| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
17 Jul 2003 03:08:28 PM |
| Object: |
PUBLIC RELIGION, reasons for |
PUBLIC RELIGION, Reason for
WARNING FORM THE FOUNDING ERA"
A Baptist minister and follow warrior with Jefferson, Madison and others in
the struggle for religious freedom gave this advice about electing public
officials: "...guard against those men who make a great noise about
religion..."
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/leland5.htm
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THIS ERA
Sentiments like that may not be in the most elegantly stoical style
of the best federal judges. They reflect, though, the relentless pressures
that should leave no one smug about the security of the safeguards for
minority consciences in America.
Credit the West Virginia federal judge, in any event, with
enforcing the law against the blunt defiance of the West Virginia
legislature. Other legislators have chosen to be more subtle and to insist
that their decreed periods of silence really have nothing to do with the
Constitution's prohibition against officially promoted prayer in the public
schools. And, as I've said, august judges and scholars have accepted this
account. A law professor who vigorously supports a liberally interpreted
Establishment Clause has written that laws decreeing moments of silence are
no problem if they do not prescribe prayer during those moments; the
students, he points out, have free choice: some "may use the moment of
silence to pray; others may use it to meditate, daydream, plot mischief, or
ogle their favorite classmate."11 Justices of the Supreme Court and other
federal judges have reached the same conclusion.12 With all respect to
them, I'm led to recall the observation of justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
that judges tend to be naive people. Granted that he probably had, as
usual, a more layered meaning than the one I now take, it does seem
remarkably naive to treat the moment-of-silence laws in this innocent
fashion.
To be sure, the decreed time of silence may be used to daydream or
ogle, etc. But how did it happen that in all the decades before the
school-prayer cases no powerhouse of daydreamers and oglers (who represent
all of us, after all) demanded laws compelling stated periods of silence?
Rhetorical questions don't need answers. As a relevant tangent, however,
one recalls the long stretches of silence, in study halls and classrooms,
that characterized life in public school. There was always plenty of time
to pray or ogle. No law proclaimed a specific moment of silence. No
occasion arose when anybody was questioned about the failure to use the
silent time for praying. The moment-of-silence laws are, in one word,
charades.
Ruses of this kind remind us of the essentially sleazy uses to
which politicians put their professed devotion to God.
Instead, in a kind of guerrilla war against the First Amendment, periodic
bursts of public religious displays by government officials are offered up
as substitutes for statesmanship.
The uses of God as a "ceremonial and patriotic" implement go
forward steadily in more obtrusive and questionable forms. The insistent
demand to have creches and menorahs in public sites continues to present
tough questions leading to the varieties of intricate and disputed answers
mentioned in Chapter i. The legal issues are tricky enough to promise a
continued supply of test cases. To oversimplify a lot, the hardest cases
-where private groups want to put their creches or menorahs in the public
park or on City Hall plaza-pit the First Amendment free-speech rights of
those groups against the claim of the objectors that this placement of the
symbols indicates government endorsement of the religion symbolized.
Without questioning the difficulty of these cases, it is fair to conjure
with the question why they keep happening. The answer lies, I think, in the
very nature of hostile and competitive patriotism out of which one might
wish that God could have been kept. The creche on the public square--to
"put Christ back into Christmas," as its sponsors say- -plants the
religious flag of the angry nativists winning theirs back from the alien,
infidel intruders. (Who do they think they are?) The menorah sponsors are
a kindred but more pathetic story. (If the goyim can do it, so can we.)
Both are joined together as enemies of the mutual forbearance that is at
the heart of religious freedom in a pluralist society.
The gist of the demand is that the muscle of your religion be
displayed in the public space. The subject, as is usual with facile shows
of patriotism, is power. It is put, to be sure, as a matter of free
expression by the creche and menorah advocates, but that is largely fraud
or self-delusion.. There are ample private spaces in every community, amply
visible, for displaying religious icons. The insistence on the public
space, the space that belongs to all of us, is to show those others, the
nonadherents. The distinction is readily, if not always malevolently,
blurred. . .
Whatever misunderstandings may beset a recent refugee from Soviet
atheism, there is no ground for similar confusion, and probably no similar
confusion, among most people who want their religious symbols standing on
public property. The symbols make a statement-not of religious faith. They
are not needed for that. They assert simply and starkly, as I've said,
power over the nonbelievers. This was underscored for me in a fleeting
moment of a case that ended 4-4 in the Supreme Court, the equal division
(Justice Powell was ill and absent) resulting in a defeat for the village
of Scarsdale (with me as unsuccessful counsel) when it sought to deny a
place for a creche in a public circle.20 In the course of that proceeding,
one of the sponsors of the creche was asked about his interest in viewing
it while it stood on Scarsdale's Boniface Circle during the Christmas
season. To my surprise as the questioner, it turned out that he never
bothered to go look at the creche at all, let alone to admire or draw
inspiration from it. But on reflection that should not have been so
surprising. The creche was not there for him to see or appreciate for its
intrinsic spiritual value in his religious universe. It was there for
others, who professed other religions or none, so that the clout of his
religious group should be made manifest-above all to any in the sharply
divided village who would have preferred that it not be there: This is the
low road., followed by at least a good number of those who seek for. their
religion and its symbols the imprimatur of government. If it is religious
at all, this stance betokens a weak and self-doubting species of faith.
Much more blatant and unsettling than the creches and menorahs, and
even the tasteless evasions of moment-of silence laws, is the ongoing
course of flat-out defiance of the Supreme Court's ban against organized
prayer in the public schools. It is ironic at best that in God's name,
while tracing the blessings of democracy to their religion, so many people
hack at the most vital of democratic organs: the rule of law, including the
acceptance of authoritative decisions by those commissioned to expound the
Constitution. Ironic or not, the practice continues, at a steep price in
human anguish and political subversion.
SOURCE: pp. FAITH AND FREEDOM, religious liberty in America, Marvin E.
Frankel (retired U S Federal District Court judge) Hill and Wang, N Y
(1994) 55-64
should cherish and preserve it.
SOURCE: FAITH AND FREEDOM, religious liberty in America, Marvin E. Frankel
(retired U S Federal District Court judge) Hill and Wang, N Y (1994) 55-64
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If Alabama's Chief Justice Moore weren't a judicial demagogue and if he
really wanted to "do it right," he wouldn't have done it the way he did.
He'd have talked it over with his colleagues, he'd have done some research,
and he'd have solicited input from legal scholars and historians -- and
there wouldn't be any "Ten Commandments controversy" whatever. Moore would
have had his Moses, and more.... But, in my opinion, politicians like Moore
aren't as much about Moses and the great Judeo-Christian tradition as they
are about using Moses and the great Judeo-Christian tradition to create
controversy and get votes. (11.04.2001)
SOURCE: BurtLaw's Court Gazing II BurtLaw.Com- LawAndEverythingElse.Com
- Copyright (c) 2001 Burton Randall Hanson
http://www.lawandeverythingelse.com/id50.htm
[Scroll down to: The "Ten Commandments movement" revisited.
************************************************
The "Ten Commandments Judge" the ACLU helped elect.
http://www.lawandeverythingelse.com/id12.htm#last_november_the_good_voters_of_1
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The entire argument rests on wanting the govt. to acknowledge God
in various forms and fashions. To create at the very least perceived unions
between church (religion) and state (govt.) It's about power, in some
instances money, politics, and in your face to all non-believers and/or
"incorrect" believers.
Let's look at that word:
ACKNOWLEDGE: (ak not/ij), vt., -edged -edg-ing.
1. to admit to be real or true; recognize the existence, truth, or fact
of; confess to: to acknowledge belief in God.
2. to show or express recognition or realization of: to
an acknowledge an acquaintance by bowing.
3. to recognize the authority, validity, or claims of: The member nations
acknowledged the powers of the President.
4. to show or express appreciation or gratitude for: to acknowledge a
favor
5. to indicate or make known the receipt of: to acknowledge a letter
6. to take notice of or reply to: to acknowledge a greeting
7. Law. to confirm as binding or of legal force: to acknowledge a deed.
[late :NlE acknow- leche, equiv. to acknow (OE acndwan to recognize; see
A-3,
Ib acid!- -ac-
-Syn. 1. concede, grant. ACKNOWLEDGE, ADMIT, CONFESS agree in the idea of
declaring something to be true. ACKNOWLEDGE implies making a statement
reluctantly, often about something previously denied: to acknowledge a
fault. ADMIT especially implies acknowledging something under pressure: to
admit a charge. CONFESS usually means stating somewhat formally an
admission of wrongdoing, crime, or shortcoming: to confess guilt; to
confess an inability to understand. -Ant. 1. deny.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT (ak no1Hj mant), n.
1. act of and an acknowledging or admitting.
2. recognition of the existence or truth of anything: the acknowledgment of
a sovereign power.
3. an expression of appreciation.
4. a . a thing done or given in appreciation or gratitude.
5.Law:
a. declaration by a person before an official that be executed a legal
document.
b. an official certificate of a formal acknowledging.
c. public recognition by a man of an illegitimate child as his own. Also.
esp. Brit. wteria) ac•knowliedge•ment. [ACKNOWLEDGE + -MENT]
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary,
Barnes & Noble Books, (1994) p. 12
The above defines what those who want that public religion really seek
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SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
(1) The original national motto was and is completely constitutional.
(2) The repressed 50s replacement "national motto" is unconstitutional and
will in time be so ruled.
(3) There have not been several cases where the unconstitutional repressed
50s replacement "national motto" was determined or ruled as mere ceremonial
deism
(4) There is no such thing as "mere" ceremonial deism. Ceremonial deism was
a escape the courts created so they could continue to allow things that
were unconstitutional, but which would be unpopular if so declared to exist
and continue. Ceremonial deism is the result of chicken-***** judges and
justices afraid to do their jobs.
The idea that something has lost it's religious meaning over time or
repeated use was and is totally exposed for the joke and fallacy is was and
is but the reactions to the "under God" ruling, and by your own position
and continual posting over and over and over again about it.
if one item that has been for years avoided by hiding under the 'ceremonial
deism" label gets ruled by any court unconstitutional, like "under God" has
just been that can open the floodgates to all sorts of cases challenging
"In God we trust" especially since it WAS NOT the original motto of this
nation. Chaplains in Congress paid for with public funds, under God, that
so called cryer's call to begin the sessions of the USSC, etc.
The courts have said that these items are so familiar to everyday life that
they have lost any and all religious meaning and significance. If that is
true, why do we need them? if that is true why the huge ourcry when Newdow
won? if that is true, why did Congress act they way they did. Gee,
Congress, by its actions is calling the courts liars.
Newdow should make that argument because that would really put the courts
tit in a wringer.
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| User: "Dana" |
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| Title: Re: PUBLIC RELIGION, reasons for |
17 Jul 2003 09:59:17 PM |
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<buckeye-elo@nospam.net> wrote in message
news:qd0ehv0kgbgffd1g8sdojr32sk2g451607@4ax.com...
PUBLIC RELIGION, Reason for
Why should we believe a biased person like you, who is intolerant of
religion.
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| User: "Carol Lee Smith" |
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| Title: Re: PUBLIC RELIGION, reasons for |
18 Jul 2003 03:03:35 PM |
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On Thu, 17 Jul 2003, Dana wrote:
<buckeye-elo@nospam.net> wrote in message
news:qd0ehv0kgbgffd1g8sdojr32sk2g451607@4ax.com...
PUBLIC RELIGION, Reason for
Why should we believe a biased person like you, who is intolerant of
religion.
Evidence of intolerance, please?
Can you back up your allegation with proof?
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