Our Court's Modern Dred Scott Decision

Five members of the unelected politburo that is our Supreme Court have created a new Constitutional right out of thin air - the right of homosexual to marry, in today's 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. In so holding, they give their newly preferred policy decision a bare patina of bull shit legalese. But at the same time, they don't even try to hide the fact that this was a pure policy decision.

I won't bother to recount from the majority decision that claims justification under the Equal Protection clause and substantive due process, then pats themselves on the back for effecting social change not supported by the people of this nation. Their arrogance is beyond stomaching. Let's go to the dissents. Ironically, the dissent from CJ Roberts, infamous for his decisions in Obamacare, is directly on point:

Over and over, the majority exalts the role of the judiciary in delivering social change. In the majority’s telling, it is the courts, not the people, who are responsible for making “new dimensions of freedom . . . apparent to new generations,” for providing “formal discourse” on social issues, and for ensuring “neutral discussions, without scornful or disparaging commentary.”

Nowhere is the majority’s extravagant conception of judicial supremacy more evident than in its description — and dismissal — of the public debate regarding same-sex marriage. Yes, the majority concedes, on one side are thousands of years of human history in every society known to have populated the planet. But on the other side, there has been “extensive litigation,” “many thoughtful District Court decisions,” “countless studies, papers, books, and other popular and scholarly writings,” and “more than 100” amicus briefs in these cases alone. Ante, at 9, 10, 23. What would be the point of allowing the democratic process to go on? It is high time for the Court to decide the meaning of marriage, based on five lawyers’ “better informed understanding” of “a liberty that remains urgent in our own era.” Ante, at 19. The answer is surely there in one of those amicus briefs or studies.

Those who founded our country would not recognize the majority’s conception of the judicial role. They after all risked their lives and fortunes for the precious right to govern themselves. They would never have imagined yielding that right on a question of social policy to unaccountable and unelected judges. And they certainly would not have been satisfied by a system empowering judges to override policy judgments so long as they do so after “a quite extensive discussion.” . . .

By deciding this question under the Constitution, the Court removes it from the realm of democratic decision. There will be consequences to shutting down the political process on an issue of such profound public significance. Closing debate tends to close minds. People denied a voice are less likely to accept the ruling of a court on an issue that does not seem to be the sort of thing courts usually decide. As a thoughtful commentator observed about another issue, “The political process was moving . . . , not swiftly enough for advocates of quick, complete change, but majoritarian institutions were listening and acting. Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” Indeed, however heartened the proponents of same-sex marriage might be on this day, it is worth acknowledging what they have lost, and lost forever: the opportunity to win the true acceptance that comes from persuading their fellow citizens of the justice of their cause. And they lose this just when the winds of change were freshening at their backs.

Federal courts are blunt instruments when it comes to creating rights. They have constitutional power only to resolve concrete cases or controversies; they do not have the flexibility of legislatures to address concerns of parties not before the court or to anticipate problems that may arise from the exercise of a new right. Today’s decision, for example, creates serious questions about religious liberty. Many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of faith, and their freedom to exercise religion is—unlike the right imagined by the majority — actually spelled out in the Constitution.

Respect for sincere religious conviction has led voters and legislators in every State that has adopted same-sex marriage democratically to include accommodations for religious practice. The majority’s decision imposing samesex marriage cannot, of course, create any such accommodations. The majority graciously suggests that religious believers may continue to “advocate” and “teach” their views of marriage. Ante, at 27. The First Amendment guarantees, however, the freedom to “exercise” religion. Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses.

Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage—when, for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex married couples. Indeed, the Solicitor General candidly acknowledged that the tax exemptions of some religious institutions would be in question if they opposed same-sex marriage. . . There is little doubt that these and similar questions will soon be before this Court. Unfortunately, people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today. . . .

If you are among the many Americans—of whatever sexual orientation—who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision. Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.

This decision will make the controversy set off by Roe v. Wade seem like the smallest of ant hills. It will be used by the left to punish the religious and further drive religion from all aspects of public life. It may well set this nation on a path to insurrection, much like the Dred Scott was a trigger for the Civil War and much like the punitive laws stipping the colonists of their rights set this nation on a path to Revolution. The five members of the Supreme Court who decided this case will no doubt be toasted around D.C. tonight and go to sleep quite happy with themselves. They will, I think, have a lot of blood on their hands before this one ends.

As I wrote below, our Court system needs to root and branch reform. As Chief Justice Roberts correctly notes, our Founders could not possibly imagine the role the activist judiciary has taken upon itself.

Update: After composing the above, I see that Mike Huckabee has come to the same conclusions. That said, I prefer the way he styles this as judicial tyranny. This from Hot Air:

“The Supreme Court has spoken with a very divided voice on something only the Supreme Being can do-redefine marriage. I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch. We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat.

“This ruling is not about marriage equality, it’s about marriage redefinition. This irrational, unconstitutional rejection of the expressed will of the people in over 30 states will prove to be one of the court’s most disastrous decisions, and they have had many. The only outcome worse than this flawed, failed decision would be for the President and Congress, two co-equal branches of government, to surrender in the face of this out-of-control act of unconstitutional, judicial tyranny.”

“The Supreme Court can no more repeal the laws of nature and nature’s God on marriage than it can the laws of gravity. Under our Constitution, the court cannot write a law, even though some cowardly politicians will wave the white flag and accept it without realizing that they are failing their sworn duty to reject abuses from the court. If accepted by Congress and this President, this decision will be a serious blow to religious liberty, which is the heart of the First Amendment.”

Bobby Jindal has a similar take.

Bookworm has some very cogent thoughts on the importance of this decision and how the left will try to use it:

This ruling may be the most consequential ruling ever to issue from the Supreme Court. Why? Because the Left will use it to destroy all religions except Islam (which they’re afraid to touch). They’ll use a magical new right to destroy one of the bedrock First Amendment rights.

Do read her entire insightful post.

And how did I miss Justice Scalia's dissent:

. . . [I]t is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact — and the furthest extension one can even imagine — of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves. . . .

. . . It would be surprising to find a prescription regarding marriage in the Federal Constitution since, as the author of today’s opinion reminded us only two years ago (in an opinion joined by the same Justices who join him today):

“[R]egulation of domestic relations is an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States.”

“[T]he Federal Government, through our history, has deferred to state-law policy decisions with respect to domestic relations.”

But we need not speculate. When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases. When it comes to determining the meaning of a vague constitutional provision—such as “due process of law” or “equal protection of the laws”—it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification. We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment’s ratification. Since there is no doubt whatever that the People never decided to prohibit the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples, the public debate over same-sex marriage must be allowed to continue.

But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law. Buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary, in its “reasoned judgment,” thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect. That is so because “[t]he generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions . . . . ” One would think that sentence would continue: “. . . and therefore they provided for a means by which the People could amend the Constitution,” or perhaps “. . . and therefore they left the creation of additional liberties, such as the freedom to marry someone of the same sex, to the People, through the never-ending process of legislation.” But no. What logically follows, in the majority’s judge-empowering estimation, is: “and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.” The “we,” needless to say, is the nine of us. “History and tradition guide and discipline [our] inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries.” Thus, rather than focusing on the People’s understanding of “liberty” — at the time of ratification or even today — the majority focuses on four “principles and traditions” that, in the majority’s view, prohibit States from defining marriage as an institution consisting of one man and one woman.

This is a naked judicial claim to legislative — indeed, super-legislative — power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices’ “reasoned judgment.” A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.

. . . [T]o allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.

But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. . . . They are certain that the People ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to bestow on them the power to remove questions from the democratic process when that is called for by their “reasoned judgment.” These Justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry. And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution.

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Watcher's Council Forum: Who Are Your Three Favorite Heroes In American History?

Each week the Watcher's Council hosts a forum as well as a weekly contest among the members for best post. This week's forum question is "Who Are Your Three Favorite Heroes In American History?" I have been kindly invited to respond.

The first great American hero is our deity, God, or at least our relationship to him through religion. Rev. Jonathan Mayhew was the first, in 1750, to argue that the source of our British rights was God and to articulate a doctrine that can be summed up in the phrase "resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." His writings spread throughout the colonies and were adopted in various forms by most of the "dissenting" religions. When, in 1775, Boston royalist Peter Oliver wrote of the causes of the Revolution, he placed the blame squarely on the "Black [robed] Regiment" of clergyman who so roused the colonists in righteous defiance against the British. It is fair to say that the dissenting clergy, from Georgia to Massachusetts, played an indispensable role in driving the Revolution. To paraphrase one Hessian soldier, this was not an American Revolution, it was a Presbyterian Revolution.

As late as January, 1776, it was not clear what we intended by our fight with the British. Most colonists still wanted no more than an adjustment of our relationship with Great Britain, not an independent nation. Yet in January, 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, the best selling book our nation has ever seen on a per capita basis but for the Bible. In it, Paine used largely biblical arguments against the divine right of Kings to rule. His arguments electrified the nation, and set us almost immediately on the path that ended less than six months later in the Declaration of Independence.

And then there were at least two "acts of God" during the Revolution that were so fortuitous and unusual as ought to leave in the most hardened atheist with a bit of uneasiness. The first was at The Battle of Long Island. The British had decimated our forces and had surrounded Washington and his 9,000 men. Had the British completed their attack, the Revolution would likely have ended there. Washington ordered a night withdrawal by boat. That night, a very unusual fog descended on the area, one so dense that soldiers said they couldn't see further than 6 feet to their front. The fog allowed the withdraw to continue through night to the dawn and after, until all 9,000 soldiers had crossed to safety.

The second "act of God" occurred as the British, in June 1776, attempted to capture the wealthiest port city in the colonies, Charleston, S.C. Had Britain succeeded, the whole nature of the Revolution would have changed. The centerpiece of the colonist's defense of Charleston was a half built fort on Sullivan's Island that the British expected to easily defeat with an infantry attack across the ford separating Isle of Palms from Sullivan's Island, a ford at low tide that virtually never exceeded three feet. Yet in June, 1776, a highly unusual wind pattern developed and, even at low tide, the water at the ford was over 7 feet deep. With the British infantry stopped cold, the fort survived the most devastating bombardment of the war even while the colonists wreaked destruction on the British ships, saving Charleston from occupation for a critical three years.

And then, of course, it was this view of God as the source of our rights that animated our Founders. Our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not bestowed by man. They are natural rights that come from God. The first and most important hero of our nation must be God.

The second most important person in American history is George Washington. People who study the Revolution call him the "indispensable man," and that he was. He took charge of an army of amateurs and led them against the world's superpower of the era. He was in an impossible situation against impossible odds.

Washington was never a great military commander. He was outfoxed all too often on the battlefield. Indeed, by December 1776, he had been beaten so badly over the preceding six months that everyone on both sides thought the Revolution was over but for the signing of surrender documents. Yet Washington, a man whose persistence and refusal to surrender was inhuman, on Dec. 25, 1776, led a beaten force of 2,500 across the Delaware River in horrendous conditions. The next morning, his soldiers surprised the best light infantry forces in America, the Hessians at Trenton, and won a victory so stunning that it literally saved the Revolution.

And while Washington's command of the Continental Army over the next seven years was critically important, it was his actions at and after the end of the war that proved of importance equal to his victory at Trenton. The history of revolutions was equally a history of successful military commanders taking power as dictator or King, from Caesar to Cromwell. But not with George Washington, who not merely voluntarily relinquished all power at the end of the war, but put an end to a revolt of officers who had not been paid.

Then it was Washington, called out of retirement, who lent his credibility to the Constitutional Convention that resulted in the drafting of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. And while all knew that Washington would be elected President - he was elected to two terms with 100% of the electoral college votes - Washington easily could have chosen to be President for life. But instead, he opted to go back into retirement after two terms. Washington was a hero and perhaps the single man indispensable to the creation of our nation.

The third choice for American hero is harder. There are so many who could legitimately take this position. Let me just give it to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The history of America's treatment of blacks is indeed a mark on this nation. Even after the end of slavery and the enshrinement of equal rights in our Constitution at the end of the Civil War, racism and unequal treatment were still rampant in this nation. Rev. King was born in 1929. He did not start the Civil Rights movement, but he became its most important voice. He shamed white America with their failure to live up to the promise of this nation, enshrined in our first Founding document, The Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal." Dr. King brought a moral message that our nation could not ignore, and he pushed it relentlessly, at great danger to himself, and he did so with non-violence. His speech in 1963 in Washington D.C., now known as the "I Have A Dream" speech, is perhaps the most recognizable speech in our nation's history, and rightly so. He finished the speech with a stirring call for an America where people are judged "not . . . by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

In our unique nation, Rev. King's call for equality was not only a moral clarion call, but a necessity if we are to survive as a melting pot. Since Rev. King's death, the movement he started has been wholly bastardized by the left for their own ends. That does not in any way detract from Rev. King's message, indeed, it only increases the need for us fulfill his vision.

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The Left's War On Religion & Family

The left has two goals - one, to imbue children with socialist morality and ethics (to the extent such can be said to exist) irrespective of how parents want to raise their children. The second is to drive its biggest competitor in the arena of ethics and morality, Christianity, from the public square (see A Historical Perspective On Religion & Obama's HHS Mandate). One area where these two goals converge for the left is in regards to sex.

In NYC, Mayor Bloomberg started a stealth program three years ago to freely dispense birth control drugs and the morning after "Plan B" abortion pill to NYC high school students. This was done without the knowledge or permission of the children's parents. After the program came to light, a FOIA request showed:

About 40 separate “school-based health centers” doled out 12,721 doses of Plan B in 2011-12, up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10, according to the newly released data. About 22,400 students sought reproductive care from January 2009 through last school year, records show.

This is a left wing government standing "in loco parentis," assuming the role of parents in deciding about how to address sex and abortion with their children. Parents are pushed wholly out of the loop on these critical issues. Moreover, in the way this is being handled, the state is promoting the sexualization of our children. Just as a practical matter, this a huge issue for the health of our children. If the Plan B pill was doled out 12,721 times last year, that shows a high number of teens having unprotected sex. The implications of that are frightening. According to the CDC:

An estimated 8,300 young people aged 13–24 years in the 40 states reporting to CDC had HIV infection in 2009. Nearly half of the 19 million new STDs each year are among young people aged 15–24 years.

On top of AIDS, we now have STD's that are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Anyone who has unprotected casual sex is playing Russian roulette. The Bloomberg solution is to pass out the Plan B abortion pill like candy and with no notice to the parents. Leave aside for the moment the moral and ethical issues associated with abortion that parents should have the absolute right to discuss with their children upon notice that they are sexually active. The fact is that while parents can't completely stop their children from having sex, notice would at least allow parents to drive home the point that having unprotected sex is very dangerous.

As to the moral and ethical issues associated with sex and, in particular, abortion, the left likes to pretend that they simply don't exist. One can trace a direct line from socialists of yore to Bloomberg's policies of today. In the U.S., Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, as a committed socialist, was a staunch proponent of consequence free sex and an implacable enemy of Christianity (all in addition to being a eugenicist). These things were not unique to Sanger, but rather an established part of the socialist blueprint in their war on religion and family. For instance, in a fascinating article on "cultural marxism" at the American Thinker, author Linda Kimball writes:

In 1919, Georg Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun regime in Hungary. He immediately set plans in motion to de-Christianize Hungary. Reasoning that if Christian sexual ethics could be undermined among children, then both the hated patriarchal family and the Church would be dealt a crippling blow. Lukacs launched a radical sex education program in the schools. Sex lectures were organized and literature handed out which graphically instructed youth in free love (promiscuity) and sexual intercourse while simultaneously encouraging them to deride and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority. All of this was accompanied by a reign of cultural terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and dissenters.

And of course, it is not just teen sex. There has been no greater challenge to religion in our country than Obama's HHS mandate that requires employers to offer health plans that include free contraceptives and Plan B abortion pills. This would require not merely Church and affiliated employers to fund something to which their religion has been opposed since antiquity, but it would require private employers to violate their religious conscience (see Hobby Lobby). The failure to comply would result in massive penalties that would drive quasi religious institutions and businesses owned by Christians out of existence. It is hard to imagine any more of a direct attack on the ability of Americans to engage in the free exercise of religion, nor a plan more directly aimed at driving religious institutions and individuals out of our public and economic life.

If you have any doubt that this is a policy aimed directly at religion, understand that contraceptives are a nominal cost. Further, programs are already in place for women in the lower economic class to receive free contraception. This is not an HHS program aimed at solving a systemic problem for our nation's women as to either access to or affordability of contraceptives.

Obama's contraceptive / Plan B abortion pill mandate was recently made final in regulations issued by HHS. The regulations include the same accounting gimmick that Obama announced last year - that while all employers other than the Churches themselves would have to provide free contraceptives and abortion Plan B pills free to employees, in the case of quasi religious institutions, the employer would not have to pay for contraceptive/abortion aspects of the policy. Rather, their insurer would be required to provide the contraceptives and plan B pills "free of charge" to women. The response from the Catholic Church:

The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected the latest White House proposal on health insurance coverage of contraceptives, saying it did not offer enough safeguards for religious hospitals, colleges and charities that objected to providing such coverage for their employees.

The bishops said they would continue fighting the federal mandate in court.

The late Andrew Breitbart's riason d' etre was that culture mattered - that it was in the culture wars that the left was working fundamental change to our nation. He was right. And there are no clearer examples of the left's war of cultural marxism on religion and family than the lefts push to sexualize our children, to drive parents from the decision making regarding their children as regards sex, and the left's push to drive religion and the religious out of our public and economic life. The stakes in this war are existential.

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The Most Insightful Line Of The Decade?

Karl Marx famously said that "religion is the opiate of the masses."

Screenwriter Robert Avrech has replied: "Marxism is the opiate of the elites."

One could easily write entire books in support of that position. It is the most insightful line I've read in years. Do read Mr. Avrech's entire post on his evolution from left to right.

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LA Times Op-Ed: Applying A Reasonable Radical Muzzie Standard To The 1st Amendment

Update: Welcome Crusader Rabbit readers. Unless you want to read an exposition on U.S. law of freedom of speech, the parts you want to read are higihlighted in yellow.
_________________________

Writing in the LA Times, Sarah Chayes, like many on the left, is demanding that the producer of the "Innocence of Muslims" be tried for inciting the violence of 9-11-12. Leave aside for the moment that this argument is a pretext to take focus off of Obama's failed foreign policy, just as for the radical Islamists, the movie was itself a pretext for their violence directed at the U.S.

The roadblock to the left's call for prosecution is the First Amendment. But Ms. Chayes has an answer to that - stop applying the test of how a "reasonable person" would react to particular speech, and apply the test of how radical Muslims would react to the same speech. Ms. Chayes would give radical Islamists control over our right of free speech and insert a de facto "blasphemy" exception into our Constitutional law, one applicable only to Islam. This from Ms. Chayes in the LA Times:

In one of the most famous 1st Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck vs. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited. "The most stringent protection," he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, "would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."

Holmes' test — that words are not protected if their nature and circumstances create a "clear and present danger" of harm — has since been tightened. But even under the more restrictive current standard, "Innocence of Muslims," the film whose video trailer indirectly led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens among others, is not, arguably, free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution and the values it enshrines . . .

The current standard for restricting speech — or punishing it after it has in fact caused violence — was laid out in the 1969 case Brandenburg vs. Ohio. Under the narrower guidelines, only speech that has the intent and the likelihood of inciting imminent violence or lawbreaking can be limited.

Likelihood is the easiest test. In Afghanistan, where I have lived for most of the past decade, frustrations at an abusive government and at the apparent role of international forces in propping it up have been growing for years. But those frustrations are often vented in religious, not political, terms, because religion is a more socially acceptable, and safer, rationale for public outcry. . . .

As a threshold matter, despite Ms. Chayes's obfuscations, the law applicable to the film in question is crystal clear and long settled. The Supreme Court held, in the 1952 case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson that the makers of a sacriligous film could not be prosecuted for their speech:

[T]he state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them which is sufficient to justify prior restraints upon the expression of those views. It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches, or motion pictures.

Ms. Chayes wholly ignores that case law to make her argument. But even then, and leaving aside whether the speech has any intrinsic "value," the Holmes test mentioned by Ms. Chayes is ultimately a test of how a reasonable person in OUR society would react in the circumstances, not how al Qaeda members living in Egypt would react. In America, a reasonable person does not react with violence, even when an artist displays a crucifix in a jar of urine, when Louis Farrakhan regularly denigrates Judaism, when Islam strips Christ of his divinity, or even when the Onion uses an obscene cartoon to make the point that reasonable people in our nation do not respond with violence to criticism of the basest sort against their religion.

Most importantly, there is a historical reason to treat Ms. Shayes's argument with utter derision. The questioning of religious dogma and customs were critical parts of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and such questioning was the entire basis for the Reformation. Those titanic events of Western History took all aspects of our civilization, including our religious practices, out of the Dark Ages and into modernity.

Without these titanic historical periods, we would still be living under the yoke of a Dark Ages interpretation of religion. Witches would be executed, as would blasphemers and heretics. Any criticism of religious dogma would be met with violence. Any who left our religion would be subject to murder. Corruption among the clerics would be beyond reproach. Religion, instead of being a faith, would be a central tool of political power and state control. Our civilization would be dysfunctional, not dynamic.  Our government would subject people of other religions to severe state discrimination. Modern science, sparked by the Enlightenment and the basis for all of the technological advances of Western civilization, would have been severely circumscribed. Wouldn't that be horrendous?

Well, take a look at Islam today as practiced in the Middle East, and that is what you will find - all those things and more in every country with a Muslim government. And as to science, do note that Saudi Arabia only put the flat earth theory behind them with the recent turn of the millenium. A fatwa issued by the Grand Mufti in 1993 instructed "the earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of punishment."

The radical Muzzies  have never gone through a period of Enlightenment, a Renaissance or a Reformation.  And they never will if criticism of their religion, in any and every form, is silenced. That is the world to which Ms. Chayes would consign Muslims, and if not altered, it is a world that will inevitably lead to an existential clash with our own civilization.  Ms. Chayes's proposal is the precise opposite of what is needed, both for the Muslim world and our own.

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Blue Alert [Updated]

Send out the 911, notify all authorities, there are a laundry list of things gone missing from the Democratic National Convention:

- The debt clock is nowhere to be found at the DNC.

Somebody must have stolen it off the wall at the DNC. Fortunately, for those of us viewing Fox News, Bret Baer had a handy dandy debt clock in the corner of the screen and yes, how appropriate that it should trip over the $16,000,000,000,000.00 mark just as the DNC convenes. It is a Democrat milestone as Obama has compiled more debt under his watch than Bush in two terms and more than any previous President of the U.S., from Washington to Clinton combined.

I am not sure who the guy is in the video below, but on the issue of this insane accumulation of debt . . .



. . . I agree with him 100%.

- Mention of God in the Democratic platform. [SEE UPDATE BELOW]

Yes, for the first time in the history of the Democratic Party, all mention of God has been scrubbed from the Democratic platform.  This should not surprise anyone. The radical left has been at war with religion since prior to the founding of our country, and it is the radical left that now controls the Democratic Party. This is one more incremental step in what has been a "march of a thousand miles," to quote Mao (how appropriate), to remove religion, and in particular Christianity, from the American public square.

- Mention of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the Democratic platform. {SEE UPDATE BELOW]

To my Jewish Democratic friends, no cause for worry. Its not like Democrats do not fully support Israel.  Oh, and the Democratic platiform also strips language from previous platforms calling for the isolation of Hamas, calling for Palestinian refugees only be returned to a Palestinian state, not Israel, and strips language that dismissed any demand for a return to the 1949 borders.  And if you don't think the Palestinians and Iranians haven't picked up on this signal, you are living in a fantasy land.  Many more friends to Israel like Obama and the Democrat left and future maps will be showing Israel overstamped with an expiration date.

- Obama Supporters

Long gone are the adoring crowds fighting for a chance to hear THE ONE make his acceptance speech. Four years ago, 84,000 showed up in Denver to worship at the feet of HE who would heal the planet and slow the rise of the oceans. Now, the Dems are "desperately" scrambling to bus in enough people from NC and surrounding states to fill the stands for The One's 2012 acceptance speech. And if there aren't enough rent a mobs to do the trick, the alternative is to move the speech to a 20,000 person indoor venue and justify the change because of the potential for inclement weather - after all, it's supposed to be partly cloudy and 75 degrees on Thursday in Charlotte.

And last but not least, there is the most important thing of all missing from the DNC . . .

- Leadership

Well, effective leadership at least. Our Community Organizer In Chief has, in the preceding near four years, led us to the worst recovery since WWII and has us poised on the brink to sink far lower. Now Obama says he wants four more years because he hasn't "finished the job" yet.

Curiously enough, that was my reaction too.

UPDATE: The radical left displayed too much of their beliefs to the public with the original platform, adopted in toto last night. So, less than 24 hours later, the DNC has forced through an amendment.

The amendment restores mention of God and acknowledges Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Now, if you think this reflects how the radical left that dominates today's Democratic Party thinks, think again. Watch the video below. If that was a 2/3rd's affirmative vote to adopt the amendment, then Obama is a small government, free market capitalist. I would imagine you would have to go back to the old Soviet Politburo to see democracy practiced like that.

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Guess Who's 2012 Agenda This Is?

1 – TAX REFORM - We support replacing the current tax code with the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax would treat everyone – gay or straight – equally. Until then, we support death tax repeal; domestic partner tax equity; cuts in the capital gains and corporate tax rates to jump start our economy and create jobs; a fairer, flatter and substantially simpler tax code.

2 – HEALTHCARE REFORM – Repeal of Obamacare; encourage free market healthcare reform. Allow for the purchase of insurance across state lines – expanding access to domestic partner benefits; emphasizing individual ownership of healthcare insurance – such a shift would prevent discriminatory practices by an employer or the government.

3 – SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM - The only way to permanent solvency in the Social Security system is through the creation of inheritable personal savings accounts. Personal savings accounts would give gay and lesbian couples the same opportunity toleave their accounts to their spouses as their straight counterparts.

4 - RESPECTING THE PROPER ROLE OF THE JUDICIARY - We believe our Constitution should be respected and that judges appointed to the federal bench should recognize the proper and appropriate role of the judiciary as laid out by our Founding Fathers.

5 – HOLDING THE LINE ON SPENDING – Standing up for all tax payers against wasteful and unnecessary spending to protect future generations from the mounting federal debt.

6 – FIGHTING GLOBAL EXTREMISTS – Standing strong against radical regimes that refuse to recognize the basic human rights of gays and lesbians, women and religious minorities.

7 – DEFENDING OUR CONSTITUTION – Opposing any anti-gay federal marriage amendment. Marriage should be a question for the states. A federal constitutional amendment on marriage would be an unprecedented federal power grab from thestates.

8 – EMPOWERING INDIVIDUALS TO DEFEND THEMSELVES – Protecting 2nd amendment rights. The answer to stopping bias motivated crime is not the Hate Crimes laws, instead we support empowering individuals to lawfully protect themselves.

9 – RESPECTING STATES RIGHTS – Supporting a strong 10th Amendment that limits the scope of the federal government and empowers states; repealing the federal Defense of Marriage Act and return power to regulate marriage and family law to the states.

10 – EDUCATION REFORM – The answer to the serious problem of bullying is not more federal intervention in education. Instead, we support empowering parents and families by supporting school choice initiatives and protecting the right of parents to homeschool their children.

That very admirable agenda is GOProud's, as director Jimmy LaSalvia explains:

The so-called “gay agenda” has been defined narrowly by the gay left. In contrast to the approach of the left, GOProud’s agenda emphasizes conservative and libertarian principles that will improve the daily lives of all Americans, but especially gay and lesbian Americans.

My hat's off to him. I am of a religious bent, so I think that the homosexuality is sinful, but I also believe that is a matter wholly between the individual and God. Gays should not suffer discrimination, and there is a large place open for them both at my table and under the GOP tent.

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Cambodia & The Socialist Ethic

One of my constant themes on this blog concerns the decades long effort of the left to drive Judaism and Christianity from the public square, thus allowing government to become the sole moral arbiter, unmoored from the Judeo Christian ethic.  In the Judeo-Christian world, human life is sacrosanct, and thus the government is limited as to when it subjects may be imprisoned, executed or otherwise subject to coercion.  The secular left devalues human life, elevating in its stead the power of government and the principle of "equality." Where that leads is discussed by Prof. Douglas Levene in Reflections on Cambodia, an essay at NRO:

Cambodia suffered deeply under the Khmer Rouge. Perhaps as much as 20 percent of its people were murdered in killing fields like Choeung Ek or died as a result of starvation or disease following the expulsion of the urban populations to the countryside and the forced collectivization of agriculture. But calling these murders “genocide” troubles me.

Cambodia is now and was then one of the most ethnically unitary countries in the world: 95 percent of all Cambodians are ethnically Khmer; the remaining 5 percent include Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotians, Hmong, Cham, and others. And 95 percent of all Cambodians, of whatever ethnicity, are Buddhist. Most of the killings were Khmer on Khmer, although the Khmer Rouge did also target Cambodia’s very small Cham Muslim minority.

The term “genocide” historically refers to the mass extermination of a race or ethnicity, as with the Turks and the Armenians, or the Germans and the Jews, or the Serbs and the Bosnians. It doesn’t seem to fit what happened in Cambodia, except for the scale of the slaughter.

Rather, what happened in Cambodia is what happened in the French Revolution, and in Stalin’s purges and mass collectivization campaigns, and in Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, only on a proportionately larger scale. It was mass murder in the name of equality. It wasn’t “genocide”; it was Communist utopianism carried to its logical extreme. The Khmer Rouge, who called themselves Maoists, believed that the most important social and political value was equality and that in order to create their new, classless society in which everyone was equal, it was necessary to exterminate anyone who might be smarter, or better educated, or wealthier, or more talented than anyone else. Thus, they killed the educated, the bourgeoisie, the middle classes, and the rich; movie stars, pop singers, authors, urban residents, and workers for the former government; and anyone who protested — as well as the families of all the above. Towards the end, they also killed cadres who were thought to be a political threat. Whatever their crimes were, the Khmer Rouge do not seem to have been motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious hatred.

Why then do Cambodians and the world call the mass murders by the Khmer Rouge “genocide”? I can think of several possible reasons. One is the superficial similarity to other mass slaughters — as noted earlier, the pictures of the Cambodian killing fields look very much like the pictures from the German concentration camps. Surely many people who are largely ignorant of history know only that similarity. Another reason is the fact that the victims of genocide are sympathetic. The U.N. creates commissions, and wealthy countries send money. Cambodia today is filled with NGOs bringing aid of various kinds. The desire for international sympathy might explain why Cambodians use the genocide label.

However, I suspect that the most important reason for the usage worldwide is that many people in the international media, international agencies, and international NGOs (not to mention academia) are reluctant to face up to the crimes committed by Communism in the name of equality. To do so might call into question the weight attached by them to equality as the most important social value and undermine the multicultural faith that evil is predominantly the product of inequality, racism, ethnic hatred, or religious fanaticism. That cannot be permitted, so such crimes must be either ignored or mislabeled. . . .

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"When Even Casual Sex Requires A State Welfare Program . . ."

". . . you’re pretty much done for."

So says Mark Steyn in his column at the NRO. It's one of his better ones, which is saying a lot:

. . . No, the most basic issue here is not religious morality, individual liberty, or fiscal responsibility. It’s that a society in which middle-aged children of privilege testify before the most powerful figures in the land to demand state-enforced funding for their sex lives at a time when their government owes more money than anyone has ever owed in the history of the planet is quite simply nuts. . . .

Insane as this scenario is, the Democrat-media complex insists that everyone take it seriously. When it emerged the other day that Amanda Clayton, a 24-year-old Michigan million-dollar-lottery winner, still receives $200 of food stamps every month, even the press and the bureaucrats were obliged to acknowledge the ridiculousness. Yet the same people are determined that Sandra Fluke be treated with respect as a pioneering spokesperson for the rights of the horizontally challenged.

Sorry, I pass. “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1784. In the absence of religious virtue, sexual virtue, and fiscal virtue, one might trust to the people’s sense of sheer preposterousness to reject the official narrative of the Fluke charade. Yet even that is not to be permitted. . . . But let me say this. Almost every matter of the moment boils down to the same story: The Left’s urge to narrow the bounds of public discourse and insist that “conventional wisdom” unknown to the world the day before yesterday is now as unquestionable as the laws of physics. Nothing that Rush said is as weird or as degrading as what Sandra Fluke and the Obama administration are demanding. And any freeborn citizen should reserve the right to point that out as loudly and as often as possible.

I think he misses the boat when he says that the issue here isn't about religious freedom.  I think religious freedom is at the very center of the issue, as I've pointed out here.  But beyond that, Steyn nails a perfect 10.

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The Catholic Church & The Left

(Photoshop H/T American Digest)

I have long been intending to post on why the modern left and many in the Catholic Church have made common cause, at least over the past eight decades. The base of the left has been defined since the inception of socialism by their antipathy towards Christianity, thus making the voluntary union of the Church with the left a dichotomy. On a related note, it is capitalism that has brought the greatest benefits to all people, from the poorest on up, in our nation and the world. Yet many in religious orders seem to agree with the left that capitalism, operating from enlightened self interest, is less desirable than the left's model of forced redistribution.

I have long suspected that the answers to both of the above issue has much to do with the lifestyle of clergy and monks of the Catholic Church. It is the closest thing to a successful experiment in the Marxist model as likely ever to be found on this earth. Thus it becomes understandable that many in the Church, not seeing the larger reality, would in fact feel an affinity for their would-be executioners. Many in the Church do not seem to distinguish between voluntary acts of charity and expropriation of property by the police power of the state. They do not recognize that capitalism creates far more wealth to the benefit of all - thus making charity possible - while socialism produces much less wealth and results in far less charity, with the State assuming the role of charitable institutions. But on top of all of this, most importantly, many in the Church have been willfully blind about the ultimate goal of the socialist left - to remove religion from society in order to make the state the ultimate arbiter of morality. The left has not exactly been hiding the ball on this one.

While I intended to pontificate on this at some length, I see that a Catholic Priest, Father Zhuhisdorf, has already addressed many of these issues in his blog. I defer to Father Z:

Ask everybody and they’ll all agree it’s a good thing priests don’t run the world.

I agree with this view.

I also believe it’s even better that members of religious orders don’t run the world, whether they are Sisters of Mercy or, lemme think, Jesuits … or some other kind of religious.

Why?

Religious don’t live in the real world.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe firmly that many religious do alot of good for the world, but they don’t live in it. . . .

For example, unlike diocesan priests, individual religious don’t pay income taxes. Religious don’t worry about unemployment, health care, food, housing and nursing care when they are aged, or the cost of their funerals. Their religious communities take care of all that. Religious contribute all of what little (or in some cases much) money they earn from their apostolates into a common fund that is administered by their superiors. That common fund takes care of the needs of all community members.

That’s why I get a little edgy hearing religious talking about social justice, universal health care and other federal mandates and entitlements.

The idea that religious have of the state is far too analogous to that of a religious community.

Time and time again religious who pronounce themselves on social issues demonstrate that they think of nation-states, such as the USA, in religious terms. Nation-states are their communities writ large, in which everybody helps everybody else, and in which goods are distributed not on the basis of property rights, but instead, as in the Acts of the Apostles, “distribution is made to each according to his need” (Acts 4:35).

According to this model, wealthy Americans should “pay their fair share” in federal and state income taxes in order to help those who are poor.

I happen to agree with that sentiment.

The wealthy should help the poor. Jesus taught that. The Church Fathers taught that long before modern popes wrote encyclicals (just read St. John Chrysostom or St. Augustine of Hippo).

But what Jesus, the Acts of the Apostles and the Church Fathers all had in common in this regard is that they were talking about voluntary charity. They were not talking about the state.

The state is a modern institution and it is based upon coercion.

If you don’t believe that, go and break a law and see what happens to you.

The power of the state may in some places derive from the consent of the governed, but in no place do individual members or even the majority, consent to each and every act of the state.

If you don’t believe that, try stopping an abortion and see what happens to you.

When the government collects income taxes, it is not passing the basket at church, asking you to perform a voluntary act of charity (pace William Buffett): it is seizing your property. If you don’t hand over your property, the state will garnish your wages and/or confiscate and sell your house and goods. It may also put you in prison.

Where’s the voluntary in that?

In the national conversation Americans are currently having over the federal government takeover of health care, what gets obscured is the distinction between the public sector and the voluntary sector, that is, between the state and the Church.

It’s the role of members of any church to practice charity. The state’s role in our lives is, with our consent, coercive. But its coercive power should be limited.

If you allow the distinction between the political and religious spheres to be blurred, and if you begin romantically to think of the state as a kind of big religious community, you will end up thinking just like Mussolini: the state should own everything and provide you with all your needs.

When religious behave like this we call them a community.

When states behave like this we call them fascist.

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Krauthammer On The Gospel According To Obama

Pinhead does his best Obama imitation:

 

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In his column this week, Charles Krauthammer disects Obama's forays into the pontifical:

At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, seeking theological underpinning for his drive to raise taxes on the rich, President Obama invoked the highest possible authority. His policy, he testified “as a Christian,” “coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.’ ”

Now, I’m no theologian, but I’m fairly certain that neither Jesus nor his rabbinic forebears, when speaking of giving, meant some obligation to the state. You tithe the priest, not the tax man.

The Judeo-Christian tradition commands personal generosity as represented, for example, by the biblical injunction against retrieving any sheaf left behind while harvesting one’s own field. That is for the gleaners — “the poor and the alien” (Leviticus 19:10). Like Ruth in the field of Boaz. As far as I can tell, that charitable transaction involved no mediation by the IRS.

. . . But this Gospel according to Obama has a rival — the newly revealed Gospel according to Sebelius, over which has erupted quite a contretemps. By some peculiar logic, it falls to the health and human services secretary to promulgate the definition of “religious” — for the purposes, for example, of exempting religious institutions from certain regulatory dictates.

Such exemptions are granted in grudging recognition that, whereas the rest of civil society may be broken to the will of the state’s regulators, our quaint Constitution grants special autonomy to religious institutions.

Accordingly, it would be a mockery of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment if, for example, the Catholic Church were required by law to freely provide such “health care services” (in secularist parlance) as contraception, sterilization and pharmacological abortion — to which Catholicism is doctrinally opposed as a grave contravention of its teachings about the sanctity of life.

Ah. But there would be no such Free Exercise violation if the institutions so mandated are deemed, by regulatory fiat, not religious.

And thus, the word came forth from Sebelius decreeing the exact criteria required (a) to meet her definition of “religious” and thus (b) to qualify for a modicum of independence from newly enacted state control of American health care, under which the aforementioned Sebelius and her phalanx of experts determine everything — from who is to be covered, to which treatments are to be guaranteed free of charge.

Criterion 1: A “religious institution” must have “the inculcation of religious values as its purpose.” But that’s not the purpose of Catholic charities; it’s to give succor to the poor. That’s not the purpose of Catholic hospitals; it’s to give succor to the sick. Therefore, they don’t qualify as “religious” — and therefore can be required, among other things, to provide free morning-after abortifacients.

Criterion 2: Any exempt institution must be one that “primarily employs” and “primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.” Catholic soup kitchens do not demand religious IDs from either the hungry they feed or the custodians they employ. Catholic charities and hospitals — even Catholic schools — do not turn away Hindu or Jew.

Their vocation is universal, precisely the kind of universal love-thy-neighbor vocation that is the very definition of religiosity as celebrated by the Gospel of Obama. Yet according to the Gospel of Sebelius, these very same Catholic institutions are not religious at all — under the secularist assumption that religion is what happens on Sunday under some Gothic spire, while good works are “social services” properly rendered up unto Caesar.

. . . To flatter his faith-breakfast guests and justify his tax policies, Obama declares good works to be the essence of religiosity. Yet he turns around and, through Sebelius, tells the faithful who engage in good works that what they’re doing is not religion at all. You want to do religion? Get thee to a nunnery. You want shelter from the power of the state? Get out of your soup kitchen and back to your pews. Outside, Leviathan rules.

The contradiction is glaring, the hypocrisy breathtaking. But that’s not why Obama offered a hasty compromise on Friday. It’s because the firestorm of protest was becoming a threat to his reelection. Sure, health care, good works and religion are important. But reelection is divine.

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The War On Religion: Mark Steyn, Ron Paul & Congress

Mark Steyn weighs in on modern Christmas traditions, the fear of even religious institutions to proclaim their faith out of fear of litigation, and what it all means:

Christmas in America is a season of time-honored traditions:

The sacred performance of the annual ACLU lawsuit over the presence of an insufficiently secular "holiday" tree.

The ritual provocations of the atheist displays licensed by pitifully appeasing municipalities to sit between the menorah and the giant Frosty the Snowman.

The familiar strains of every hack columnist's "war on Christmas" column rolling off the keyboard as easily as Richard Clayderman playing "Winter Wonderland" ...

This year has been a choice year. A crucified skeleton Santa Claus was erected as part of the "holiday" display outside the Loudoun County courthouse in Virginia — because, let's face it, nothing cheers the hearts of moppets in the Old Dominion like telling them, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus — and he's hanging lifeless in the town square."

Alas, a week ago, some local burghers failed to get into the ecumenical spirit and decapitated him. Who are these killjoys? Christians intolerant of the First Amendment (as some have suggested)? Or perhaps a passing Saudi? . . . .

Across the fruitcaked plain in California, the city of Santa Monica allocated permits for "holiday" displays at Palisades Park by means of lottery. Eighteen of the 21 slots went to atheists — for example, the slogan "37 million Americans know a myth when they see one" over portraits of Jesus, Santa, and Satan.

. . . Perhaps Santa Monica should adopt a less theocratic moniker and change its name to Satan Monica, as its interpretation of the separation of church and state seems to have evolved into expressions of public contempt for large numbers of the citizenry augmented by the traumatizing of their children.

Boy, I can't wait to see what those courageous atheists come up with for Ramadan. Or does that set their hearts a-flutter quite as much?

One sympathizes, up to a point. As America degenerates from a land of laws to a land of legalisms, much of life is devoted to forestalling litigation. What's less understandable is the faintheartedness of explicitly Christian institutions. . . .

When an explicitly Catholic institution thinks the meaning of Christmas is "tenderness for the past, vapid generalities for the present, evasive abstractions for the future," it's pretty much over. Suffering no such urge to self-abasement, Muslim students at the Catholic University of America in Washington recently filed a complaint over the lack of Islamic prayer rooms on the campus. They find it offensive to have to pray surrounded by Christian symbols such as crucifixes and paintings of distinguished theologians.

True, this thought might have occurred to them before they applied to an institution called "Catholic University." On the other hand, it's surely not unreasonable for them to have expected Catholic University to muster no more than the nominal rump Christianity of that Catholic college in New England. Why wouldn't you demand Muslim prayer rooms?

As much as belligerent atheists, belligerent Muslims reckon that a decade or so hence "Catholic colleges" will be Catholic mainly in the sense that Istanbul's Hagia Sophia is still a cathedral: that's to say, it's a museum, a heritage site for where once was a believing church. And who could object to the embalming of our inheritance?

Christmas is all about "tenderness for the past," right? When Christian college administrators are sending out cards saying "We believe in nothing", why wouldn't you take them at their word?

Which brings us back in this season of joy to the Republican presidential debates, the European debt crisis and all the other fun stuff. The crisis afflicting the West is not primarily one of unsustainable debt and spending. These are mere symptoms of a deeper identity crisis.

It is not necessary to be a believing Christian to be unnerved by the ease and speed with which we have cast off our inheritance and trampled it into the dust. When American municipalities are proudly displaying the execution of skeleton Santas and giant Satans on public property, it may just be a heartening exercise of the First Amendment, it may be a trivial example of the narcissism of moral frivolity.

Or it could be a sign that eventually societies become too stupid to survive. The fellows building the post-western world figure they know which it is.

And then there is this worthy essay on the topic from Ron Paul in 2003.

As we celebrate another Yuletide season, it's hard not to notice that Christmas in America simply doesn't feel the same anymore. Although an overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, and those who don't celebrate it overwhelmingly accept and respect our nation's Christmas traditions, a certain shared public sentiment slowly has disappeared. The Christmas spirit, marked by a wonderful feeling of goodwill among men, is in danger of being lost in the ongoing war against religion.

Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view. The justification is always that someone, somewhere, might possibly be offended or feel uncomfortable living in the midst of a largely Christian society, so all must yield to the fragile sensibilities of the few. The ultimate goal of the anti-religious elites is to transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity.

This growing bias explains why many of our wonderful Christmas traditions have been lost. Christmas pageants and plays, including Handel's Messiah, have been banned from schools and community halls. Nativity scenes have been ordered removed from town squares, and even criticized as offensive when placed on private church lawns. Office Christmas parties have become taboo, replaced by colorless seasonal parties to ensure no employees feel threatened by a “hostile environment.” Even wholly non-religious decorations featuring Santa Claus, snowmen, and the like have been called into question as Christmas symbols that might cause discomfort. Earlier this month, firemen near Chicago reluctantly removed Christmas decorations from their firehouse after a complaint by some embittered busybody.

Most noticeably, however, the once commonplace refrain of “Merry Christmas” has been replaced by the vague, ubiquitous “Happy Holidays.” But what holiday? Is Christmas some kind of secret, a word that cannot be uttered in public? Why have we allowed the secularists to intimidate us into downplaying our most cherished and meaningful Christian celebration?

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders' political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government's hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation's history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for external government. This is the real reason the collectivist Left hates religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state for the people's allegiance, and many devout people put their faith in God before their faith in the state. Knowing this, the secularists wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our nation's Christian heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.

The war on religion is perhaps best captured this year by the fact that our elected Representatives in Congress have been advised by the Congressional Franking Comission that they cannot send out greeting cards to constituents on the Congressional dime that say "Merry Christmas."

The Supreme Court has so moved us from the true meaning of the First Amendment's anti-establishment clause that every one of the Founders - even the deist Thomas Jefferson - would be horrified at what has become of Christianity in the public sphere today. It is a travesty that is having a profound and lasting effect on our nation - and none of it is good. For a much more in depth explanation, please see the speech of James Buckley here.

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James Buckley: Musings On The Place Of Religion In American Public Life

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