Religions > Atheism > Liberal revolution (From Alan Keyes site , pushing Philip Hamburger's book
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02 Nov 2005 09:42:41 PM |
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Liberal revolution (From Alan Keyes site , pushing Philip Hamburger's book |
Liberal revolution (From Alan Keyes site , pushing Philip Hamburger's book
Issues analysis
Liberal revolution
New and better solutions?
November 2, 2005
Joshua Herring
RenewAmerica analyst
http://www.renewamerica.us/analyses/051102herring.htm
[excerpt]
Another age--another time of iconoclasts and humanistic thinking
The election of Thomas Jefferson as President of the United States
came at a time of political upheaval in this nation over the degree to
which religion (Christianity) should be allowed to influence American
government. It was a time very similar to what we are dealing with
politically speaking today, in some ways. Bitter battles were being
fought between members of Jefferson's more secularized Republican
Party and Federalists who were backed by the New England clergy both
before and after the election. In the title for chapter six of his
highly celebrated book Separation of Church and State, Philip
Hamburger, John P. Wilson Professor of Law at University of Chicago,
described the Republican Party's approach to politics during this
period of American history as keeping religion out of politics and
making politics religious.
I thought of this shortly after the 2004 elections, when in a
televised interview I heard newly elected Illinois Senator Barack
Obama respond to questions about morality in the Democratic Party by
asserting that rising unemployment and lack of national healthcare
coverage are examples of America's most serious moral problems. Nearly
all of the Democratic Party on a congressional level today has lost
touch with their moral compass so badly that when someone tries to
connect with them about the matter, either they can't even manage to
get on the same page, or they feign a morality their voting records
clearly deny. Yet they would have us believe they have solutions to
the crises involving societal problems in America that are so
unquestionably linked to our moral posture as a nation.
Liberal forces in the government today are relentlessly seeking to
diminish the influence of the Christian clergy on the politics of this
nation. They have even gone so far as to use the IRS in an effort to
remove the influence of the clergy from the picture altogether during
the final stretch of the campaign season before elections. They are
also seeking the progressive removal--to an even greater degree than
what we've already seen--of the influence, in fact even the mere
visibility, of Christianity in the public domain. Furthermore, this
has been carried much further than simply being a matter of visibility
in public buildings.
In one Ten Commandments case that I read of in the past year or so,
there was a battle over removal of a display of the commandments on
private property on the basis of the fact that it could be seen from a
freeway. In 1990 the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for a
public cemetery to have a planter in the shape of a cross, on the
basis of the premise that if someone were to view the cross, it could
cause "emotional distress" and thus constitute an "injury-in-fact." [4]
During the first decade of the nineteenth century, Jeffersonian
Republicans virtually demanded that clergymen separate religion from
politics completely. Yet at the same time, Republicans spoke of their
programs and aspirations in ways that described themselves as the
heralds of a new millennial era, and even went so far as to employ
concepts and terminology pilfered from religious thought. In the words
of Professor Hamburger:
"They sought to transform the politics of this world, and in so doing
they often described secular politics as a means of achieving
religious and even millennial ends. In this civic appropriation of
religious expectations, Republicans learned much from writings
associated with the French Revolution, most notably the voluble
eloquence of Volney and Paine. Thomas Paine--a critic of the
"adulterous connection between church and state"--perceived in the
recent history of France not merely a revolution, but a 'REGENERATION
OF MAN.'" [5]
Hamburger again:
"It was, however, the Compte de Volney who, both in print and in
person, gave Americans their most popular glimpse of a Republican
millennium. In 1791, in a surreal fantasy of rational, anticlerical,
and antimonarchical legislators (whom he imagined himself to be
viewing from the gondola of a hot-air balloon) Volney predicted an end
to prejudice and passion, warfare and intolerance. Among the rational
people of his reconstructed world, the 'religion of errour and
delusion' would be replaced by the 'religion of evidence and truth,'
leading to unanimity in the perception of the laws of nature, which,
in turn, would permit the attainment of harmony on earth." [6]
[end excerpt]
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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]
***************************************************************
.. . . 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)
.. . .
****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
****************************************************************
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