| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
25 Jan 2005 11:36:32 AM |
| Object: |
Re: THE OATH FOR PRESIDENT |
"krp" <web2457k@verizon.net> wrote:
I forgot to add something
:|
:|"Ken Smith" <forget@it.com> wrote in message news:41EFA730.9070401@it.com...
:|> No Dems Inaugurated Today wrote:
:|
:|>>>>>>ALL of them Carol ... ALL of them recited the oath with right hand on
:|>>>>>>a BIBLE and closing "SO HELP ME GOD!" ALL Carol. ALL of them! There
:|>>>>>>is NOTHING to support YOUR claims to speak for them or that of WHACK
:|>>>>>>JOB Newdow to do likewise.
:|>>>>>
:|>>>>> Newdow is technically correct, but his actions are doomed to failure,
:|>>>>> as the Court has crafted a doctrine whereby de minimis infringements
:|>>>>> are "let go." I don't think any of us are really going to squabble
:|>>>>> with it all that much, but it would be intellectually dishonest to say
:|>>>>> that Mike Newdow doesn't have a cogent point.
:|>>>>
:|>>>> Newdow is full of *****! He couldn't be more wrong Constitutionally
:|>>>> if he stayed up for a year setting out to be wrong!
:|>>>
:|>>> And the secular purpose for having a house chaplain is?
:|>>
:|>> To acknowledge that ours is a nation under God and dependent upon His
:|>> grace.
:|
:|> That's what I love about religious nutters: words have no meaning to
:|> them. You didn't, perchance, borrow a copy of Ted Kaldis'
:|> Thoroughly-Fucked Dictionary, now did you?
:|
:| That's what I love about you Atheist NUTTERS... Words have NO meaning
:|to you. When I refer to the United States being a "Covenant Nation" your
:|eyes glaze over and you have NO idea of what I am talking about.
You're making the same claim that nut case R Gardiner AKA Ambrose Searle
used to make
buckeye May 4 2000, 12:00 am hide options
Newsgroups:
alt.history,soc.history,soc.history.war.us-revolution,alt.history.colonial,alt.politics.usa.constitution,alt.atheism
From: - Find messages by this author
Date: 2000/05/04
Subject: Re: Federal Constitution
Rick Gardiner <Gardi...@pitnet.net> wrote:
:|It's haphazard post time again, huh? Okay.
:|
:|--------
:|This is important, because the design of a political order at root is
:|a religious issue, contingent on certain assumptions about the origin
:|and nature of man; the kind of God to whom we will be held
:|accountable; how we order our values; our conception of rights and
:|obligations; and how we are to treat our neighbors either in person or
:|through the instrument of the state. Certainly religion is a personal
:|matter; but it has deep social and political implications. Every
:|social order rests on certain religious assumptions, sometimes
:|explicitly and sometimes implicitly.
:|
Gardiner <Gardi...@pitnet.net> wrote:
:|jali...@pilot.infi.net wrote:
:|>
:|> Could you kindly point out all this large Christian influence in the
:|> Constitution?
:|
:|Just for starters:
:| The root principle of the new Constitution was denoted by the word
:|"federal," a term based in Calvinist theology.
Gee, something must be wrong here.
John Calvin (1509-1564)
FEDERAL adj. 1645 foederal pertaining to or based on a treaty, especially a
covenant between God and the individual; formed in English from Latin
foedus covenant, league (genitive foederis; related to fides FAITH) +
English - al The Anglicized spelling federal is first recorded in 1737
(earlier then the French federal, 1789)
The sense of relating to a government comprising independent states
is first recorded in 1707 from the context of phrases such as federal
union, in which federal refers to the earliest sense of a treaty;
therefore, a union based on a treaty.
FEDERALISM n. 1789 Federalism formed in American English from federal + ism
FEDERALIST n. 1787, formed in American English from federal + ist.
(The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology)
Hmmmmmm, interesting, no mention of Calvin though.
Rather, the above also indicates a secular meaning and use of the word.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEDERAL
(1) (a) Of or pertaining to a convenant, compact or treaty.
1660 Stillingfl
1701 Grew.
1789 G. White
(b) Pertaining to a convenant of works, etc etc (This one is quite
religious) (federal theology, etc)
1645 Ussher
1649 Jer. Taylor
1673 True Worship of God
1737 Waterland
1800 etc
(2) Of or pertaining to, or nature of, the form of government in which two
or more states constitute a political unity while remaining more or less
independent with regard to their internal affairs.
1707 Seton
1777 Robertson
1787 J. Barlow
1832 etc etc
(b) Of or pertaining to a political unity so constituted, as distinguished
from the separate states forming it.
1789 T. Jefferson
1796 Washington
1844, etc etc
(3) U S Hist. (a) Favoring the establishment of a strong federal i.e.
central government.
1788 Lond.
1789 T Jefferson
1796Morse
1839 etc etc
(Oxford English Dictionary)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
:| The word "federal" signified
:|two things. First, it referred to the nature of the new union. Second, it
:|referred to the new way that the government was organized, and particularly to
:|the relationship between the individual states and the whole American nation.
:|The founders called their new government a "federal" government. They called
:|the constitution a "federal" constitution.
Yep, they did, they employed the secular meaning to the word.
That does not prove your point.
:| In the American colonies, the words "federal" and "federal head" were widely
:|known and generally understood because of the widespread influence of
:|Calvinist Christianity.
Widespread basically in New England, and don't even bother with your
Dominion stuff. As early as 1707 there was a very real secul;ar meaning to
the words under discussion.
:| To many in the Founders' day, to say that America was
:|a "federal" government, with a "federal" constitution was to imply that
:|Calvinist principles were assumed in the nature of the new union.
Yea right.
For some in the New England area, you might be right. However, the uproar
that came about over the No religious test clause shows you to be far more
incorrect then correct.
The English
:|word "federal" came from the Latin word foedus, which meant "bond" or union.
:|Foedus was often used in the Latin Bible to translate the Hebrew word for
:|"covenant." The Puritans and other Calvinists were people of "federal" or
:|covenant theology. The word federal in American culture was widely known to be
:|linked to the Puritans and to the Westminster Confession and Catechism (1646).
Hmmmmm, that began changing at least as early as 1707.
:|In the New England states where Calvinism was particularly strong, many
:|Christians viewed the Constitution in this light.
Many big whoop.
I know, you are still convinced that new England was the center of life
learning, and was responsible for the founding of the world, but tain't so.
Wonder how many many really is?
:| By 1787, federal political principles had been prevalent for some time,
:|particularly in New England, due to the influence of the Puritans. As
:|Historian Herbert Schneider observed:
:|
The meanings of the word Federal can be stated as follows:
While it does give a religious example, as an example, there is nothing
from the founding era that indicates that they used the word federal--in
relation to the constitution or form of government they were forming-- to
indicate a treaty between God and individuals.
You forgot to include that in your definitions. I wonder why?
I don't see Calvin mentioned anywhere.
I do see a religious meaning, but more importantly I see a very strong
secular meaning, and a secular meaning that was the meaning when the
founders used the word federal in relation to the constitution they had
framed and the government it was forming.
There is no evidence indicating your meaning was meant.
Why did you try so hard to slant your discourse?
if this is how your book is constructed, it seems to rest a lot on half
truths, misrepresentations, and a lot of other questionable scholarship.
**********************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
"Dedicated to combatting 'history by sound bite'."
Now including a re-publication of Tom Peters
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE HOME PAGE
and
Audio links to Supreme Court oral arguments and
Speech by civil rights/constitutional lawyer and others.
Page is a member of the following web rings:
The First Amendment Ring--&--The Church-State Ring
Freethought Ring--&--The History Ring
American History WebRing--&--Legal Research Ring
**********************************************
:|You retards
:|need to read the Declaration of Independence a few times and understand what
:|a truly remarkable document it is and how much of the philosophy of the
:|formation of this Republic it represents.
This DOI?
The Declaration of Independence (1776)
* Introduction
* Declaration of Independence: Its Purpose
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/doipurp.htm
* Jefferson's Declaration of Independence did not use the word
"Creator"
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/doitj.htm
* Lincoln's reinventing of the Declaration of Independence
* The United States Supreme Court and the Declaration of Independence
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/doisussc.htm
* An analysis of the Declaration of Independence
o Declaration of Independence: Preamble
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/doi-pream.htm
o Declaration of Independence is not law
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/doinotlaw.htm
o The Declaration of Independence Didn't Create Independence,
Didn't "Found" Anything, Didn't Separate Anything: It Was an Explanation
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/doiexplain.htm
"Founding" Documents and Religion (1776-1791)
* Founding Documents and Religion, DOI, AOC, Constitution, BORs
o A Big Fuss Over Nothing: An analysis of real and imagined
references to God, Christianity and Religion and lack thereof in obvious
places in five documents from the founding period of our history: the
Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Northwest
Ordinance, Federalist Papers, Constitution of the United States
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/bigfuss.htm
*********************************************************************************
* Madison's Arguments Against Special Religious Sanction of American
Government
http://candst.tripod.com/madlib.htm
Study Guide: The Roots of American Democracy
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/studygd8.htm
Roots of American Law
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/histlaw.htm
* Treaty of Tripoli, 1796: Little-Known U.S. Document Signed by
President Adams Proclaims America's Government Is Secular
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tripoli1.htm
* Joel Barlow And The Treaty With Tripoli
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/boston4.htm
n his, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States
of America" [1787-1788], John Adams wrote:
"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first
example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if
men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice,
imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an
era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American
governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in
America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be
pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the
gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those
at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it
will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely
by the use of reason and the senses.
". . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on
the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or
mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that
whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights
of mankind."
:|
:| I have had this argument many times with NUT CASE Atheists before. There
:|is a legal progression in the creation of a new nation. Just like in the
:|formation of any corporation. First you begin with the articles of
:|Incorporation stating the legal purpose of the corporation. Then you enact
:|its constitution and by laws. They do NOT exist apart from one another. The
:|monarchies exist on the claim of "divine right." The various Republics have
:|documents similar to the Declaration of Independence, they state the legal
:|definition of the national corporation. I am not aware of any nation that
:|lacks such a stated purpose. The DOI is what gives the Constitution LEGAL
:|legitimacy. The document also details where YOUR "rights" come from.
And you are full of it
I can add the following to this at this time as well"
"Dr. James Slaughter" <jslaughter@criswell.edu> wrote:
:|The origin of all human rights is God, as acknowledged by the Founding
:|Fathers.
Our founding document of liberty, the Declaration of Independence, pointed
to God as the source of our rights. Among the "truths" that were regarded
by our founding fathers as "self-evident" was the proposition that certain
rights were "unalienable" because their source was neither government nor
popular acceptance, but the endowment of the "Creator." What God gives, no
human can take away. As the young Alexander Hamilton insisted on the eve of
the American Revolution: "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be
rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.... They are written, as
with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the
divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."2 Nor
is this an anachronistic view. President George W. Bush put it this way in
2002: "We need common sense judges who understand our rights were derived
from God."3
If only it were that simple! If only it were true that a God, in whom
everyone believed, had come down from the heavens and given the entire
world an unambiguous list of the rights with which He endowed us. How much
easier it would be to defend these sacred rights from alienation by mere
mortals. Alas, the claim that rights were written down by the hand of the
divinity is one of those founding myths to which we desperately cling,
along with the giving of the Tablets to Moses on Sinai, the dictation of
the Koran to Muhammad, and the discovery of the Gold Plates by Joseph
Smith.
To the extent the divine source and unalienability of our rights are
purported to be factual, history has proved our founding fathers plainly
wrong: Every right has in fact been alienated by governments since the
beginning of time. Within a generation of the establishment of our nation,
the founding fathers rescinded virtually every right they had previously
declared unalienable. John Adams, one of the drafters of the Declaration of
Independence, alienated the right to speak freely and express dissenting
views when, as president, he enforced the Alien and Sedition Acts against
his political opponents-with Hamilton's strong support.4 (Perhaps
Hamilton's God had not given "sacred rights" to Jeffersonians!) Another of
the drafters, Thomas Jefferson, alienated the most basic of rights-to the
equal protection of the laws, based on the "truth" that "all men are
created equal"-when he helped to write (and strengthen) Virginia's "Slave
Code," just a few years after drafting the Declaration of Independence. The
revised Code denied Negro slaves the right to liberty and to the pursuit of
happiness by punishing attempted escape with"outlawry" or death. Jefferson
personally suspected that "the blacks ... are inferior to the whites in the
endowments of body and mind." In other words, they were endowed by their
creator not with equality but with inferiority.
There is no right that has not been suspended or trampled during times of
crisis and war, even by our greatest presidents. Washington was a strong
supporter of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Lincoln suspended the writ of
habeas corpus. Wilson authorized the "Palmer raids," in which his attorney
general seized, arrested, and imprisoned thousands of suspected radicals in
violation of their rights. Roosevelt ordered the detention of more than
100,000 Americans of Japanese descent without even a semblance of due
process. He also convened a military tribunal to try-without a jury-an
American citizen caught spying for Germany in the United States. And
Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, despite their personal dislike of Senator
Joseph McCarthy, alienated the rights of political dissent during the Cold
War by enforcing the persecution of Communists, former Communists, and
those suspected of leftist sympathies.
These precedents and others have been cited by President George W. Bush,
his attorney general, and some judges to justify-the alienation of some of
our most important rights (perhaps Bush's God did not bestow these rights
on American citizens suspected of terrorism or foreigners detained at
Guantanamo, Cuba). The difference is that in the past, the alienations were
temporary, lasting only as long as the war or emergency. But the "war"
against terrorism is, by its nature, unending. There will be no formal
surrender by our current enemies. There will be no peace treaty, parades,
or victory days. Whatever alienations of our fundamental rights are
authorized by the courts today will endure for generations. Alienation may
well become the norm.
NOTES:
2. Quoted in Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin, 2004), p.
60.
3. Alessandra Stanley, "Understanding the President and His God," New York
Times, April 29, 2004, p. El.
4. See David McGowan, "Ethos in Law and History: Alexander Hamilton, The
Federalist, and the Supreme Court," 85 Minnesota Law Review 755 (2001), pp.
778-779 (noting Hamilton's support, as demonstrated by his reaction to the
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, which opposed the Alien and Sedition
Acts; among other things, Hamilton recommended using military force to
"persuade" Virginia that the Alien and Sedition Acts were appropriate).
SOURCE: Rights From Wrongs, A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights. Alan
Dershowitz, Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Boom Group, N.Y. (2004)
pp. 2-3
Laws can have a lot to do with rights. After all laws frequently establish
what one can't do thus implying at the same time what can be done ow what
is allowed to be done, thus a right. Laws frequently come about to prevent
or avoid something. Laws frequently came about as a result of people
living together and the laws resulted from some event, some action.
Gee, we are getting into "wrongs"
There are at least three books that Alan Dershowitz has written as he
developed this concept in his mind
The Genesis of Justice Ten stories of Bibical Injustice that Led to the
Ten Commandnents and Modern Law (2000)
America Declares Independence (2003)
Rights From Wrongs, A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights (2004)
The same concepts can be found in the history of law and in the folowing as
well:
Benjamin F. Underwood: The Practical Separation of Church and State (1876)
http://candst.tripod.com/uwood.htm
.
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