of respondents would
support a designated prayer time in school.
That's not religious freedom. That's government sponsorship of religion.
And when school prayer is organized as was the practice generations ago,
it's not just sponsorship. It's coercion.
Sounds like a no-brainer. In a society based on freedom of religion,
freedom of expression and freedom of thought, the last thing government
would be telling people is how to believe and in what.
Yet one of the more celebrated religious-right causes lately is posting the
Ten Commandments in schools and courthouses, effectively to serve as a
statement of public policy. And those commandments, depending on one's
variation, begin, “I am the Lord God; thou shalt have no other gods before
me.”
Pray tell: What business has our government telling people what to worship
and how?
Logic be gone. The posting of the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, and
the refusal to obey a court order to remove it, apparently have made former
Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore governor material. He
announced his candidacy last week.
A recent political cartoon, commenting on a judge's ruling that reciting
the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional,
demonstrates the maddening nature of issues like these. A school child with
hand to heart, stands before the flag and says, “Who is this God character,
anyway?”
We are to believe that without government intervention, the concept of God,
and any belief therein, would vanish. Come on, people: That's your idea of
a supreme being?
Against a political tide that wants government in a pastor's role, hear a
voice of scholarship like James A. Wood, for many years director of
Baylor's church-state institute. Wood is deeply religious but says: “There
is no freedom of religion without freedom from religion. The freedom to
believe is worthless without the freedom not to believe. You can't really
talk about freedom of religion as if it stands apart from freedom from it.”
Oh, yes, you can. Listen to the “less-government” crowd, which asserts that
for the saving of souls, government is the answer.
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Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas as well]
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.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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