USSC and "under God."

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jal...@cox.net

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May 6, 2003, 5:09:49 PM5/6/03

FROM M. NEWDOW

[me]
Have you had to file anything yet?

[Mike]
>:|I have until May 30 to file, and I probably can get an extension (which I may
>:|seek).

[me]
> I think what should be is with you, the 9th Circuit was right, with their
> first ruling, not the watered down second one, in my opinion, however, that
> doesn't seem to enter into things with the big five at the USSC.

[Mike]
The USDOJ has asked for the broader issue - "under God" in the Pledge, not
just in the schools - to be heard. I still think I'm going to win if the
Court takes that question.
******************************************************

FROM AN ATTORNEY FRIEND OF MINE

There may be three options (I don't consider it credible that the USSC will
refuse to hear the case) First, that they will rule with Newdow, although
likely in a highly qualified and limited way. I view this as on the outer
realm of realistic. The four horsemen must stay the course, and either
O'Connor must affirm the endorsement test as formulated, or Kennedy must
stand by stare decisis and uphold the endorsement test and his earlier
statement that under it, "under god" is unconstitutional. I view it as
more
likely that either O'Connor will hedge the test (her baby) or Kennedy will
repudiate it (or qualify it in a way that undercuts it here) or one or more
of the four horsemen will bolt.

Second option is that they hedge the tests in such a way that they don't
apply here. Possible under some sort of a "matter of degree" approach.

Third option is that they intellectually punt the issue, a la Marsh v.
Chambers, and essentially say nothing by saying that things like this have
been going on a long time so it can't be unconstitutional.

Either way, Scalia and Rehnquist will write separately with some sort of
magnum opus to the idea of god, religion, Christianity, etc. as the
founding
principle of America, yada, yada, yada. It will be painful, intellectually
contorted, and ultimately flawed. But perhaps it won't carry the day.

I don't know whether to believe that, in their hearts, Achcroft, Rehnquist
et al. are smart enough to know they are wrong on the constitutional issue,
or not smart enough to see it for what it is. I still don't know of any
First Amendment scholar who thinks the 9th Circuit was wrong, although
plenty seem to be willing to say that the USSC will rule against it.
The whole process has undermined the government's legitimacy. If the
Constitution can't be followed where it overturns long-standing and popular
practices, then is our Constitutional government legitimate? The whole
thing has brought to light the fact that there really are a huge group of
people who are anti-constitutional. Or who are for the Constitution only
so far as they agree with it. Do we as a nation look for ultimate
authority to our personal beliefs, or to the Constitution? Because no
matter how "non-sectarian" they try to make "god" what he is, does, and
says is still a matter of personal belief.

Hope your eyes are better, the site is getting lots of hits, and the side
of right eventually wins out.

Jeff Strickland

unread,

May 6, 2003, 7:11:49 PM5/6/03

I wish you, jalison, could offer your insight into this issue along with the
dry facts that you keep regurgitating. The "attorney friend" gives an
excellent analysis of the options the court will face, and the direction it
might take. I happen to follow along with second option the court has, but I
enjoy reading in plain english the other options, and the reasons they are
strong, or not.

jal...@cox.net

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May 7, 2003, 4:39:48 PM5/7/03

"Jeff Strickland" <cr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>:|I wish you, jalison, could offer your insight into this issue along with the

>:|dry facts that you keep regurgitating.

LOL, what do you think, I and a number of others have been doing in replies
to your posts since early last july?

>:|The "attorney friend" gives an

>:|excellent analysis of the options the court will face,

The attorney friend has had his comments posted in replies to a number of
your wild claims since last July and you never seemed very interested
before.
They were just as good as the comments here.
The same attorney friend has two articles written specifically for our web
site, which I have quoted from a number of times in relies to some of your
outlandish claims

it never seemed to make a bit of difference to you before.

The two articles are (and one of them addresses the 'under God' thing)

Removed From The Legislative Province by Neal Blanchett, Esq. (Looks at the
Pledge controversy from a legal point of view)
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/blanchrt.htm

Congress Shall Make No Law Respecting the Establishment of Reason. Neal
Blanchett, Esq. comments on the Ten Commandments controversy.
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/blanch2.htm

In addition, I received another email from him today
with the following added comments:

I reflected on this again last night. The question Ashcroft cannot answer
is "Is "under god" in the Pledge a statement of belief? What is the
government's position on whether god exists?" This question is at the
heart
of the 9th Circuit's statement that "under god" in the Pledge is
"normative." If he answers it yes, then the USSC is in an impossible
position. They must either strike it down or acknowledge that government
can take a position on the truth or falsity of religious beliefs. To do so
would open the Pandora's box, and even the USSC can see that. Every
majority religious group (including local majorities like Mormons in Utah
and muslims in Dearborn) would try to endorse the truth of their religious
beliefs, and the courts would be forced into the impossible position of
deciding how much endorsement was too much. Since government cannot
discriminate between religions, stating one religious belief is true means
stating all religious beliefs are true.

But if he answers "no, it is not a statement of belief; the government does
not take a position on whether god exists" then Newdow has already won.
The
government's official position will be atheist, or at least non-theist, and
the invocations of "god" will be reduced, at least in official meaning, to
memorializations of history, statements of what the founder's believed, or
some other type classification without an element of belief. No matter how
delicately it is phrased, such a statement will enrage the religious right,
and delight atheists by acknowledging that government takes no position on
the issue. Ashcroft will not be permitted to make it.

The problem is getting him to answer the question, by getting the justices
to ask it. The court of public opinion and the press will not ask it,
since
it is the difficult question. There has to be a way to force an answer to
that question, which is the crux of the issue.

Of course we all know the truth, which is that "under god" is meant as a
statement of the majority's religious belief, but is now justified as a
statement about history.

I am impressed with Newdow's optimism, but I think he's underestimating the
mental and verbal gymnastics the justices are capable of, which is truly
Delphic. Bush v. Gore (to provide just one example) is almost impenetrable
and virtually meaningless. They can make it up on the fly, Rehnquist and
Scalia in particular.
***********************************************************
>:|and the direction it

>:|might take. I happen to follow along with second option the court has,

The second option as he submitted them was one of dishonesty.
It was one of avoiding the issue and mumbo jumboing up the place so they
can avoid the issue..

In spite of all the comments you have made in the past, the addition of
"under God' to a otherwise secular pledge, coupled with the plainly stated
reasons of doing so by those who did it and signed it into law was
unconstitutional at the time and is unconstitutional now.

There is no such thing as almost constitutional just like there is no such
thing as almost pregnant

Something is constitutional or not and if not it should be so declared. but
that takes guts and ethics and honesty, something that has been shown to be
lacking among some of this current USSC's make up.

The four horsemen, if you don't know who he is referring to is
John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H, Souter, Stephen G, Breyer.

The three stooges will hand hold, lock step march and vote against strict
separation of church state in every establishment clause case that comes
before them. They are remarkably consistent, not matter the case, the
facts, the issues etc. In short they vote the party philosophy each time,
screw precedence, law, history etc. Rehnquist will even invent history to
make it work in his favor.

That leaves the usual two, both of who are conservatives. Both of who once
upon a time actually voted with precedence, established law, etc and
frequently pissed conservatives off for doing so. But in the past few years
they stopped free lancing, in short stopped being justices and became more
and more political hacks.

As the "attorney friend" stated, Kennedy in another case actually stated
that 'under God" would be unconstitutional. Is he going to stand by that
now, or will he beat a hasty cowards retreat. He wants to be the next Chief
Justice, but then, so does Scalia and Scalia intimidates Kennedy.

If Kennedy stands by his previous comments Newdow wins, provided the four
horsemen stand together. They usually do on church state, not always but
usually.

Even O'Conner has made previous comments in other opinions that should
favor Newdow if she doesn't retreat from those comments.

In short, this could be 6 -3 in favor of Newdow.

For him to lose either both O'Connor and Kennedy have to retreat from
previous comments in previous opinions, something they have both done more
and more recently, or one of them has to take back what they said before
and one or more of the four horsemen have to join that side.

As you should be beginning to understand by now, this has nothing to do
with the Constitution, law, Constitutional Law, etc. it has to do with
politics. This has been one of the most political driven court that has
existed in recent decades. They don't even pretend they aren't anymore.

Scalia doesn't even go through the motions of hiding the fact that he
believes there is higher law in this nation, higher than the Constitution,
and he votes with his religion, not the Constitution. He shouldn't be in
the USSC, but since he is, he should remove himself from any and all cases
that come up before this court that deal with religion.

Historian John Wilson observes that the historic "tensions between temporal
and spiritual life in America" were far from settled with the adoption of
the First Amendment.3 The religious diversity of the U.S. today would
astound the framers of the Constitution. Wilson believes this diversity
exacerbates the issues of the proper relationship between church and state.
Issues like the right to an abortion, or even the rights to freedom of
speech, of association, and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure,
appear settled to most Americans, but Constitutional rights are fragile
things and subject to the prevailing mood of enforcement, or the
interpretation of the latest majority on the Supreme Court. In the 19th
century, there was a de facto Protestant establishment in the U.S. However,
the Christian Right of the day, according to author Robert Boston,
"acknowledged the secular nature of the Constitution, and called for
amending it to include references to God or Christianity. The Christian
Right of today has generally abandoned this strategy and in the face of all
available evidence, insists that the Constitution was somehow written to
afford special protection to Christianity."4

This change in political strategies over time reflects the regrouping of
the theocrats after a steady two century decline. A principal catalyst is
the advent of the politically oriented theology of Christian
Reconstructionism-the effort to replace Constitutional law with "God's
law." However outlandish it appears, it is one of the most significant, but
least remarked-upon events in modem politics -and it is the driving
ideology of the resurgent Christian Right. Not only is Reconstructionism
explicitly anti-democratic and anti-pluralist, but adherents of other
religions are viewed as heretics at best, and unfit to hold public office.
So narrowly intolerant is the movement of Reconstructionism that even those
who profess Christianity but hold differing religious or theological views
are often castigated as "antiChristian" and agents of Satan.
3. John Wilson, "Church and State in America," in James Madison on
Religious Liberty, Robert S. Alley, editor, Prometheus Books, 1985. p. 99.
4. Robert Boston, Why the Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of
Church & State, Prometheus Books, 1993. p. 87.
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Eternal Hostility, The Struggle between Theoracy
and Democracy. Frederick Clarkson. Common Courage press, (1997) pp 2-7)

>:|but I

>:|enjoy reading in plain english the other options, and the reasons they are
>:|strong, or not.

You have been given everyone of them for 10 months

>:|<snip discussion between Newdow and (apparently) jalison, but maybe the
>:|attorney friend>

I wonder why you would delete that, you hate Mike that much?

NO, it was between Newdow and myself. Where it says [me] that is me where
is says

I had sent my comments and Newdow's replies to my comments to the lawyer
friend who then email ed me back with his thoughts on the topic.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM M. NEWDOW

[me] Yes me jalison

Have you had to file anything yet?

[Mike] Newdow

>:|I have until May 30 to file, and I probably can get an extension (which I may
>:|seek).

[me] Yes me jalison

> I think what should be is with you, the 9th Circuit was right, with their
> first ruling, not the watered down second one, in my opinion, however, that
> doesn't seem to enter into things with the big five at the USSC.

[Mike] Newdow

The USDOJ has asked for the broader issue - "under God" in the Pledge, not
just in the schools - to be heard. I still think I'm going to win if the
Court takes that question.
******************************************************

FROM AN ATTORNEY FRIEND OF MINE

You left the rst intact

>:|> FROM AN ATTORNEY FRIEND OF MINE

Jeff Strickland

unread,

May 7, 2003, 7:33:23 PM5/7/03

> >:|The "attorney friend" gives an
> >:|excellent analysis of the options the court will face,
>
> The attorney friend has had his comments posted in replies to a number of
> your wild claims since last July and you never seemed very interested
> before.
> They were just as good as the comments here.
> The same attorney friend has two articles written specifically for our web
> site, which I have quoted from a number of times in relies to some of your
> outlandish claims

Sorry, I guess I didn't recognize his analysis, and all you seem to post is
direct quotes from whereever you find them. You offer very little
commentary, beyond insults.

>
> it never seemed to make a bit of difference to you before.
>

Actually, I thought that I summarized similar options several months ago, I
just didn't give names of the justices, and which would lean which way. I
could be wrong, but I though I gave similar views of the three options. In
any case, I understand the options the attorney discusses, and I tend to
lean toward the second of the three as the one we will end up with.

My weakness is that I do not know all of the justices by their habits and
nature, so I am at a disadvantage to predict who will vote which way. You
are much better at predicting which justices will do what, and I respect you
for that. I don't respect you for very much, but I appreciate your knowledge
even when I think you draw the wrong conclusions from previous rulings.

> The two articles are (and one of them addresses the 'under God' thing)
>
> Removed From The Legislative Province by Neal Blanchett, Esq. (Looks at
the
> Pledge controversy from a legal point of view)
> http://members.tripod.com/~candst/blanchrt.htm
>
> Congress Shall Make No Law Respecting the Establishment of Reason. Neal
> Blanchett, Esq. comments on the Ten Commandments controversy.
> http://members.tripod.com/~candst/blanch2.htm
>
> In addition, I received another email from him today
> with the following added comments:
>

+++++
This is part of the problem I am having, I can not tell by the markings on
this post which comments are yours and which are the "attorney friend", or
which are comments Mr. Newdow has made to you and you have shared with us.
Because we are discussing the "attorney friend", it appears to me now that
the following paragraphs are his words, not yours, but we shouldn't have to
guess when the speaker is changing in a typed discussion.
+++++

> I reflected on this again last night. The question Ashcroft cannot answer
> is "Is "under god" in the Pledge a statement of belief? What is the
> government's position on whether god exists?" This question is at the
> heart
> of the 9th Circuit's statement that "under god" in the Pledge is
> "normative." If he answers it yes, then the USSC is in an impossible
> position. They must either strike it down or acknowledge that government
> can take a position on the truth or falsity of religious beliefs. To do
so
> would open the Pandora's box, and even the USSC can see that. Every
> majority religious group (including local majorities like Mormons in Utah
> and muslims in Dearborn) would try to endorse the truth of their religious
> beliefs, and the courts would be forced into the impossible position of
> deciding how much endorsement was too much. Since government cannot
> discriminate between religions, stating one religious belief is true means
> stating all religious beliefs are true.
>

My question is that in the context of the entire sentence (The Pledge is a
single sentence, after all.), is under God a government recognition of
religion, per se?

It is only an acknowledgement that some of the citizens of our nation
recognize religion. This is the message here, not the establishment of
religion, or the government puting one religion ahead of all others, or
sending non-believers to the back of the room. The government is not at the
center of religion, religion has no influence on government. Religion is
entwined into the fabric of American lives, that is all. As a matter of
degree, as the attorney friend suggests as the second of three options the
court has, the degree is insignificant and meaningless in the context of the
Establishment Clause. The justices will uphold the Establishment Clause and
all of its tests, and they will say that "under God" does not cross the line
that the EC draws.

> But if he answers "no, it is not a statement of belief; the government
does
> not take a position on whether god exists" then Newdow has already won.
> The
> government's official position will be atheist, or at least non-theist,
and
> the invocations of "god" will be reduced, at least in official meaning, to
> memorializations of history, statements of what the founder's believed, or
> some other type classification without an element of belief. No matter
how
> delicately it is phrased, such a statement will enrage the religious
right,
> and delight atheists by acknowledging that government takes no position on
> the issue. Ashcroft will not be permitted to make it.
>
> The problem is getting him to answer the question, by getting the justices
> to ask it. The court of public opinion and the press will not ask it,
> since
> it is the difficult question. There has to be a way to force an answer to
> that question, which is the crux of the issue.
>

You can not force an answer to that question because we all have different
answers to the same question. What Ashcroft feels about religion isn't
really inportant, because he is a citizen just like everybody else. Bush is
clearly a more religiouis President than Clinton was (not wanting to
disparage Clinton in any way), but we can't have a different definition of
what we can accept just because the Administration has changed. We need a
steady standard, and the 1st and the Establishment Clause provide that
standard. The question is if the Pledge violates the standard by
establishing religion, or is a mere acknowledgement that many in our society
embrace religion.

It is a bit harsh to say that somebody that has a view you do not support is
dishonest and lacks ethics.

>
> The four horsemen, if you don't know who he is referring to is
> John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H, Souter, Stephen G,
Breyer.
>
> The three stooges will hand hold, lock step march and vote against strict
> separation of church state in every establishment clause case that comes
> before them. They are remarkably consistent, not matter the case, the
> facts, the issues etc. In short they vote the party philosophy each time,
> screw precedence, law, history etc. Rehnquist will even invent history to
> make it work in his favor.
>
> That leaves the usual two, both of who are conservatives. Both of who once
> upon a time actually voted with precedence, established law, etc and
> frequently pissed conservatives off for doing so. But in the past few
years
> they stopped free lancing, in short stopped being justices and became more
> and more political hacks.
>
> As the "attorney friend" stated, Kennedy in another case actually stated
> that 'under God" would be unconstitutional. Is he going to stand by that
> now, or will he beat a hasty cowards retreat. He wants to be the next
Chief
> Justice, but then, so does Scalia and Scalia intimidates Kennedy.
>

That remains to be seen.

I must live a protected life under this rock -- I have never heard of the
Christian Right's efforts to seek special protections. Maybe I have heard of
these efforts, but have not recognized them as the insidious special
protections you are talking about.

Sorry, in my ignorance, I just missed them. I don't agree with all of them,
but I understand what is being said and the issues as they are explained.

>
> >:|<snip discussion between Newdow and (apparently) jalison, but maybe the
> >:|attorney friend>
>
> I wonder why you would delete that, you hate Mike that much?
>
> NO, it was between Newdow and myself. Where it says [me] that is me where
> is says
>
> I had sent my comments and Newdow's replies to my comments to the lawyer
> friend who then email ed me back with his thoughts on the topic.
>

It wasn't useful to the discussion I wanted to have; I was really only
interested in illustrating the attorney friend's ability to give a
thoughtful analysis of the various options.

> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> FROM M. NEWDOW
>
> [me] Yes me jalison
> Have you had to file anything yet?
>
>
> [Mike] Newdow
> >:|I have until May 30 to file, and I probably can get an extension (which
I may
> >:|seek).
>
> [me] Yes me jalison
> > I think what should be is with you, the 9th Circuit was right, with
their
> > first ruling, not the watered down second one, in my opinion, however,
that
> > doesn't seem to enter into things with the big five at the USSC.
>
> [Mike] Newdow
> The USDOJ has asked for the broader issue - "under God" in the Pledge, not
> just in the schools - to be heard. I still think I'm going to win if the
> Court takes that question.
> ******************************************************
>
> FROM AN ATTORNEY FRIEND OF MINE
>
>
> You left the rst intact
>

Yes, I did because it was the material that I wanted to talk about. I cut
it out now because we have talked about it already and it is no longer
useful to the ongoing discussion.

jal...@cox.net

unread,

May 8, 2003, 2:12:41 PM5/8/03

"Jeff Strickland" <cr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>:|> >:|The "attorney friend" gives an

It was always identified.

>:|and all you seem to post is

>:|direct quotes from whereever you find them.

Properly cited, which means the person, the place, time,, the publication,
etc.

>:|You offer very little
>:|commentary, beyond insults.

That's right sonny. The insults have been earned by you as has been
pointed out to you time and time again.

Commentary? If you mean the lawyer, those items I have posted in the past
by him were identified in some form or fashion as from an attorney.
If you mean commentary by me, nope, I don't offer that much. What I think,
just like what you think id irrelevant.
Even though I am far more qualified than you are to offer an opinion, and
any opinion I would offer would be a far more informed opinion than
anything you could offer, I don't offer my opinions when I have access to
the opinions of people who are experts in the field.

>:|> it never seemed to make a bit of difference to you before.

>:|>
>:|
>:|Actually, I thought that I summarized similar options several months ago, I
>:|just didn't give names of the justices, and which would lean which way. I
>:|could be wrong, but I though I gave similar views of the three options. In
>:|any case, I understand the options the attorney discusses, and I tend to
>:|lean toward the second of the three as the one we will end up with.

There wasn't only three there. You seemed to have missed that

>:|My weakness is

Your weakness is you don't know what you are talking about. Plain and
simple.

>:|that I do not know all of the justices by their habits and

>:|nature, so I am at a disadvantage

You are at a disadvantage because you don't know what you are talking
about. Your a typical lay person with tons of opinions that are based on
smoke. A typical American knowledge of American history, which isn't that
good. You have no background in law, you don't do any study or research.

You are not prepared to be confronted by someone who actually can produce
all sorts of data evidence, facts, etc . You are only well suited to get
into a argument/discussion with others when all can make all the wild ass
claims they want, toss out all the wild ass opinions they want, never have
to document anything, support anything. In discussions where facts, truth,
etc are totally unimportant. if it pops into your head it's fair game to
say it who cars if its true or not, lies and making it up are valid
techniques to use and so on. That is what you are suited for on there.

Your comments going back to last July on this topic have been based on your
own personal religious desires, beliefs, wants. They have been consistent
pro under god, pro religious right, anti separation stance.

Your predictions have all boiled down to the 9th Circuit was wrong and the
USSC will set it right.

Well, they may rule against Newdow, but not because the 9th Circuit was
wrong. If they rule against Newdow it will be for political reasons, not
legal or Constitutional reasons.

>:|to predict who will vote which way. You

>:|are much better at predicting which justices will do what, and I respect you
>:|for that. I don't respect you for very much,

LOL, those that are routinely expose, with factual data feels that way
about me. People don't like being exposed for being ignorant when they
are, fools when they are, liars when they are, etc.

I take your lack of respect as a compliment.

>:|but I appreciate your knowledge

>:|even when I think you draw the wrong conclusions from previous rulings.

You think but you can't prove it. You can't demonstrate it and last but not
least, since I rarely offer my personal opinions, and even less offer any
unsubstantiated personal opinions of mine, you can't be saying I have
reached the incorrect conclusions. Instead you, job blow nobody, you
Jeff - I don't have a clue what I am talking about, but I am
good at pretending and making it up as I go along so don't confuse me
with the facts, my mind is made up -Strickland
are disagreeing with people trained in law, respected historians, authors,
etc. But of course, you never actually demonstrative or document how and
why they are incorrect, you just say that are.
You don't have the background, training, study, knowledge to know if the
conclusions are correct or not. You only know they disagree with the way
you want it to be, what you believe, not know, just believe, etc.

>:|> The two articles are (and one of them addresses the 'under God' thing)

>:|>

Have you read the above yet?

>:|> In addition, I received another email from him today

>:|> with the following added comments:
>:|>
>:|
>:|+++++
>:|This is part of the problem I am having, I can not tell by the markings on
>:|this post which comments are yours and which are the "attorney friend", or
>:|which are comments Mr. Newdow has made to you and you have shared with us.
>:|Because we are discussing the "attorney friend", it appears to me now that
>:|the following paragraphs are his words, not yours, but we shouldn't have to
>:|guess when the speaker is changing in a typed discussion.
>:|+++++

I can only say this to you, you must have worse vision problems than I do
and your comprehension has to be seriously flawed.

There was nothing complicated about how I laid out my reply to you and I
clearly identified what the "Attorney friend said"
Note:
---------------------------------------------------------

In addition, I received another email from him today
with the following added comments:

I reflected on this again last night. The question Ashcroft cannot answer

is "Is "under god" in the Pledge a statement of belief? What is the
government's position on whether god exists?" This question is at the
heart

etc, etc etc
--------------------------------------------------------

if you couldn't understand that you have a serious problem

>:|> I reflected on this again last night. The question Ashcroft cannot answer

>:|> is "Is "under god" in the Pledge a statement of belief? What is the
>:|> government's position on whether god exists?" This question is at the
>:|> heart
>:|> of the 9th Circuit's statement that "under god" in the Pledge is
>:|> "normative." If he answers it yes, then the USSC is in an impossible
>:|> position. They must either strike it down or acknowledge that government
>:|> can take a position on the truth or falsity of religious beliefs. To do
>:|so
>:|> would open the Pandora's box, and even the USSC can see that. Every
>:|> majority religious group (including local majorities like Mormons in Utah
>:|> and muslims in Dearborn) would try to endorse the truth of their religious
>:|> beliefs, and the courts would be forced into the impossible position of
>:|> deciding how much endorsement was too much. Since government cannot
>:|> discriminate between religions, stating one religious belief is true means
>:|> stating all religious beliefs are true.
>:|>
>:|My question is that in the context of the entire sentence (The Pledge is a
>:|single sentence, after all.), is under God a government recognition of
>:|religion, per se?

What did the ruling by the 9th Circuit say, dippy?
They did make a ruling, they did have that ruling published. What did they
rule?

BTW, is God non religious?

Your still not really reading something to learn or understand anything.
Your still trying to find some something to get your arguments from clear
back to last july in. Your arguments based on your own religious wants,
desires and beliefs.

>:|
>:|It is only an acknowledgement that some of the citizens of our nation

>:|recognize religion. This is the message here, not the establishment of
>:|religion, or the government puting one religion ahead of all others, or
>:|sending non-believers to the back of the room. The government is not at the
>:|center of religion, religion has no influence on government. Religion is
>:|entwined into the fabric of American lives, that is all. As a matter of
>:|degree, as the attorney friend suggests as the second of three options the
>:|court has, the degree is insignificant and meaningless in the context of the
>:|Establishment Clause. The justices will uphold the Establishment Clause and
>:|all of its tests, and they will say that "under God" does not cross the line
>:|that the EC draws.

Here we go again, the 10 month long ignorant crusade of personal
unsubstantiated opinions by
Jeff - I don't have a clue what I am talking about, but I am
good at pretending and making it up as I go along so don't confuse me
with the facts, my mind is made up -Strickland

You didn't understand a damn thing the "attorney Friend" wrote. You just
wanted another excuse to do your soap boxing again.

The "Attorney friend" said (simplified version)

There may be three options (I don't consider it credible that the USSC will
refuse to hear the case)

First, that they will rule with Newdow, although likely in a highly
qualified and limited way. I view this as on the outer
realm of realistic.

(hint, he thinks this is the least likely event--even thought both O'Conner
and Kennedy have stated in the past in previous cases things that should
make it likely they will go with Newdow, he knows these five and their
recent track record.)

Second option is that they hedge the tests in such a way that they don't
apply here. Possible under some sort of a "matter of degree" approach.

(Hint, this is a chicken shit avoidance tactic, smoking screening mumbo
jumbo voodoo dancing tactic)

(hint, this is another chicken shit way of avoiding the truth of the
matter. In case you didn't know it Marsh v Chambers was pure bullshit.
They ran away from using establishment clause tests because the lower
courts had used them and claimed that legislative chaplains violated every
establishment clause test that had ever been developed.
So the USSC decided to use history instead but the history they used was
incorrect history. It just shows u what extremes the justices will go to
flim flam the American people and rule the way they want to rule in the
frost place.

You also totally overlooked the following that he said

"I don't know whether to believe that, in their hearts, Achcroft, Rehnquist
et al. are smart enough to know they are wrong on the constitutional issue,
or not smart enough to see it for what it is. I still don't know of any
First Amendment scholar who thinks the 9th Circuit was wrong, although
plenty seem to be willing to say that the USSC will rule against it.
The whole process has undermined the government's legitimacy. If the
Constitution can't be followed where it overturns long-standing and popular
practices, then is our Constitutional government legitimate? The whole
thing has brought to light the fact that there really are a huge group of
people who are anti-constitutional. Or who are for the Constitution only
so far as they agree with it. Do we as a nation look for ultimate
authority to our personal beliefs, or to the Constitution? Because no
matter how "non-sectarian" they try to make "god" what he is, does, and
says is still a matter of personal belief."

>:|> But if he answers "no, it is not a statement of belief; the government

Drop it dippy. you aren't smart enough to even understand what the attorney
was talking about. You try to lay some lame bull shit in there.

>:|> Of course we all know the truth, which is that "under god" is meant as a

>:|> statement of the majority's religious belief, but is now justified as a
>:|> statement about history.

Hers you go again butt hole full of ignorance and shit as usual.
It is so comical to compare your statements with some one trained in the
law and far smarter then you

Here dippy, just this part alone trashes you

>:|> There is no such thing as almost constitutional just like there is no such

>:|> thing as almost pregnant
>:|>
>:|> Something is constitutional or not and if not it should be so declared.
>:|but
>:|> that takes guts and ethics and honesty, something that has been shown to
>:|be
>:|> lacking among some of this current USSC's make up.
>:|>
>:|It is a bit harsh to say that somebody that has a view you do not support is
>:|dishonest and lacks ethics.

You want it documented dippy. I can do that for you.

I can document exactly what I am talking about with regards to Rehnquist,
Scalia, Thomas and O'Connor

When are you going to learn dippy, I don't make statements that I can't
back up with evidence.

>:|> The four horsemen, if you don't know who he is referring to is

>:|> John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H, Souter, Stephen G,
>:|Breyer.
>:|>
>:|> The three stooges will hand hold, lock step march and vote against strict
>:|> separation of church state in every establishment clause case that comes
>:|> before them. They are remarkably consistent, not matter the case, the
>:|> facts, the issues etc. In short they vote the party philosophy each time,
>:|> screw precedence, law, history etc. Rehnquist will even invent history to
>:|> make it work in his favor.
>:|>
>:|> That leaves the usual two, both of who are conservatives. Both of who once
>:|> upon a time actually voted with precedence, established law, etc and
>:|> frequently pissed conservatives off for doing so. But in the past few
>:|years
>:|> they stopped free lancing, in short stopped being justices and became more
>:|> and more political hacks.
>:|>
>:|> As the "attorney friend" stated, Kennedy in another case actually stated
>:|> that 'under God" would be unconstitutional. Is he going to stand by that
>:|> now, or will he beat a hasty cowards retreat. He wants to be the next
>:|Chief
>:|> Justice, but then, so does Scalia and Scalia intimidates Kennedy.
>:|>
>:|That remains to be seen.

What remains to be seen stupid? that Kennedy would like to be the next
Chief Justice or that Scalia does or that Scalia intimidates Kennedy?

>:|> Historian John Wilson observes that the historic "tensions between

>:|temporal
>:|> and spiritual life in America" were far from settled with the adoption of
>:|> the First Amendment.3 The religious diversity of the U.S. today would
>:|> astound the framers of the Constitution. Wilson believes this diversity
>:|> exacerbates the issues of the proper relationship between church and
>:|state.
>:|> Issues like the right to an abortion, or even the rights to freedom of
>:|> speech, of association, and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure,
>:|> appear settled to most Americans, but Constitutional rights are fragile
>:|> things and subject to the prevailing mood of enforcement, or the
>:|> interpretation of the latest majority on the Supreme Court. In the 19th
>:|> century, there was a de facto Protestant establishment in the U.S.
>:|However,
>:|> the Christian Right of the day, according to author Robert Boston,
>:|> "acknowledged the secular nature of the Constitution, and called for
>:|> amending it to include references to God or Christianity. The Christian
>:|> Right of today has generally abandoned this strategy and in the face of
>:|all
>:|> available evidence, insists that the Constitution was somehow written to
>:|> afford special protection to Christianity."4

>:|>
>:|
>:|I must live a protected life under this rock --

That is one way of putting it.

lazy and uninformed is another way.

>:|I have never heard of the

>:|Christian Right's efforts to seek special protections.

So what, big deal. you have shown there is a whole lot you don't know
though your posts in the past.

>:|Maybe I have heard of

>:|these efforts, but have not recognized them as the insidious special
>:|protections you are talking about.

I wasn't doing the talking stupid. Historian John Wilson was the person
who wrote the excerpt you gripping about.

>:|> >:|but I

>:|> >:|enjoy reading in plain english the other options, and the reasons they
>:|are
>:|> >:|strong, or not.
>:|>
>:|>
>:|> You have been given everyone of them for 10 months
>:|>
>:|
>:|Sorry, in my ignorance, I just missed them. I don't agree with all of them,
>:|but I understand what is being said and the issues as they are explained.

I seriously doubt that based on your various posts.

jal...@cox.net

unread,

May 8, 2003, 2:27:09 PM5/8/03

"Jeff Strickland" <cr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>:|I must live a protected life under this rock -- I have never heard of the

The U.S. Constitution:

"A Legal Barrier to Christian Theocracy"

An essential component of the Reconstructionist worldview is a
revisionist view of history called "Christian history," which holds that
history is predestined from "creation" through the inevitable arrival of
the Kingdom of God. Christian history is written by means of retroactively
discerning "God's providence."
Most Reconstructionists, for example, argue that the U.S. is a
"Christian Nation," and that they are the champions and heirs of the
"original intentions of the Founding Fathers." While the notion of a
"Christian Nation" is not unique to the Reconstructionists, this dual
justification for their views, one religious, the other somehow
constitutional, is the result of a form of historical revisionism that
Rushdoony frankly calls "Christian revisionism."24
Christian revisionism is integral to the Christian Right's approach
to politics and public policy. If one's political righteousness and sense
of historical continuity are matters of faith, what appears as fact to
everyone else becomes fiction before the compelling evidence of faith.
Whatever does not fall neatly into a "Biblical worldview" becomes
problematic, perhaps a delusion sent by Satan.
The invocation of the Bible and the Founding Fathers is a powerful
ingredient in religious-nationalist demagoguery. However, among the stark
flaws of Reconstructionist history is the way Christian revisionism
distorts historical fact.
For example, by interpreting the framing of the Constitution as if
it were a document inspired by and adhering to a Reconstructed version of
Christianity, Reconstructionists avoid such inconvenient facts as Article
VI of the Constitution. Most historians agree that Article VI, which states
that public officials shall be "bound by oath or affirmation to support
this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a
qualification to any office or public trust under the United States," was a
move toward the disestablishment of churches as official power brokers, and
the establishment of the principles of religious pluralism and separation
of church and state.
Rushdoony writes however, that "The Constitution was designed to
perpetuate a Christian order," then asks rhetorically: "Why then is there,
in the main, an absence of any reference to Christianity in the
Constitution?" He argues that the purpose was to protect religion from the
federal government, and to preserve "states rights."'25
Such a view requires ignoring Article VI. Before 1787, most of the
colonies and early states had required pledges of allegiance to
Christianity, if not a particular sect, and that one be a member of the
correct sect to vote or hold public office. Part of the struggle toward
democracy at the time was the "disestablishment" of the state churches-the
power structures of the local colonial theocracies. Thus the "religious
test' 'was a significant philosophical matter. There was little debate over
Article VI, which passed unanimously at the Constitutional Convention.26
Most of the states soon followed the federal lead in bringing their legal
codes into the constitutional framework. Delaware was the first, in 1792,
to bring its laws into conformity with this constitutional provision .27
Gary DeMar, in his 1993 book America's Christian History: The
Untold Story, also trips over Article VI. He quotes from colonial and state
constitutions to prove they were "Christian" states. And of course,
generally they were, until the framers of the Constitution set
disestablishment irrevocably in motion. Yet DeMar tries to explain this
away, claiming that Article VI merely banned "government mandated religious
tests"-as if there were any other kind at issue. He later asserts that they
did not intend disestablishment. 28

By contrast, historian Garry Wills sees no mistake. The framers of
the Constitution, he concludes, stitched together ideas from
"constitutional monarchies, ancient republics, and modern leagues... but we
(the U.S.) invented nothing, except disestablishment... No other government
in the history of the world had launched itself without the help of
officially recognized gods and their state connected ministers."29
Similarly, historian Robert Rutland, of the University of Virginia, writes
that the United States was founded "on purpose in the bright light of
history. The mere existence of the nation," he observed, "was itself a kind
of Declaration of Independence from the folk gods and religious and
semi-religious myths that had always and everywhere surrounded governments
and their rulers."30 .
Disestablishment was the clear and unambiguous choice of framers
of the Constitution, most of whom were serious Christian They were also
well aware of the history of religious persecuti carried out in the name
of Christianity. The Protestant Reformati had a horrific record of
persecution and religious warfare long befo it provided the basis for
religious liberty. Rutland notes that one ten of the population of Germany
was killed during the Thirty Years W between 1616 and 1648, "the very time
that the New England Puritans were settling in the New World in quest of
their own religio liberty, and incidentally, their freedom to persecute in
their ow way."31 Similarly, neo-conservative scholar Michael Novak observ
that the authors of the Constitution "had learned from the bitter exp
rience of the religious wars that they had to treat well the matter
religion. They had to do so in a practical way that would work." 32
Even Gary North (who holds a Ph.D. in History) sees the co nection
between Article VI and disestablishment, and attacks Rust doony's version
of the "Christian" Constitution. North writes th "In his desire to make the
case for Christian America, he (Rus doony) closed his eyes to the judicial
break from Christian Ame ica: the ratification of the Constitution." North
says Rushdoon "pretends" that Article VI "does not say what it says, and
does n mean what it has always meant: a legal barrier to Christian theoc
racy," leading "directly to the rise of religious pluralism. 33 The
long-term national goal," he concludes, "has to be the substitute of a
Trinitarian national oath for the present prohibition against reli gious
test oaths. 34
Meanwhile, North believes that, as a matter of strategy, it may b
worthwhile to temporarily advocate pluralism while plotting for th takeover
.35 North predicts that "pluralism will be shot to pieces i an ideological
(and perhaps even literal) crossfire, " as "Christians' and "humanists"
sharpen and harden their positions in "an escalat ing religious war' 36
(emphasis in the original). He notes that since it is legally possible for
voters to amend the Constitution, it would be possible to limit citizenship
to members of the correct sects just as the Twenty-first Amendment ended
prohibition, which ha been enacted by the Eighteenth Amendment. The
"dilemma of democratic pluralism," North explains, is that the same
constitutional doctrines that protect political and religious expressions
also protect those who oppose pluralist, constitutional government,
including "those who say that no one holding a rival view will be allowed
to vote," once the Constitution is amended. North notes that convicted
felons are denied the right to vote and that this should be done to "those
who hold religious or ideological views that would threaten the very
foundations of Christian Civilization."37 North and his colleagues of
course, do everything they can to exploit this "dilemma."
North's view that the Constitution was not intended to be a
Christian document or to promote Christianity is, however, the exception on
the Christian Right. The falsely nostalgic view of a Christian
Constitution, somehow subverted by modernism and the Supreme Court,
generally holds sway. Christian historical revisionism is the premise of
much Christian Right political and historical literature. Revisionist works
by Gary DeMar, among others, are being widely taught in Christian schools
and home schools, which in turn inform the political understanding of the
broader Christian Right and serve as a dangerously polarizing factor in
contemporary politics.
24. R. J. Rushdoony, The Nature of the American System, The Craig
Press, vi., 1965.
25. Ibid., pp., 2-3.
26. Leo Pfeffer, Church, State and Freedom, Beacon Press 1967. p.
254 (revised edition).
27. Albert J. Menendez, No Religious Test: The Story of Our
Constitu tion's Forgotten Article, Americans United for Separation of
Church & State, 1987. p. 11.
28. Gary DeMar, America's Christian History The Untold Story, Amer
ican Vision, 1993. pp. 88-89.
29. Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics, Simon
and Schuster, 1990. p. 383.
30. Robert Rutland, "The Courage to Doubt in a Secular Republic,"
in James Madison on Religious Liberty, Prometheus Books, 1985. p. 208
[209].
31. Ibid., p. 209.
32. Michael Novak, ibid., p. 300.
33. North, Political Polytheism, op. cit., pp. 681-685. A non-Recon
structionist advocate of the "Christian Nation" doctrine, Harold O.J.
Brown, agrees with North. "America made a mistake in the year 1787.
Officially, government ...broke with Christianity," God and Politics, Four
Views on the Reformation of Civil Government, Gary Scott Smith, ed.
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1989. p. 132.
34. North, ibid., p. 568.
35. Ibid., p. 265.
36. Ibid., p. 227.
37. Ibid., p. 569.
Frederick Clarkson, "Eternal Hostility, The Struggle Beteen Theoracy and
Democracy." Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine (1997) 83-86
****************************************************
I think this parable represents the beliefs of at least many of the
Founding Fathers and the spirit that formed their making of the
Constitution. I would like, from the vantage point of Franklin's
skepticism, to try to offer a larger historical perspective, to take the
discussion of religion in politics out of the halls of legislatures and try
to put it into macroscosm of world history.
The United States was the first modern nation founded on purpose in
the bright light of history. The mere existence of the nation was itself a
kind of Declaration of Independence from the folk gods and religious and
semireligious myths that had always and everywhere surrounded governments
and their rulers. Kings and queens were customarily crowned and hallowed by
priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes. And they had good reason to want
the odor of sanctity. Queen Elizabeth I, for example, made trouble for the
author who wrote too freely describing the dethroning of her predecessor
Richard II. Prudent divine-right sovereigns saw their protection lay in
controlling the prying research of inquiring historians. They preferred
simply to legitimize themselves by descent from the Trojans or from the
gods.
Some would say that religious liberty is probably the most
distinctive and certainly one of the greatest contributions of the American
experience to all human progress. Religious liberty in the United States is
the product of not only the courageous personal humility of the Founding
Fathers, as well as a by-product of some happy facts of American history.
These are no less important because they appear obvious, but we're inclined
to ignore them.
First, since the founding of the nation-by an act of revolution and
by the framing of a Constitution-was accomplished in a relatively brief
time, living men and women could see that it was a product of their
struggles, discussion, and handiwork, not the fiat of some sanctified,
mythenshrouded past. .
Second, the nation was created from areas with diverse sects. Oddly
enough, the fact that the colonies already had their several and various j
established churches contributed to this necessity. A federal nation was
plainly not founded on an orthodox religious base. In Europe, the
Protestant Reformation came as a disruptive force into the relatively
monolithic world of the medieval church. In England, for example,
Protestant orthodoxy was indelibly identified with national identity. In
the American colonies, religious variety preceded political unity and had
to be accommodated within it. '"
Third, the diffusion of American colonial settlements with no one
capital, the great distance of colonial urban centers from one another, and
the oceanic separation from London or Rome, all made religious independence
a fact of geography as well as of theology. So much of the population was
at the edges and out beyond the range of the churches. One of the
consequences of this was a different line of historical development of the
relation between church and state, one which is so grand and so unqiue that
we are perhaps inclined to ignore it. Over there, the development was
generally from religious orthodoxy enforced by the state, to toleration-and
only later to religious liberty. Historically speaking, of course,
religious toleration is to be sharply contrasted to religious liberty.
Toleration implies the existence of an established church, and toleration
is always a revocable concession rather than a defensible right. In the
United States, for the first time in modern Western history, the nation
leaped from the provincial religious preference of its regions into
religious liberty for the whole nation. The Founding Fathers despised the
condescension that was implied in the very concept of toleration. That was
a stage necessary for Old World nations, but not for our New World nation.
.Robert Rutland, "The Courage to Doubt in a Secular Republic," in James
Madison on Religious Liberty, Prometheus Books, 1985. p. 208 [209].
***********************************************
Conclusion

SINCE THIS BOOK IS ABOUT RELIGION IN AMERICAN POLITICS, IT HAS DEALT
primarily with Protestant, and especially evangelical, Christianity. The
influence of that form of religion has been so preponderant that only
recently has the notion of America as "a Christian nation" become rightly
suspect. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor caused a flurry of criticism when she
endorsed that notion in 1989.1 Yet the Supreme Court referred to "this
Christian nation" in nineteenth-century cases.2 Abraham Lincoln regularly
used the term.3
To understand why the term is now offensive we must recognize
exactly what it meant through most of our history. It did not mean that
"JudeoChristian heritage" people invoke when they want to defend civil
religion of Tocqueville's sort or try to shoehorn prayer back into the
schools. The dominant Christianity of America tolerated when it did not
encourage anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism. The "Judeo" part of the
mythical Judeo-Christian heritage was a Protestant reading of its "Old
Testament" as if that were the Jewish Scripture. There is more genuine
religious vision, much of it derived from the Jewish tradition, in recent
criticism of religious symbols than in condescending praise of the Jews as
preparers of the Christian testament. The ancient prohibition on idolatry
is a healthy warning against letting "civil religion" appropriate the
attributes of God. In most of our wars, as in dubious other matters like
slavery, we have indeed "taken God's name in vain."
America was, sociologically, a "Christian (Protestant) nation" by
virtue of its dominant cultural values, so long as those values were not
effectively challenged by others. Catholics withdrew from the national
school system to escape Protestantism, not secularism. Prayers were still
said, the Bible still read, in schools that the Catholic hierarchy objected
to-only it was the Protestant translation of the Bible that was used, and
the Protestant version of the Lord's Prayer. Nineteenth-century
Protestantism was not ecumenical. Those harking back to the "good old days"
of religion in public life forget just how exclusive that religion was.
America's culture was infused with Protestantism in the same way
that, according to Cardinal Newman, British literature was culturally
Protestant. As a Catholic, of course, he did not consider this historical
fact prescriptive, the expression of what should have been or had to be or
must forever be; but he told his fellows to face it as a historical fact:
"We cannot write a new Milton or a new Gibbon.."4 There are some givens of
a historical situation-and he was speaking de facto, not de lure. Catholics
should not deny the facts, he argued. They should face the obvious: "We
cannot destroy or reverse it the Protestant character of classical English
literature; we may confront and encounter it, but we cannot make it over
again."5
In the same way, there is no denying the Protestant consensus with
which this nation began-the anti-Catholicism expressed even in the
Declaration of Independence, the long exclusion of Jews from "Christian
organizations," the nativist resistance to other cultures. A Protestant God
led armies into war against the devil-worshiping Native Americans. African
gods could not be worshiped on America's soil when slaves were brought
here. Yet the first insights into the need to separate church and state
also came from Protestants-from people like John Endecott, Roger Williams,
and the Baptists. There were Protestant critics of slavery as well as
defenders-Anthony Benezet, for instance, in colonial and revolutionary
Philadelphia, breaking the law to teach slaves how to read. We have a
double heritage, even from the Protestant background that dominated our
culture for so long.
But few, even Protestants, want that exclusive aspect of our
culture to be maintained. That is why our history has been selectively
rewritten, foisting on us a premature ecumenism and mythical amity of
"judeo-Christian" elements. But it is our task, in a society of
increasingly complex articulation, to complete the effort of Madison in
removing religion from state ceremony and proclamations. We appreciate
better than Lincoln's contemporaries did his use of religious language to
question the complacent view that God is in agreement with armies that
invoke him. We value more those who follow conscience to deny that a
once-Christian culture must have a Christian state. A modern prophet like
Dr. King makes us understand the witness of those who found the "Christian
state" ungodly in its blessing of things like slavery.

Despite the Protestant presuppositions of our culture (many of them
unspoken), we have had a professed ideal of constitutional separation. That
gave to religion an initial, if minimal, freedom from crippling forms of
cooperation with the state. That, more than anything else, made the United
States a new thing on the earth, setting new tasks for religion, offering
it new opportunities. Everything else in our Constitution-separation of
powers, balanced government, bicameralism, federalism-had been anticipated
both in theory and practice. The framers aptly defended their handiwork
with citations from Polybius and Montesquieu and Hume, and with references
to the history of constitutional monarchies, ancient republics, and modern
leagues. We combined a number of these features in a way that was suitable
to our genius, as the drafters put itto what Montesquieu called the
national esprit. But we invented nothing, except disestablishment.
No other government in history had launched itself without the help
of officially recognized gods and their state-connected ministers. It is no
wonder that, in so novel an undertaking, it should have taken a while to
sift the dangers and the blessings of the new arrangement, to learn how
best to live with it, to complete the logic of its workings. We are still
grappling with its meaning for us. But, at the least, its meaning has been
one of freedom-the free exercise of the churches, free not only from
official obstruction but from compromising favors. A burden was lifted from
religion when it ceased to depend on the breath of princes, when it had
nothing by way of political office with which to lure or tempt people into
the fold or into the ministry. Thrown back on themselves, the churches were
encouraged to search for their own essence, make their moral case on truly
religious grounds, reward people in the proper spiritual currency. The
contradictory goals of political advancement and religious vocation were
not an omnipresent problem.
Corruption of church and state is a mutual infection, whether mild
or extreme. Even in mild form, it leads to the quiet agony of Trollope's
Warden (Septimus Harding), baffled by pygmy clergy seeking preferment.At
its worst it leads to the horror of the medieval papacy Lord Acton's own
example of "absolute power [that] corrupts absolutely. "6
Our American churches have escaped the worst element of that
partnership-the effort to maintain theological consistency through changes
of political regimes; the cleansing of mud from ecclesiastical skirts after
official scandal; the labor to maintain spiritual strength in captivity,
like Samson stirring in his chains; the spectacle of disappointed clerics
who dwindle into bitter courtiers. Purity of teaching and practice is
easier to demand, and not always impossible of achievement. Mercenary
desires, though they can creep in on ministers from all other sides, are at
least not obtruded by the state. We stumble on no remnants of cuius regio
eius religio (each region its own religion), as even Queen Elizabeth II
does, obliged to change identities in moving from one realm to another:
Head of the English church south of the Scottish border, she becomes head
of the Presbyterian kirk north of it.
The fear, of course, was that a church freed of official power
would be neutered. But no careful look at our history can support such
fear. Religion has, admittedly, been a powerful force for social stability,
supporting indirectly the regime that offers free exercise to all beliefs;
but it has also been a prophetic voice of resistance to power when that is
unchecked by moral insight. The cleric in jail is an American tradition,
the conscientious objector, the practitioner of civil disobedience. The
Quaker Anthony Benezet denounced slavery to Patrick Henry, war to General
Howe, and the treatment of Arcadians to his local Philadelphia rulers.
Carrie Nation, like Ronald Reagan a Disciple of Christ, made
fervent war on saloons. The Underground Railway was run by holy criminals.
Religious radicals have extraordinary staying power-like Dorothy Day, who
went to jail for women's rights with Alice Paul in the 1920s, and with
Ammon Hennacy to protest nuclear war in the 1950s, feeding the poor and
defying the powerful, decade in and decade out. Of all the communes formed
in the wake of the 1960s, only religious ones seem to have survived into
the 1990s-Jonah House, Sojourners, the Committee for Creative Non-Violence.
The sanctuary movement offered a new underground railway for those fleeing
oppression in El Salvador and Guatemala.
The sanctuary movement of the 1980s renewed a religious drama
played out, over and over, in our supposedly secular world-the nocturnal
gathering for prayer, then the flight from police. The FBI sent bugged
informers into sanctuary churches. It paid spies like Jesus Cruz to smuggle
refugees alongide the movement's organizers, then to testify against them
in the Phoenix trial of 1985-86. 7
Jesds Cruz was an interesting name in this context, both the first
and the last name (cruz means "cross"-Jesus Cruz always wore one around his
neck). I think of him at Mass with the refugees, repeating that Last Supper
at which Jesus said the one who dipped a hand in the bowl with him would
betray him. In Cruz's case, the price was not thirty pieces of silver but
eighteen thousand dollars of tax-collected money. Here, as so often, the
church was not only separate from the state, but opposed to the state,
castigating it, breaking its laws, as Dr. King did, and Dorothy Day, and
Anthony Benezet. It is a part of our history we can be proud of, though our
elected representatives play the villains in the story. Roger Williams knew
that true religion must always be, in some measure, an underground affair.

1. Alan M. Dershowitz, "Justice O'Connor's Second Indiscretion,"
New York Times, April 2, 1989.
2. People v. Ruggles (1811): "we are a Christian people." Justice
Brewer in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States (1892):'This is a
Christian nation." Cf. Mark DeWolfe Howe, The Carden and the Wilderness:
Religion and Government in American Constitutional History (University of
Chicago, 1965), pp. 14, 29.
3. See Lincoln's order for Sabbath observance by the military, out
of "deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people," in Abraham
Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 18591865, edited by Don F. Fehrenbacher
(Library of America, 1989), p. 382. Also the resolution of slavery, as
disqualifying the South from entry "into the family of christian and
civilized nations" (ibid., p. 445-and cf. pp. 223, 433, 597, 627).
4. John Henry Newman, "English Catholic Literature," in The Idea of
a University (Oxford, 1976), p. 255.
5. Ibid., p. 259.
6. Acton's famous axiom was formulated in a letter of 1887 to
Mandell Creighton, a historian of the papacy. See Selected Writings of Lord
Acton, edited by J. Rufus Fears (Liberty Classics, 1985), vol. 2, p. 383.
7. 'Cf. Miriam Davidson, Convictions of the Heart: Jim Corbett and
the Sanctuary Movement (University of Arizona, 1988), pp. 115-17; Robert
Tomsho, The American Sanctuary Movement (Texas Monthly Press, 1987), pp.
159-67, 204-5.
Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics, Simon and
Schuster, 1990. pp. 381-385. 383
***************************************************

Jeff Strickland

unread,

May 8, 2003, 5:33:17 PM5/8/03

This sounds a lot like, "the sky is falling."

jal...@cox.net

unread,

May 9, 2003, 8:34:10 AM5/9/03

"Jeff Strickland" <cr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>:|This sounds a lot like, "the sky is falling."

I bet you know nothing about this movement:
Reconstructionism

Nothign about these people:
Rushdoony
Gary DeMar,
Gary North

or these people
Historian Garry Wills
historian Robert Rutland,
Nistorian. John Wilson,
Frederick Clarkson.

I know you didn't check out the following cites:

information on RECONSTRUCTIONIST:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
8. RECONSTRUCTIONISTS

Reconstructionism in its broadest sense describes the rebuilding by
Christians of' every aspect of` Western civilization according to biblical
strictures, beginning in the United States. It is founded on the belief
that God's laws, as described in the Bible, pertain to all people
throughout history and comprise the only legitimate basis for culture.
According to their literature and statements, reconstructionists
would raze most of the structures of American life; a streamlined society
would be rebuilt according to the Mosaic code, which is considered an exact
blueprint for social order. This effort to remake America as ancient Israel
entails the abolition not merely of` the federal government and public
education, but also, as sociologist Anson Shupe has written in The Wall
Street Journal, of the entire Western liberal tradition, including "popular
sovereignty, civil liberties, and 'natural rights' concerned with
such things as freedom of conscience and separation of church and state."
As Shupe notes, there would be no place in this reformed society for Jews,
Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Baha'is, humanists, atheists, or even
non-reconstructionist Christians. Movement founder Rousas John (R.J.)
Rushdoony has stated that "in the name of toleration, the believer is asked
to associate on a common level of total acceptance with the atheist, the
pervert, the criminal, and the adherents of other religions."
Indeed, the writings of leading members of the movement suggest
that any dissenters could be "eliminated." Gary North, Rushdoony's
estranged son-in-law and one of reconstructionism's most militant
spokesmen, has asserted that "the perfect love of God necessarily involves
the perfect hatred of God's enemies." North also declares: "That's how our
King wants us to pray against His enemies: let them he destroyed."
Such a destruction may be abetted by reconstructionism's most
controversial concept: the installation of the legal code of the Hebrew
Bible as the basis for civil law. This idea has led the most rigorous
reconstructionists, those associated with the teaching of Rushdoony, to
espouse the death penalty as a possible punishment for adulterers,
homosexuals, blasphemers, incorrigible juvenile delinquents, and
propagators of false doctrines, among others. Non-capital offenses could be
punished by slavery
In addition to fostering Godly families, "the purpose of the law is
to suppress, control, and/or eliminate the ungodly..." Rushdoony has
declared.'

THE PROBLEM WITH RECONSTRUCTIONISM

Absolutism and parochialism may be virtues in a religious system,
but not in a pluralistic democracy. And while reconstructionism's core
adherents are neither particularly numerous (roughly 40,000, according to
Gary North) nor unified, many of its teachings -- and teachers -- have been
absorbed into the religious right movement.
This fact should not be overstated. The r-eligious right is not
primarily reconstructionist, and most of those who do adopt some
reconstructionist teachings reject its more extreme views (and its
postrnillennialism). Christianity Today and other observers maintain that
most churchgoers have probably never heard of Rushdoony. Religion professor
James Manis states, "One often hears fundamentalist leaders articulate the
denial,' I'rn not a Reconstructionist, but...,' and then proceed to expound
a Reconstructionist tenet or two."
Reconstructionism's influence among Christian activists dates to
the 1960s and 1970s, when reconstructionists were elucidating an
evangelical political philosophy even as evangelicals began to turn to
politics after a half-century of abstention. This philosophy drew on
historic themes of dominion -- the: notion that believers are called to
exercise control over all the earth -- that came to undergird the religious
right's efforts. In 1981, Newsweek named Chalcedon, Rushdoony's Vallecito,
California, reconstructionist center, as the religious right's leading
thinktank. Robert Billings, founder of the pioneering National Christian
Action Coalition and later a Moral Majority leader, reportedly stated: "if
it weren't for [Rushdoony's] books, none of us would be here."
Rushdoony's impact on the religious right is especially disturbing
because, in addition to their theocratic intolerance, his hooks have
maligned Jews, Judaism, and Blacks, and have engaged in Holocaust
"revisionism." Other leading reconstructionists have also attacked Jews.
And though their unflinching theocratic rhetoric keeps these thinkers off
of major forurns, their association with major religious right figures and
groups underscores the apparent insensitivity of many of the "pro-family"
movement leaders.

R.J. RUSHDOONY

Rushdoony was born in New York City in 1 916, the son of Armenian
immigrants whose ancestry reportedly traces an unbroken succession of
ecclesiastics dating to the fourth century. He earned a Ph.D. in
educational philosophy, and served as a Presbyterian pastor; a missionary
to Native Americans, and a John Birch Society activist. In 1959, he
launched reconstructionism with By What Standard?, an interpretation of the
apologetics of the late Calvinist theologian Cornelius Van Til (while Van
Til is considered the "patron philosopher" of
Reconstructionism, he reportedly opposed the movement).
In 1964, Rushdoony established Chalcedon (cal-see-don), named for a
fifth century church council, to disseminate his ideas. The author of
dozens of books, he pumped out reconstructionist volumes in relative
obscurity throughout the 1960s. At the same time, he continued to cultivate
his arch-conservative secular credentials: in July 1965, according to The
John Birch Society Bulletin, he shared a conference podium with former
Noire name law school dean and popular far-right radio and television
propagandist Clarence Manion, wile once declared that the U.S. government
had adopted "in whole or in part" eight of the ten commandments of the
Communist Manifesto.

THE MOVEMENT TAKES HOLD

In 1973, Rushdoony published his massive tome, The Institutes of
Biblical Law, a 900-page exposition of the Ten Commandments (whose title
evoked John Calvin's epochal institutes of the Christian Religion). The
work became reconstructionism's benchmark text. Rushdoony's views were
absorbed by a younger and often fractious coterie, who in turn est:ablished
their own reconstructionist thinktanks and churches. The busiest enclaves
include Tyler, texas, the site of Gary North's Institute for Christian
Economics (North holds a Ph.D. in history), and Atlanta, home to both Gary;
DeMar's , American Vision and Joseph Morecraf't's Chalcedon Presbyterian
church.

RECONSTRUCTIONISM'S DISCONTENTS

The movement that Rushdoony sired has never disguised its disdain
for modern liberal govarnance and culture. "The state is a bankrupt
institution," Rushdoony asserts. The only alternative to this bankrupt
"humanistic" system is "a God-centereed government": "The choice," says
Rushdoony acolyte David Chilton, "is Christian morality or no morality."
Rushdoony believes that "every Law-system must maintain its
existence by hostility to every other- Law-system and to alien religious
foundations...." He and his kinsmen consider democracy to be "heresy"
Rushdoony calls it "the great love of the failures and cowards of` life."
lie insists that "Christianity is completely and radically
anti-detnocratic; it is committed to a spiritual aristocracy."
This aristocracy foregoes noblesse oblige, however. North says:
"People who use the phrase 'the universal brotherhood of man' to Prove an
underlying unity based mutual respect and love are rnisusing the Bible's
testimony. The universal brotherhood of man is a brotherhood of` death and
destruction."
Many Christians have failed to grasp this notion, according to
Byron Snapp. a Virginia reconstructionist. "[T]]he Christian must realize
that plualism is a myth." he maintains. "At no point in Scripture do we
read that God teaches, supports or condones pluralism. To support pluralism
is to recognize all religions as equal."
North goes even further: he encourages the likeminded to use
America's religious liberty to destroy itself:
"We must use this doctrine of religious liberty to gain
independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people
who know that there is no religious neutrality. . . Then they will get busy
in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which
finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

THE ENEMIES OF GOD

In an appendix to David Chilton's 198'7 reconstructionist reading
of the prophecies of Revelation, The Days of Vengeance, colleague James
Jordan wrote, "At the present time, the Jews are apostate enemies of
God...." Breaking with most evangelicals, Jordan asserted that "Modern
apostate Jews have absolutely no theological, and therefore no historical
right to the land ol` Palestine." Thus, "Christian Zionism is blasphemy. It
is a heresy."
Jordan maintains a disinterested view of political events in the
Middle East: "As Christians we see both Jews and Moslems [sic] as groups
that have rejected Christ as Messiah, and who have opposed the true faith.
If they want to convert, we rejoice. If` they want to kill each other off,
then that is too bad, but let them have at it -- there's nothing we can do
about ii."
In his 1999 work, The Judeo-Christian Tradition, North mused on the
Jews rejection of Jesus with his customary brio: "The Jews as a covenanted
nation refused to listen. Instead, they killed Jesus -- divorce through
execution. They submitted their- own final divorce papers to God by killing
the bridegroom To their shock and horror, the Bridegroom returned from the
dead to issue the final divorce decree to Israel."
In killing God, North argues, the Jews bankrupted their religion
and joined the ranks of humanists -- the enemies of God.l He states: "The
crisis of modern Judaisrn is today the crisis of humanism. Rushdoony
identified the underlying problem a generation ago [in a 1967 newsletter]:
Judaism grew out of the rejection of Jesus Christ and steadily became
humanism, and the Talmud is essentially the exposition of humanism under
the face of` Scripture."'
As Rushdoony maintained in his Institutes: "Although Israel between
the captivity and the crucifixion observed the sabbaths of` the earth, at
other Points they despised God, and they crucified His Son, so that the
curse fell upon them and the earth for their sake."

"THE INSTITUTES" -- HOLOCAUST "REVISIONISM"

In The Institutes, Rushdoony elaborates 18 offenses which, he
contends, merit the death penalty according to Mosaic law. In his
exposition of one of these offenses -- bearing "false witness in a case
involving a capital offense" -- he writes:
The false witness borne during World War II with respect to Germany
is especially notable and revealing. The charge is repeatedly made that six
million innocent Jews were slain by the Nazis, and the figure -- and even
larger figures -- is now entrenched in the history books. Poncins, in
summarizing the studies of the French Socialist, Paul Rassinier, himself a
prisoner in Buchenwald, states:

"Rassinier reached the conclusion that the number of Jews who died
after deportation is approximately 1,200,000 and this figure, he tells us,
has finally been accepted as valid.... Likewise he notes that Paul [sic]
Hilberg, in his study of the same problem, reached a total of 896,292
victims."
Very many of these people died of epidemics: many were executed.(5)
Rushdoony argues that the purportedly inflated Holocaust death toll derives
from a "basic insensitivity to truth which too extensively characterizes
this age." Histories of the Holocaust, he contends, are exaggerated to
shock the insensitive:
"...a generation schooled to violence in motion pictures, radio,
literature, and press could riot be expected to react to a murder or two.
The result was a desperately twisted mentality which could only appreciate
evil as evil on a massive scale. Did tile Nazis actually execute many
thousands, tens, or hundred thousands of Jews? Men to whom such murders
were nothing had to blow up the figure to millions.... The evils were all
too, real: even greater is the evil of bearing false witness concerning
them...."
Poncins, bitterly anti-Jewish, is ready to report the errors in
thc` accounts of Nazi murders of Jews; he is not ready to be distressed
that any were brutally murdered.
Despite the ostensible compassion of this last phrase, these
passages comprise a striking addition to the canons of` Nazi apology. The
addition may be termed Holocaust reconstructionism: Jews were wrongfully
killed by Nazis; the number of victims was vastly inflated to shock a
desensitized modern world; the Nazis were therein victims of false witness;
false witness is punishable hy execution. One may deduce from this twisted
scheme that those who refute Holocaust "revisionism" and its false
calculations deserve death.

GARY NORTH AND THE "FINAL SOLUTION"

Gary North wrote three appendices to Rushdoony's Institutes, adding
his imprimatur to his father-in-law's hateful theories. While apparently
refraining from outright revisionism himself, he adds an unpleasant coda to
Rushdoony in The Judeo-Christian Tradition:
"The words 素inal solution' have been associated with Hitler's
Third Reich. The phrase is used in history textbooks to describe the
removal of Jews through extermination. But what people fail to understand
is that the concept of the 素inal solution' is universal. Ever): religion
and every social philosophy has a doctrine of final solution, some means of
eliminating 爽nbelievers'.... The Jews will eventually be reconciled to
God through iaith in Jesus Christ.... This is God's "final solution" in
history to the wall of` separation between gentiles and Jews."
Nazism here becomes a natural and fitting approach to reconciling
differences even God is a kind of Fuhrer.

Jeff Strickland

unread,

May 9, 2003, 11:26:47 AM5/9/03

The sky is falling ...

jal...@cox.net

unread,

May 9, 2003, 3:22:02 PM5/9/03

"Jeff Strickland" <cr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>:|The sky is falling ...

Each childish post of yours like this only further proves that which I say
about you.

I accept your surrender by default and recognize your need to remain in
denial and ignorance.

The radicals need people like you to make their dreams come true.

Now, run along sonny, you are out of your league when you TRY to reply to
me

[from stupid strickland]
>:|to predict who will vote which way. You

>:|are much better at predicting which justices will do what, and I respect you
>:|for that. I don't respect you for very much,

[my reply]

LOL, those that are routinely expose, with factual data feels that way
about me. People don't like being exposed for being ignorant when they
are, fools when they are, liars when they are, etc.

I take your lack of respect as a compliment.

[from stupid strickland]
>:|but I appreciate your knowledge

>:|even when I think you draw the wrong conclusions from previous rulings.

[my reply[

****************************************************

Carol Lee Smith

unread,

May 9, 2003, 6:03:37 PM5/9/03

On Fri, 9 May 2003, Jeff Strickland wrote:

> The sky is falling ...

Do you mean the firmament?

How can that happen?

They just don't make them like they used to.

Firmaments, that is.

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