| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
21 Jun 2004 11:46:33 AM |
| Object: |
Reconstructionists, Justice Thomas, Incorporation |
This covers a number of related topics. The Reconstructionists in general,
their aims and goals, the beginning of the anti-establishment incorporation
against the states as it appeared in a federal court ruling, USSC Justice
Thomas and his views about incorporation of the Establishment clause and
the 14th amendment and incorporation in general.
==============================================
Subject: Re: Reconstructionist (Wuz: Separation of school and state (Wuz;
An American history resource))
Newsgroups: misc.education.home-school.christian
Date: 1999/10/07
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=jalison,+reconstructionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=37fdba1b.2144752%40news.pilot.infi.net&rnum=1
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F2C414C98
[Excerpt]
The battle being waged by the Christian Right to reclaim American for
Christ is being waged on other fronts as well. The extreme right-wing of
the movement is prominently occupied by the Reconstructionists, who believe
fervently that the law given by God for the political, legal, and spiritual
ordering of ancient Israel as set forth in the Old Testament is intended
for all people in all ages.
*********************************************************
Subject: Re: Reconstructionist (Wuz: Separation of school and state (Wuz;
An American history resource))
Newsgroups: misc.education.home-school.christian
Date: 1999/10/07
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=37fcb891.1750100%40news.pilot.infi.net
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q2D451C98
[Excerpt]
Thy Kingdom Come: Christian Reconstructionism
The Religious Right is not a monolithic movement. Like the mythical
Hydra, the Religious Right is multi-headed. While the various groups that
make up the Religious Right may agree on many key issues, they fall out
over others, especially issues of theology and its relationship to the
political order.
****************************************************************
Subject: Re: Separation of school and state WAS An American history
resource
Newsgroups: misc.education, misc.education.home-school.christian,
misc.education.home-school.misc
Date: 1999/09/24
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=jalison,+reconstructionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=37ed99fb.3602964%40news.pilot.infi.net&rnum=4
http://makeashorterlink.com/?B20523C98
[Excerpt]
8. RECONSTRUCTIONISTS
Reconstructionism in its broadest sense describes the rebuilding by
Christians of' every aspect of` Western civilization according to biblical
strictures, beginning in the United States. It is founded on the belief
that God's laws, as described in the Bible, pertain to all people
throughout history and comprise the only legitimate basis for culture.
According to their literature and statements, reconstructionists
would raze most of the structures of American life; a streamlined society
would be rebuilt according to the Mosaic code, which is considered an exact
blueprint for social order. This effort to remake America as ancient Israel
entails the abolition not merely of` the federal government and public
education, but also, as sociologist Anson Shupe has written in The Wall
Street Journal, of the entire Western liberal tradition, including
"popular sovereignty, civil liberties, and 'natural rights' concerned with
such things as freedom of conscience and separation of church and state."
*****************************************************************
Subject: Re: Jewish Roots of Christianity
Newsgroups: alt.atheism, talk.politics.libertarian, talk.atheism,
talk.politics.misc
Date: 2002-05-19 04:01:48 PST
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=jalison,+reconstructionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=v9qeeu0su2r0g85g91g0if57ppio0mguie%404ax.com&rnum=7
http://makeashorterlink.com/?O21532C98
[Excerpt]
RECONSTRUCTIONISTS AND THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT
Rushdoony has appeared "a number of times" on Pat Robertson's 700
Club, according to Christianity Today and The Wall Street Journal (CBN
acknowledges two appearances); North has also appeared on the program. Both
have been repeat guests on televangelist and religious right organizer D.
..James Kennedy's television broadcasts, and Kennedy has called their
biblical commentaries "essential" works.
Rushdoony addressed a 1983 Free Congress Foundation conference on
criminal justice reform; the conference's program described Rushdoony as a
"prominent Christian writer." In 1986, Free Congress PAC gave one of its
two largest donations to the unsuccessful U.S. Congressional campaign of
Joseph Morecraft, a Rushdoony follower who has stated, "The only hope for
the United States is the total Christianization of the country at all
levels...."
**************************************************************
Subject: Re: USSC and "under God."
Newsgroups: misc.education, alt.atheism, alt.politics.liberalism,
alt.politics.republicans, alt.politics.usa.constitution,
alt.politics.usa.republican, alt.society.liberalism
Date: 2003-05-08 11:28:04 PST
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=jalison,+reconstructionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=j58lbvksiokjiru0tfbem9034ma7ndoujk%404ax.com&rnum=10
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S53562C98
[Excerpt]
The U.S. Constitution:
"A Legal Barrier to Christian Theocracy"
An essential component of the Reconstructionist worldview is a
revisionist view of history called "Christian history," which holds that
history is predestined from "creation" through the inevitable arrival of
the Kingdom of God. Christian history is written by means of retroactively
discerning "God's providence."
Most Reconstructionists, for example, argue that the U.S. is a
"Christian Nation," and that they are the champions and heirs of the
"original intentions of the Founding Fathers." While the notion of a
"Christian Nation" is not unique to the Reconstructionists, this dual
justification for their views, one religious, the other somehow
constitutional, is the result of a form of historical revisionism that
Rushdoony frankly calls "Christian revisionism."24
***********************************************************
Some info on Reconstructionism:
I did not preview any of these pages, I do suspect from a quick glance over
them, that there are going to be both pages supportive of the movement and
those that are not supportive.
Seems like a balanced combination to me.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.ifas.org/fw/9501/chalcedon.html
http://www.ifas.org/fw/9607/rushdoony.html
http://www.chalcedon.edu/
Now it is interesting that when I typed in the name Rushdoony, R J, doing a
web search using the go network search engine, the following web page was
listed.
Kindly note, the the connection with Regent U. Pat Roberetson's graduate
University, on the grounds of CBN here in Va beach, Va.
http://www.regent.edu/acad/schdiv/syllabi/fall97-syllabi/cdh520sl.html
Under Reconstructionism one can find the following:
http://admin.qrd.org/qrd/www/rrr/recon.html
http://www.publiceye.org/pra/magazine/chrisrec.html
http://www.johnco.cc.ks.us/~mfoster/reconstruction.html
http://www.phptr.com/ptrbooks/ect_0136245609.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/2850/Theonomy.html
http://www.camano.net/~dcloud/otimothy/tl07000d.htm
http://www.teleport.com/~mkmcconn/calvin.html
http://www.execpc.com/~awallace/reconstruction.txt
http://www.execpc.com/~awallace/endtime.htm
http://listserver.charis.net/archives/genevanet/389
http://www.ifas.org/fw/9703/review.html
http://apocalypse.berkshire.net/~ifas/fw/9801/godly.html
http://www.faith.edu/pulpits/90_01.htm
http://geneva.rutgers.edu/src/faq/reconstruction.txt
http://www.kipertek.com/forerunner/puritan/PS.Puritan_Storm_Rising.html
http://mel.org/humanities/theology/THEOL-christian.html
http://hugin.imat.com/~sheaffer/rightwing.html
****************************************************************
GARY AMOS A Virginia beach Attorney who helped Pat Robertson set up his
Regent University in general and his School of law at that University.
Did you notice Amos's Bio? He helped set up Regent University and it
closely aligned with the Rushdoony reconstructionist movement.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=gary+amos+reconstructionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=c1b4k7%24em6%241%40oasis.ccit.arizona.edu&rnum=2
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F20615C98
[Excerpt]
In addition to evangelizing all junior and senior HIGH SCHOOLS , NCC goals
include taking control of all SCHOOL BOARDS, with a view toward replacing
PUBLIC SCHOOLS with PRIVATE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS by the year 2000.
Grimstead's ideas have led to some schisms with COR. Defectors include
Religious Right activist and Biblical Scorecard publisher David Balsiger,
Beverly LaHaye of Concerned Women for America, GARY AMOS of REGENT
UNIVERSITY, and Robert Dugan of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Among other's who seem to be scuttling away from the taint of Rushdoony's
views and the emerging militance of COR/NCC is Don Wildmon, who actually
sued an official of the National Endowment for the Arts for slander after
she inaccurately attributed Rushdoony's views on capital punishment and
democracy to Wildmon and his American Family Association. (Rushdoony
himself is a long accepted leader in conservative circles, having served on
the Board of Governors of the elite Council for National Policy, and on the
advisory board of the Conservative Caucus and Conservative Digest.) Gary
Amos now claims that the COR/NCC agenda exists only on paper and blames it
on Grimstead. NAE's Dugan says COR has gotten too Reconstructionist for
him.
******************************************************************
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=buckeye%40exis.net+amos+rushdoony&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=85r5nk%24hv8%241%40nnrp1.deja.com&rnum=3
http://makeashorterlink.com/?H27B51E47
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=buckeye%40exis.net+amos+rushdoony&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=om944t8jv82ufgqqju9seadh9vt5ib8vel%404ax.com&rnum=4
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X46B14E47
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=gary+amos,+Rushdoony,+reconstructionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=rub48so9tei0eihf5jok1h45cd5g9ilmt1%404ax.com&rnum=1
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X2CB52E47
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=gary+amos,+Rushdoony,+reconstructionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=%25K4j5.131%24x74.5005%40nntp.msen.com&rnum=3
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X25C64E47
The above URL talks about the goals of taking over school bds across the
country
#######################################################
Subject: Re: the only difference
Newsgroups: or.politics
Date: 2004-02-22 19:54:11 PST
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=titus,++reconstructionist,+supreme+court&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=403977A1.51218050%40exchangenet.net&rnum=3
http://makeashorterlink.com/?P2A612C98
[Excerpt]
Christian Reconstructionism: Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence
by Frederick Clarkson
The Public Eye Magazine, Vol. VIII, No. 1 & 2,
March/June 1994
Part 1
Overview and Roots
The Christian Right has shown impressive resilience and has rebounded
dramatically after a series of embarrassing televangelist scandals of
the late 1980s, the collapse of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, and
the failed presidential bid of Pat Robertson. In the 1990s, Christian
Right organizing went to the grassroots and exerted wide influence in
American politics across the country.
There is no doubt that Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition gets much
of the credit for this successful strategic shift to the local level.
But another largely overlooked reason for the persistent success of
the Christian Right is a theological shift since the 1960s. The
catalyst for the shift is Christian Reconstructionism--arguably the
driving ideology of the Christian Right in the 1990s.
The significance of the Reconstructionist movement is not its numbers,
but the power of its ideas and their surprisingly rapid acceptance.
**********************************************************************
Current evetns in Reconstructionist land
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=titus,++reconstructionist,+supreme+court&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&filter=0
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F57623C98
[lots of information to be found here ]
*********************************************************************
JUSTICE THOMAS
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+Justice++thomas,+reconstructionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=59d9354.0405180819.475142e8%40posting.google.com&rnum=4
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z1F661C98
[Excerpt]
The Neocons and Machiavelli
The current US leaders' actions are so clearly sabotaging the very
system that sustains them that an explanation is in order. What
motivates these people? Is it mere thirst for wealth and power?
Perhaps we can gain some insight by examining the philosophies they
espouse.
Neoconservatism, the political movement to which most of the
current administration belongs, is widely attributed to be the
intellectual offspring of Leo Strauss (1899-1973), a Jewish scholar
who fled Hitler's Germany and taught political science at the
University of Chicago. According to Shadia Drury in Leo Strauss and
the American Right (Griffin, 1999), Strauss advocated an essentially
Machiavellian approach to governance; he believed that
* a leader must perpetually deceive those being ruled;
* those who lead are accountable to no overarching system of
morals, only to the right of the superior to rule the inferior;
* religion is the force that binds society together, and is
therefore the tool by which the ruler can manipulate the masses (any
religion will do);
* secularism in society is to be suppressed, because it leads
to critical thinking and dissent;
* a political system can be stable only if it is united
against an external threat, and that if no real threat exists, one
should be manufactured.
Drury writes that, "In Strauss's view, the trouble with liberal
society is that it dispenses with noble lies and pious frauds. It
tries to found society on secular rational foundations."
Among Strauss's students was Paul Wolfowitz, one of the leading
hawks in the Defense Department who urged the invasion of Iraq; more
distant followers include Newt Gingrich, Clarence Thomas, Irving
Kristol, William Bennett, John Ashcroft, and Michael Ledeen
AND
Enter the Religious Right
Strauss's belief that religion is a tool that leaders can use to
manipulate the masses naturally leads one to wonder about the history
and nature of the collaboration between neoconservatives and the
Christian evangelical movement. Clearly, the neocon agenda is not what
most people would traditionally have thought of as exemplifying the
teachings of Jesus; how, then, has the philosophy of Strauss, Kristol,
Podhoretz, and Wolfowitz come to achieve virtual sanctification in the
eyes of tens of millions of devout American Christians? To answer this
question, we must first examine developments within the more
conservative US Christian churches in the past few decades.
In her essay The Despoiling of America, investigative reporter
Katherine Yurica explains the origins of the now-dominant faction of
the Christian Right, which she calls "dominionism," and how it has
found common cause with the neoconservative movement.10 Dominionism,
closely related to another Christian movement called
"reconstructionism," was founded by the late R. J. Rushdoony, who also
co-founded the Council for National Policy - which has been called the
politburo of the American conservative movement, since it is composed
of top political and business leaders who set the national agenda for
the vast network of right-wing foundations, publishers, media, and
universities that have schooled a whole generation in the ideology of
neoconservatism, much the way the extremist Wahabbi religious schools
funded by Saudi billionaires have seeded the Middle East with Islamic
fundamentalism. Dominionism began to flourish in the 1970s as a
politicized religious reaction to communism and secular humanism. One
of its foremost spokesmen, Pat Robertson (religious broadcaster,
former presidential candidate, and founder of the Christian
Coalition), has for decades patiently and relentlessly put forward the
dominionist view to his millions of daily TV viewers that God intends
His followers to rule the world on His behalf. Yurica describes
dominionism as a Machiavellian perversion of Christianity.
**********************************************************
Subject: [progchat_action] 'On a Mission From God': The Religious Right
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Date: 2004-05-12 10:20:13 PST
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+Justice++thomas,+reconstructionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=c7tmc0%242s3v%241%40pencil.math.missouri.edu&rnum=5
http://makeashorterlink.com/?H14732C98
[Excerpt]
LaHaye, you may recall, is co-author of the various Left Behind
series, which, to date, has sold a reported whopping 60 million
copies. A "strict biblical reconstructionist" who takes the Bible
as "God's literal truth,"
AND
4) Opus Dei
While FBI agent Robert Hanssen brought the Catholic organization
Opus Dei to the prominence when he was caught spying for Russia,
it is once again in the spotlight thanks to the best-selling book
The Da Vinci Code. And while the group's secrecy appeals to some
("I think they really fly under everybody's radar screen and that
they're a lot more powerful than a lot of people think," Rev. James
Martin, associate editor of America magazine explained.
[ABC News]) and its attitude towards pain and suffering appeals to
others ("After I joined, they gave me a barbed-wire chain to wear
on my leg for two hours a day and a whip to hit my buttocks with,"
former Opus Dei member Sharon Clasen said. [Chicago Tribune]) in
April, 2001, The American Catholic co-editor Catharine A. Henningsen
revealed why this highly secretive group might be of concern to
average Joes:
"Immediately following that revelation [that Hanssen was a member
of Opus Dei] stories began to surface in the press claiming that
FBI Director, Louis Freeh and Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia
and Clarence Thomas are also Opus Dei members. Opus Dei denies that
Freeh, Scalia and Thomas are members, though Freeh sends his son
to the Opus Dei School, The Heights, and Scalia's wife is reported
to regularly attend Opus Dei functions. Robert Hanssen, Justice
Scalia and Louis Freeh also all worship at St. Catherine of Siena
parish in Great Falls, Virginia, where the Tridentine Latin Mass
is offered, rather than the new order of the Mass declared by Paul
VI." [The American Catholic]
"Whether or not an alleged member of Opus Dei, like Justice Antonin
Scalia, enjoys a touch of the lash on his prodigious derriere from
time to time, is certainly no business of ours," Mike Whitney wrote.
"However, the affiliation of a Justice on the highest court in the
land to an organization that, for all appearances, is nothing more
than a right-wing cult should arouse not only suspicion, but an
investigation." [CounterPunch.org]
Scalia's alleged membership notwithstanding, the fact that a mere
three weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to take up the vice
president's appeal in lawsuits concerning the administration's
energy task force, Scalia traveled with ***** Cheney on Air Force
Two to hunt on a private hunting reserve owned by an oil industry
executive is unsettling. And Scalia's keynote speech before a
Philadelphia-based advocacy group which actively opposes gay rights
(during a time when the Supreme Court was weighing a landmark gay
rights case) has also raised eyebrows. [LA Times]
AND
All of this sounds nuts, of course, because, quite frankly, it is.
But considering that when John Ashcroft became attorney general,
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reportedly anointed him with
cooking oil (in the manner of King David), [The Guardian] these are
nutty times.
******************************************************
:|Thomas's opinion is intellectually the most honest, and he admits, as he
:|must, that the Pledge is unconstitutional under precedent. His reading
:|of it as affirmation of belief is practically a brief for the next
:|lawsuit. The latter part of his opinion about incorporation would leave
:|states free to adopt state religions, a position not likely to be
:|adopted by either the court or the American people. Now it will be
:|interesting to watch the lower federal courts twist in the wind trying
:|to decipher this opinion to rule on the next lawsuit.
:|Neal J. Blanchett, eSG.
Thomas is a scary guy. I never realized how scary until very recently.
Somewhere in the past I had run across something that said Thomas had said
or had written in an opinion that he saw no problem with abandoning the
incorporation of the Establishment Clause against the states.
This is the same position that ultra Conservatives champion, the Christian
Reconstructionist (Rushdooney people), ultra libertarians, Judge Hand in
Wallace v Jaffree, and most recently Judge Moore and his cohorts advocate.
Well, now I don't have to look it up since Thomas repeated and elaborated
even more in this ruling.
You just have to read this to see more about how scary this dude might
very well be.
****************************************************************
MITCHELL V. HELMS AND THE MODERN CULTURAL ASSAULT ON THE SEPARATION OF
CHURCH AND STATE
Derek H. Davis*
http://www.bc.edu/schools/law/lawreviews/meta-elements/journals/bclawr/43_5/02_FMS.htm
Abstract: This Article suggests that the Mitchell v. Helms decision, and
the course on which its sets us—offering government aid to religion as a
social good—is a blunder that will have serious adverse consequences for
the vital role that religion plays in American society. The intention of
aiding religion through the beneficent emasculation of traditional tests of
government establishment observed in Helms is just the latest instance of
our recurrent attempts to kill American religion with kindness. This
process is spurred on by a perceived national crisis following tragedies
like those in Paducah, Kentucky and Littleton, Colorado. This Article
suggests that while the United States has largely resisted the temptation
to alter the inherent wisdom of the system, recent political and judicial
changes make the First Amendment and American religious groups that depend
on it more vulnerable.
****************************************************************
To make matters worse, at his age, if he sticks it out he could one day be
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I think when he was appointed to the
USSC he was about the same age as Rehnquist was when Rehnquist was
appointed.
He is also very chummy with the religious right, in fact Pat Robertson half
assed hinted once that he had Thomas in his pocket.
Robertson might have been just blowing hot air, but maybe not.
*******************************************************************
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+Justice++thomas,+reconstructionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=5u8nc.14926210%24Id.2470362%40news.easynews.com&rnum=6
http://makeashorterlink.com/?T1A835C98
Most conservative Christians, until the Reagan era, were relatively
non-political, focused on the after-life. So "the politicization of
Pentecostalism is one of the major stories of modern American politics,"
Clarkson writes. This movement is hardly "stealth" anymore. The "Second
American Revolution" envisioned by Rushdoony and his Reconstructionist
heirs is admittedly "totalitarian." Their revolution would include the
abolition of public education, and the eradication of environmental
protection laws. Hard-liners would outlaw pre-marital sex, and implement an
Old Testament-based legal system that they believe would authorize
execution of homosexuals, adulterers, and perhaps even the insufficiently
patriotic.
Authors and advocates of these ideas are no longer marginalized,
although they still often see themselves this way. They consort with
political leaders such as John Ashcroft and Clarence Thomas. The "happy
ending" of their religious script would have "saved" Christian soldiers
floating up to heaven in the Rapture, where they can have an unobstructed
view of their Warrior Jesus annihilating the remnants of the human race.
and the linchpin of the whole process: that most Jews will be wiped out, in
order that the remainder can convert to Christianity. This is "a
completely foolish and erroneous interpretation of the scriptures," former
President Jimmy Carter says.
********************************************************
ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE, INCORPORATION
JAFFREE v. BOARD OF SCHOOL COM'RS OF MOBILE COUNTY, 554 F.Supp. 1104
(1983)
Complaint challenged certain Alabama
statutes including the "Prayer Law." The District Court, Hand, Chief Judge,
held that: (1) First Amendment in part was guarantee to states which
insured that states would be able to continue whatever
church-state relationship existed in 1701, and (2) because establishment
clause of First Amendment does not prohibit the state from establishing a
religion, prayers offered by the teachers m the case unconstitutional.
Action dismissed.
Stay Granted, - U.S. -, 103 S.Ct. 842, 74 L.Ed.2d 924.
--------------------------------
Also see the following books that were cited in the above opinion
Robert Cord, Separation of Church and State. Historical
Fact and Current Mcdon (1982) P. McGuigan & R. Rader, A Blueprint for
Judicial Reform (eds. n.d.); J. McClellan, Joseph Story and the
American Constitution, 118-159 (1873) (Christianity and the Common Law).
McClellan, The Making and the Unmaking of the Establishment Clause, in
Blueprint for a Judicial Reform 295 (P. McGuigan & R Rader eds. n.d.)
(quoting J. Story. IA. Commentaries on the Constitution § 1871 (1833)
(emphasis added)).
----------------------------------------------
Jaffree v. Wallace, 705 F.2d 1526 (1983)
JAFFREE v. BOARD OF SCHOOL COM'RS OF MOBILE COUNTY , 459 U.S. 1314 (1983)
WALLACE v. JAFFREE, 472 U.S. 38 (1985)
*********************************************************
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=buckeye-ELO%40nospam.net,+justice+thomas&start=70&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=0tcfqvsq7s5j2og2a3dmgkrpf1buo2ou7c%404ax.com&rnum=75
http://makeashorterlink.com/?G1A956C98
Subject: Thomas, Moore connecton
Newsgroups: alt.atheism, alt.politics.usa.constitution, alt.education,
alt.religion.christian, alt.society.liberalism, misc.education,
alt.politics.usa.republican
Date: 2003-11-04 06:13:32 PST
Looks like we got another wacko:
Of course, if IIRC Thomas is a fan of Robert Cord.
*****************************************
Justice Thomas’s concurrence. While he joined the majority opinion,
Justice Thomas wrote a separate concurrence. Justice Thomas argued that
the Establishment Clause should be applicable to the States only to a
limited extent, or perhaps not at all. See Zelman, Opinion of Thomas, J.,
concurring, at 3-5. No other Justice agreed with this extremist view that
is contrary to over sixty years of Supreme Court decisions which have
consistently held the Establishment Clause to be fully applicable to the
States. See, e.g., Zelman, Opinion of the Court at 6; Cantwell v.
Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303 (1940).
*******************************************************
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+Justice++thomas,+INCORPORATION+OF+ESTABLISHMENT+CLAUSE&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=Xns95095A0AC434Efstone69%40207.69.154.203&rnum=3
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D6D821C98
[EXCERPT]
'Conservatives' tend to not support incorporation; in fact, in the
Newdow case, Thomas argued for de-incorporation of the Establishment
Clause (that is, not making its protections binding on the states,
only on the Federal Government) in his opinion concurring in
judgment. (However, this is not a very active area because the vast
majority of justices support the precedents established over 40 years
of jurisprudence on incorporation; but they are not in any hurry to
decide incorporation of the few provisions that are still left out).
*****************************************************
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Justice+Thomas+has+no+problem+with+not+applying+BORs+to+states&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=ejt570pagmhk1b5qu06cr5olp3q7175m8i%404ax.com&rnum=1
http://makeashorterlink.com/?U51924C98
Q. Does this bill reverse Supreme Court precedent?
A. To the extent that any decision of the United States Supreme Court or
that of any federal district court made prior to or after the effective
date of the Act prohibits the acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source
of law, liberty, or government, such precedent would not be binding on
state courts.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[This would be the first major official step in trying to cancel
application of the religious clauses of the BORs against the states.
A U S District Court judge was the firs to try and accomplish this in
recent times in Wallace v Jaffree
Back in the 50s and 60s during the bulk of the civil rights movement I am
sure there were southern state and resident southern judges who probably
said the same things, that is the BORs do not apply to the states.
However it was Judge Hand in the 80s that stated the Establishment Clause
did not apply to the states, to Alabama, etc. The USSC when it decided
Wallace v Jaffree didn't even bother to give that element of the lower
court light of day by even referring to it.
I recently ran across something which I posted at the time, that gives
strong indication that Justice Thomas would not have a problem in
supporting the idea that the BORs, i.e. in particular the religious clauses
do not apply to the states. It appears from some of the stuff I have rad
yesterday and today, Rehnquist while a conservative, is not to be counted
among the dominion leaning types but the same cannot be said for sure about
Scalia.
Rehnquist has already complained about Congress trying to limit the high
Court. One of the things I posted yesterday covers that as I recall. ]
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* Fourteenth Amendment
http://candst.tripod.com/14thamend.htm
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