Don't Taint The Intent Of The Founders
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
Remember that judge in Alabama who got in trouble for putting up a monument to the Ten Commandments?
His name is Roy Moore. Well, this week he filed an appeal to get his job back.
The chief justice was stripped of his position for refusing to remove the monument from a courthouse.
In his appeal before Alabama's Supreme Court, Moore said he was following the Alabama and U.S. constitutions when he defied a U.S. District Court order last summer to move the monument.
The federal court told Moore, who installed the monument in 2001, that the 5,000-pound stone marker had to go because it violated a constitutional ban on government promoting religion.
On Wednesday, Moore told Reuters the district court order was "unlawful and unconstitutional."
"I think it is a political persecution, not a legal trial," Moore said.
You see, I fully don't understand how civil liberties groups and others get all bent about the Ten Commandments, or any other religious symbol, for that matter, on public property.
And calling it unconstitutional is just abject nonsense.
Let's review what the U.S. Constitution says about religion, shall we?
It says, "Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ... ." That's it.
Now, the argument begins when you attempt to interpret that sentence - when you try to determine the founders' intent.
To me, the founders' intent was pretty clear. They didn't want there to be a government-sanctioned church, like the Church of England.
But do you suppose they didn't want the Ten Commandments on the courthouse?
Consider the following.
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story served on the court from 1811 to 1845, about 20 years after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were completed.
Here's what he had to say about religion and government.
"Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the First Amendment to it ... the general if not the universal sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disappropriation, if not universal indignation ... The real object of the amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which would give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government."
It seems pretty obvious to me and to Justice Stone, and, frankly, anybody else in the early 1800s, that the Constitution separated the institution of the church from the institution of the state but not the Judeo-Christian religious foundation from civil government.
At that point in history, the idea that a Christian or any religious person should be excluded from practicing his or her religious principles on public property would have been unthinkable.
Many during the early days of our country perceived the intent of the First Amendment as excluding from the government any power to act on the subject of religion.
James Madison:
"There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. This subject is, for the honor of America, perfectly free and unshackled. The government has no jurisdiction over it."
The First Amendment provided freedom FOR religion.
Need further evidence of the founders' intent? There are reams of it.
Read "The Works Of John Adams" or Carl Bridenbaugh's "Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities and Politics" or Roland Bainton's "The Travail of Religious Liberty" or James Kent's "Commentaries on American Law."
Or don't bother with all that reading, just stroll up the steps of the Capitol Building, which happens to house the Supreme Court.
There you will notice a view of Moses with the Ten Commandments.
As you enter the Supreme Court, the doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on them.
Above where the justices sit there is a display of the Ten Commandments.
For crying in a bucket, our money says "In God We Trust" on it - every bill, every coin.
Are you telling me we have to change all that?
The founders' intent is crystal clear to me. They wanted religion to be practiced freely and openly without fear of government intervention.
They would scoff at the notion that a Ten Commandments monument placed anywhere could be ruled unconstitutional.
If you want to argue that a Ten Commandments monument on public property is unconstitutional, you can't argue the founders wanted it that way. They didn't.
Just argue that the founders were wrong and the U.S. Constitution is a fairly meaningless, outdated document. [[In-content Ad]]
Remember that judge in Alabama who got in trouble for putting up a monument to the Ten Commandments?
His name is Roy Moore. Well, this week he filed an appeal to get his job back.
The chief justice was stripped of his position for refusing to remove the monument from a courthouse.
In his appeal before Alabama's Supreme Court, Moore said he was following the Alabama and U.S. constitutions when he defied a U.S. District Court order last summer to move the monument.
The federal court told Moore, who installed the monument in 2001, that the 5,000-pound stone marker had to go because it violated a constitutional ban on government promoting religion.
On Wednesday, Moore told Reuters the district court order was "unlawful and unconstitutional."
"I think it is a political persecution, not a legal trial," Moore said.
You see, I fully don't understand how civil liberties groups and others get all bent about the Ten Commandments, or any other religious symbol, for that matter, on public property.
And calling it unconstitutional is just abject nonsense.
Let's review what the U.S. Constitution says about religion, shall we?
It says, "Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ... ." That's it.
Now, the argument begins when you attempt to interpret that sentence - when you try to determine the founders' intent.
To me, the founders' intent was pretty clear. They didn't want there to be a government-sanctioned church, like the Church of England.
But do you suppose they didn't want the Ten Commandments on the courthouse?
Consider the following.
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story served on the court from 1811 to 1845, about 20 years after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were completed.
Here's what he had to say about religion and government.
"Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the First Amendment to it ... the general if not the universal sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disappropriation, if not universal indignation ... The real object of the amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which would give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government."
It seems pretty obvious to me and to Justice Stone, and, frankly, anybody else in the early 1800s, that the Constitution separated the institution of the church from the institution of the state but not the Judeo-Christian religious foundation from civil government.
At that point in history, the idea that a Christian or any religious person should be excluded from practicing his or her religious principles on public property would have been unthinkable.
Many during the early days of our country perceived the intent of the First Amendment as excluding from the government any power to act on the subject of religion.
James Madison:
"There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. This subject is, for the honor of America, perfectly free and unshackled. The government has no jurisdiction over it."
The First Amendment provided freedom FOR religion.
Need further evidence of the founders' intent? There are reams of it.
Read "The Works Of John Adams" or Carl Bridenbaugh's "Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities and Politics" or Roland Bainton's "The Travail of Religious Liberty" or James Kent's "Commentaries on American Law."
Or don't bother with all that reading, just stroll up the steps of the Capitol Building, which happens to house the Supreme Court.
There you will notice a view of Moses with the Ten Commandments.
As you enter the Supreme Court, the doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on them.
Above where the justices sit there is a display of the Ten Commandments.
For crying in a bucket, our money says "In God We Trust" on it - every bill, every coin.
Are you telling me we have to change all that?
The founders' intent is crystal clear to me. They wanted religion to be practiced freely and openly without fear of government intervention.
They would scoff at the notion that a Ten Commandments monument placed anywhere could be ruled unconstitutional.
If you want to argue that a Ten Commandments monument on public property is unconstitutional, you can't argue the founders wanted it that way. They didn't.
Just argue that the founders were wrong and the U.S. Constitution is a fairly meaningless, outdated document. [[In-content Ad]]