Supreme Court? Or, Supreme Ignorance?
If you care not to believe that we are a religious people who founded a great nation according to the wisdom of our Father God you better stay out of our Temples of Government. The Supremes, rather than engaging in their idle speculations about how many angels are dancing on the pinhead of the "Establishment Clause" should be immersing theirselves in the writings of our Founding Fathers.
We know that George Washington was First in War, First in Peace and First in the Hearts of his Countryman. Could we also say that he was First to Thank God for the Bounty of his Blessings in the establishment of our great Nation? In his own words,
"....it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge."
He continued on to state the obvious. His sentiments were not only his but also the people at large in the new Nation. In his own words,
"In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow- citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage."
In conclusion, in his own words,
"I shall take my present leave; but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human Race in humble supplication that, since He has been pleased to favor the American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquillity, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity on a form of government for the security of their union and the advancement of their happiness, so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this Government must depend." (Citation: President George Washington's First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789; Records of the United States Senate, Record Group 46, National Archives)
George Washington, with a vision that spanned two hundred years of history, on 19 September 1796, told the young nation that,
"One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown." (President George Washington's Farewell Address (1796)
Would the Founding Fathers be absolutely incredulous that the preferred instrument of destruction of this great Judeo-Christian Nation would be the Supreme Court of the United States? Our intellectual elite must be out of their ever loving collective minds. They actually believe that they are going to give us a brave new world by destroying our Nation's "dependence" on "superstitious religion." Failing to notice that communism has been totally incapable of destroying any religion they are pretentiously proceeding with their plans to eradicate organized religion as a factor in the life of our great Nation. My prediction is that they will destroy this Nation and religion will continue to be in the hearts of the citizens of this great Nation. That is unless we regain control to halt the destructive ways of the intellectual elite.
We need to prepare for the coming battle for Supreme Court appointments. We deserve the appointment, by President Bush, of candidates who reflect the values of the religious people of this Nation. We need to write our elected Senators and Representatives. Republicans need to get aggressive with the demoracists. They were in charge for forty years and they exercised power with an iron fist. Only the delusional believe that there is anything to be gained by playing nice nice with the demoracists.
Just a thought. What would happen if people holding copies of the Ten Commandments were to inundate our Nation's courts? I have spent some time waiting in the hallways of justice for my time to be in the court. I had this vision of people leaning against the wall, or sitting on benches, outside of the courtrooms holding a copy of the Ten Commandments like a live picture frame. Would that be against the law? Would we see law enforcement officials being ordered to take action? How far are we willing to go? The next time I have to go to court I am going to pin a copy of the Ten Commandments to my clothes like a note from mommy. I am old and crazy. I can pull it off.
We know that George Washington was First in War, First in Peace and First in the Hearts of his Countryman. Could we also say that he was First to Thank God for the Bounty of his Blessings in the establishment of our great Nation? In his own words,
"....it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge."
He continued on to state the obvious. His sentiments were not only his but also the people at large in the new Nation. In his own words,
"In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow- citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage."
In conclusion, in his own words,
"I shall take my present leave; but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human Race in humble supplication that, since He has been pleased to favor the American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquillity, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity on a form of government for the security of their union and the advancement of their happiness, so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this Government must depend." (Citation: President George Washington's First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789; Records of the United States Senate, Record Group 46, National Archives)
George Washington, with a vision that spanned two hundred years of history, on 19 September 1796, told the young nation that,
"One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown." (President George Washington's Farewell Address (1796)
Would the Founding Fathers be absolutely incredulous that the preferred instrument of destruction of this great Judeo-Christian Nation would be the Supreme Court of the United States? Our intellectual elite must be out of their ever loving collective minds. They actually believe that they are going to give us a brave new world by destroying our Nation's "dependence" on "superstitious religion." Failing to notice that communism has been totally incapable of destroying any religion they are pretentiously proceeding with their plans to eradicate organized religion as a factor in the life of our great Nation. My prediction is that they will destroy this Nation and religion will continue to be in the hearts of the citizens of this great Nation. That is unless we regain control to halt the destructive ways of the intellectual elite.
We need to prepare for the coming battle for Supreme Court appointments. We deserve the appointment, by President Bush, of candidates who reflect the values of the religious people of this Nation. We need to write our elected Senators and Representatives. Republicans need to get aggressive with the demoracists. They were in charge for forty years and they exercised power with an iron fist. Only the delusional believe that there is anything to be gained by playing nice nice with the demoracists.
Just a thought. What would happen if people holding copies of the Ten Commandments were to inundate our Nation's courts? I have spent some time waiting in the hallways of justice for my time to be in the court. I had this vision of people leaning against the wall, or sitting on benches, outside of the courtrooms holding a copy of the Ten Commandments like a live picture frame. Would that be against the law? Would we see law enforcement officials being ordered to take action? How far are we willing to go? The next time I have to go to court I am going to pin a copy of the Ten Commandments to my clothes like a note from mommy. I am old and crazy. I can pull it off.
posted by BigBubba at 5:54 PM
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22 Comments:
The SCOTUS decisions yesterday were indeed interesting. It seems that the Ten Commandments are okay in courtrooms as long as they were “done in the past” AND “done with some greater historical context in mind”. I wonder how they would rule if someone tried to install a monument today. I suspect you’d have to have Solon the Lawgiver holding the tablets instead of Moses.
I want to place a monument to SCOTUS in our local county courthouse. It’ll show nine justices in black robes surrounding a large parchment with the words “U.S. Constitution” boldly displayed along the top. But instead of the parchment being made of marble, I’d have installed a flat plasma display, with the words of the Constitution constantly morphing and changing, so as to read differently for every passerby. I’d show the justices in positions of “argument” with 5 on one side, and four on the other. And I’d have a statue of Moses standing in a far corner of the room, enjoying a real belly laugh.
-FJ
I always love to read Justice Scalia's arguments and dissents. He definitely shattered the logic that the rest of the Court used when he pointed out the error in logic inherent in the Establishment Clause's "Lemon Test"...
"I have remarked before that it is an odd jurisprudence that bases the unconstitutionality of a government practice that does not actually advance religion on the hopes of the government that it would do so. See Edwards, 482
U. S., at 639. But that oddity pales in comparison to the one invited by today’s analysis: the legitimacy of a government action with a wholly secular effect would turn on the misperception of an imaginary observer that the government officials behind the action had the intent to advance religion."
For more interesting reading...
Recent SCOTUS Rulings
-FJ
So, you prefer the "Catholic" Bible over the subversive fly-over country King James? There's a significant difference? I'm looking, duck.
Douay-Rheims Bible Exodus 20:
Book Of Exodus
The ten commandments.
1 And the Lord spoke all these words: 2 I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 Thou shalt not have strange gods before me. 4 Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. 5 Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me:
4 "A graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing"... All such images, or likenesses, are forbidden by this commandment, as are made to be adored and served; according to that which immediately follows, thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them. That is, all such as are designed for idols or image-gods, or are worshipped with divine honour. But otherwise images, pictures, or representations, even in the house of God, and in the very sanctuary so far from being forbidden, are expressly authorized by the word of God. See Ex. 25. 15, and etc.; chap. 38. 7; Num. 21. 8, 9; 1 Chron. or Paralip. 28. 18, 19; 2 Chron. or Paralip. 3. 10.
6 And shewing mercy unto thousands to them that love me, and keep my commandments. 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that shall take the name of the Lord his God in vain. 8 Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and shalt do all thy works. 10 But on the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou shalt do no work on it, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates.
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day: therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it. 12 Honour thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be longlived upon the land which the Lord thy God will give thee. 13 Thou shalt not kill. 14 Thou shalt not commit adultery. 15 Thou shalt not steal.
16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. 17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house: neither shalt thou desire his wife, nor his servant, nor his handmaid, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is his. 18 And all the people saw the voices and the flames, and the sound of the trumpet, and the mount smoking: and being terrified and struck with fear, they stood afar off, 19 Saying to Moses: Speak thou to us, and we will hear: let not the Lord speak to us, lest we die. 20 And Moses said to the people: Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that the dread of him might be in you, and you should not sin.
21 And the people stood afar off. But Moses went to the dark cloud wherein God was. 22 And the Lord said to Moses: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: You have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven. 23 You shall not make gods of silver, nor shall you make to yourselves gods of gold. 24 You shall make an altar of earth unto me, and you shall offer upon it your holocausts and peace offerings, your sheep and oxen, in every place where the memory of my name shall be: I will come to thee, and will bless thee. 25 And if thou make an altar of stone unto me, thou shalt not build it of hewn stones: for if thou lift up a tool upon it, it shall be defiled.
By the by, Duck, have you ever heard me call the Catholic Religion the bastion of pederasty because of the actions of a few Priests who stray from the Word of God? OK, pal, what some Protestant hayseed says, or does, is not a reflection of what the Body as a whole believes. More later, I have an appointment.
mr. ducky,
I apologize for the confusion...I probably should have included the "prologue" to Scalia's statement...
"As bad as the Lemon test is, it is worse for the fact that, since its inception, its seemingly simple mandates have been manipulated to fit whatever result the Court aimed to achieve. Today’s opinion is no different. In two respects it modifies Lemon to ratchet up the Court’s hostility to religion. First, the Court justifies inquiry into legislative purpose, not as an end itself, but as a means to ascertain the appearance of the government action to an “ ‘objective observer.’ ” Ante, at 13. Because in the Court’s view the true danger to be guarded against is that the objective observer would feel like an “outside[r]” or “not [a] full membe[r] of the political community,” its inquiry focuses not on the actual purpose of government action, but the “purpose apparent from government action.” Ante, at 12. Under this approach, even if a government could show that its actual purpose was not to advance religion, it would presumably violate the Constitution as long as the Court’s objective observer would think otherwise. See Capitol Square Review and Advisory Bd. v. Pinette, 515 U.S. 753, 776–777 (1995) (O’CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (stating that “when the reasonable observer would view a government practice as endorsing religion, . . . it is our duty to hold the practice invalid,” even if the law at issue was neutral and the benefit conferred on the religious entity was incidental)."
-FJ
As for whether the Commandments actually "advance religion", Scalia's argument would be "So what!" so long as people aren't forced to follow them... and using many of the historical arguments Big Bubba has already advanced. Heck, Scalia even had Jefferson and other "Deist's" quoting scripture!
mr. ducky, if you don't like the monuments in the court house, simply don't look at them! Avert your eyes. Religious people have to do the same (especially w/regards to billboard ads and certain television shows). Learn some "tolerance".
-FJ
Yep, I half-agree with you mr. ducky, every time Souter, Kennedy, Ginsburg, et al, start looking to "Europe" for non-American precedents and definitions of "unusual" as in "cruel and unusual", I start to get an upset stomach. But I can't control what judges may have learned as kids, be they "Judeo-Christian" values, or "Marxist Leninist" values... whatever it was, we'd have to agree that it was probably "American", so "no harm, no foul/fowl"
But perhaps one day we'll be rid of the "Lemon Test" altogther, and no one will notice if us peons start to speculate as to what the hidden "intentions" are of those who proffer judgments in courthouses by the content of papers on their walls... and then the judges might stop trying to derive "hidden and unstated intentions" from those legislators who either hung the documents or wrote the laws... and then the judges might actually be able to focus on reading and applying the laws in front of them in a "consistent" manner based upon the known context... with no "second" guessing of intent.
Or even better, maybe one day we'll get the legislator's to start defining the "reasons" for their laws in the preambles, as Plato once recommended...
Plato "Laws"
"Athenian Stranger --O lawgiver, if you know what we ought to do and say, you can surely tell us;--you are not like the poet, who, as you were just now saying, does not know the effect of his own words. And the poet may reply, that when he sits down on the tripod of the Muses he is not in his right mind, and that being a mere imitator he may be allowed to say all sorts of opposite things, and cannot tell which of them is true. But this license cannot be allowed to the lawgiver. For example, there are three kinds of funerals; one of them is excessive, another mean, a third moderate, and you say that the last is right. Now if I had a rich wife, and she told me to bury her, and I were to sing of her burial, I should praise the extravagant kind; a poor man would commend a funeral of the meaner sort, and a man of moderate means would prefer a moderate funeral. But you, as legislator, would have to say exactly what you meant by 'moderate.'
'Very true.'
Athenian Stranger - And is our lawgiver to have no preamble or interpretation of his laws, never offering a word of advice to his subjects, after the manner of some doctors? For of doctors are there not two kinds? The one gentle and the other rough, doctors who are freemen and learn themselves and teach their pupils scientifically, and doctor's assistants who get their knowledge empirically by attending on their masters? 'Of course there are.' And did you ever observe that the gentlemen doctors practice upon freemen, and that slave doctors confine themselves to slaves? The latter go about the country or wait for the slaves at the dispensaries. They hold no parley with their patients about their diseases or the remedies of them; they practice by the rule of thumb, and give their decrees in the most arbitrary manner. When they have doctored one patient they run off to another, whom they treat with equal assurance, their duty being to relieve the master of the care of his sick slaves. But the other doctor, who practices on freemen, proceeds in quite a different way. He takes counsel with his patient and learns from him, and never does anything until he has persuaded him of what he is doing. He trusts to influence rather than force. Now is not the use of both methods far better than the use of either alone? And both together may be advantageously employed by us in legislation.
We may illustrate our proposal by an example. The laws relating to
marriage naturally come first, and therefore we may begin with them. The simple law would be as follows:--A man shall marry between the ages of thirty and thirty-five; if he do not, he shall be fined or deprived of certain privileges. The double law would add the reason why: Forasmuch as man desires immortality, which he attains by the procreation of children, no one should deprive himself of his share in this good. He who obeys the law is blameless, but he who disobeys must not be a gainer by his celibacy; and therefore he shall pay a yearly fine, and shall not be allowed to receive honour from the young. That is an example of what I call the double law, which may enable us to judge how far the addition of persuasion to threats is desirable.
'Lacedaemonians in general, Stranger, are in favour of brevity; in this case, however, I prefer length. But Cleinias is the real lawgiver, and he ought to be first consulted.'
'Thank you, Megillus.'
Athenian Stranger - Whether words are to be many or few, is a foolish question:--the best and not the shortest forms are always to be approved. And legislators have never thought of the advantages which they might gain by using persuasion as well as force, but trust to force only. And I have something else to say about the matter. Here have we been from early dawn until noon, discoursing about laws, and all that we have been saying is only the preamble of the laws which we are about to give. I tell you this, because I want you to observe that songs and strains have all of them preludes, but that laws, though called by the same name (nomoi), have never any prelude. Now I am disposed to give preludes to laws, dividing them into two parts--one containing the despotic command, which I described under the image of the slave doctor--the other the persuasive part, which I term the preamble. The legislator should give preludes or preambles to his laws."
-FJ
I don't think the Founders captured the essence of what Plato recommended when they wrote...
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Perhaps they should have given "preambles" for each clause of the Constitution, and for each Ammendment. Instead, they prescribed remedies for us as a "slave doctor" might.
PS - The Federalist Papers are NOT an adequate substitute for HARD preambles...because over half of SCOTUS ignores the original context of the Constitution.
-FJ
Farmer John, I am just in from a busy day only to be greeted by your labeling Thomas Jefferson a deist. I have always spoke out against labeling him as such or calling him a free thinker. The term free thinker, I can tolerate.
I have spent the last few minutes reviewing quotes attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Many are used by folks to attach the deist label. They must, however, ignore other Jeffersonian statements that seem to acknowledge a Just and Merciful God in full control of His Creation.
I feel a strong affinity for my distant cousin and his thoughts about the Creator. I myself have inner thoughts that if put to paper and preserved for posterity would seem to question my Christian Faith. Possibly I have some thoughts that others would consider heretical. Yet I am strong in my convictions and belief. I think, I question, I believe.
I really took my personal beliefs to a new level when a friend told me that the only thing that was important was my personal relationship to God and his Son.
"Say nothing of my religion. It is known to my god and myself alone." Thomas Jefferson in a Letter to John Adams (January 11, 1817)
Thomas Jefferson was a thinker who refused to submit to the thinking of others in regards to his personal relationship with his God. I think what I choose to think because the Creator endowed his Creation with free will. I, as a lifelong Baptist, accept no intercessor between me and my Creator. When the veil of the temple was rent, at the hour of Jesus death, the priesthood, as intercessors between God and His people, was dissolved. Baptists believe in the priesthood of the believer and are leery of those who would claim authority over the believer.
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government." Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, December 6, 1813
Duck, I just love watching you get unhinged every time you are reminded that this great Nation was found on Judeo-Christian principles. Please Duck, allow Big Bubba the Munificent to assist you sputter and spew with this quote from Cousin Tom,
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper (February 10, 1814)
Duck your sputtering did not include any comments about George Washington's sentiments about the Christian underpinnings of our great Nation, the "shining city upon a hill."
"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still." Ronald Reagan Farewell Address to the Nation.
BB,
I apologize for possibly mis-characterizing Thomas Jefferson's religion as "Deism". I used the term, for I knew not what to call him, a believer in G_d, but not Christ. Whether his religion actually fits the definition of a "Deist", I must admit possible error.
From Merriam-Webster: "Deist - a movement or system of thought advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and in the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe."
Personally, I think that the above definition would apply to the "Platonist" as well.
Some of what we do know about Jefferson's religious "thoughts",
I've appended below:
"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789
"You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819
"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820
"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820
"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors." -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
-FJ
mr ducky,
European precedents...
In a 1999 death penalty case, Breyer, citing judicial decisions from Jamaica, India, Zimbabwe, and the European Court of Human Rights said, “A growing number of courts outside the United States … have held that lengthy delay in administering a lawful death penalty renders ultimate execution inhuman, degrading, or unusually cruel.”
In a 2002 case that ruled that mentally retarded people convicted of murder could not be given a death sentence, Stevens contended that “within the world community, the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed by mentally retarded offenders is overwhelmingly disapproved,” citing a legal brief from the European Union as his authority.
In Lawrence v. Texas decision that struck down the state’s sodomy statute, Kennedy, writing the majority opinion, referred approvingly to the British Parliament decriminalizing sodomy in 1967, the European Convention on Human Rights, and a 1981 European Court of Human Rights case.
...just to name a few.
-FJ
Southern States deficient in values yet it was the Southerners who led the way intellectually in the creation of this great Nation under God, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Virginians all.
I wish more yankees felt the same as you do so that you people would stop migrating to God's Country with your heathen ways. It's really a tough decision, but most Southerners pass on the joys of New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. opting for Mayberry RFD.
The Nation owes the South a debt of gratitude for having the good sense to protect the people from Michael Dukakis, Algore, Hanoi John and all the other intellectually weird people that the progressive liberal demoracists try to foist off on the unwary. The heirs, and cousins, of Jefferson, Madison and Washington refuse to be duped by the demoracists, sorry.
mr ducky,
Perhaps I would be too bold if I were to point out that the presence of the Ten Commandments in the court house might help...
"bring us to our senses and remind the southern states that they are deficient in values"
...your words, not mine.
It's funny that you seem to think it okay to occassionally cite selective, external, and highly volatile "world opinion" as a basis for interpretting American "Constitutional" values, but use of internal and historically more stable "religious opinion" is somehow "beyond the pale".
I guess we could agree that it's simply a matter of whose "values" support the political agenda du jour.
-FJ
One of our famous good ol' boys, Ron "Tater Salad" White, of Fritch, Texas had this observation about the Texas death penalty. He said that while other states were abolishing the death penalty Texas passed a law that if three credible witnesses saw you commit the crime upon conviction you moved right to the head of the line with limited appeal rights. Texas now has an express lane for the death penalty observed "Tater Salad."
Texas does not air condition any of its prisons so some might look upon the death penalty in July as some relief.
It would have been great to have had a religious discussion with Thomas Jefferson. He would have never come unhinged by such a discussion.
BB,
I applaud the South for having been able to maintain their "aristocratic" values and ways for as long as they have. In so doing, they have preserved this great nation for over 200 years.
I'm currently reading "1776", a "popular" contemporary history of the Revolution. I'm still at the beginning, where Washington is laying seige to Boston.
It's interesting to note what Washington disapproves of in his Northern troops and their officers. The values differences he cites still exist to this day.
And so,I dread the day when these aristocratic values from the South are moralized out of existence. I don't think we have too far to go.
-FJ
BB,
It sounds like Texas is just taking Justice Stevens advice when he states...
“A growing number of courts outside the United States … have held that lengthy delay in administering a lawful death penalty renders ultimate execution inhuman, degrading, or unusually cruel.”
Tater Salad should be commended his observations that at least one state, Texas, is moving to rectify that situation.
-FJ
His son is "Tater Tot."
Then again, those who first travelled to "the new land" from England were socialist Deists, not capitalist Christians, like so many people think.
I strongly agree that we are a religious society, but by no means does our country have an official religion, or a single God. Hell, we don't even have an official national language.
I understand that true separation of church and state will never come to fruition, but I think the founding fathers would be proud to see that the laws they set out are being tested -- and upheld.
Speaking as a person who has actually been to law school: Mr. Duck, you have an inaccurate view of history and a juvinile understanding of constitutional jurisprudence. To say any more would waste my time and force me to bill you for it.
TJB,
Yes, I'm sure they'd be very proud... right up to the point where they started to converse with our learned politicians and educators... and learned just how ignorant we had actually become.
-FJ
thomas j. brown, I have heard the "socialist Deists" claim before. I know there is truth in the statement, however, how about providing us with some names of "socialist Deists" who have had an impact on early America compared to the Christian intellectuals.
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