Editor, Times-Union: Freedom OF religion is freedom for all, indeed (and constitutional). Freedom FROM religion is bondage (and unconstitutional). Lack of morality based in religion has only one eventual outcome - chaos. There can never be enough police officers to combat a lawless populace. By lawless I mean no moral center based in religion. Once morality is legislated away, or more accurately, arbitrated away by morally corrupt judges rewriting legislation, civilized reason is removed from the decision to follow the rules. All evil is fair game.
There cannot be enough desire for society to work harmoniously to counter selfishness and lawlessness that exists in a society without religion. It has been said that one could take a walk at night in Moscow's Gorky Park without fear of being the victim of violent crime. Try that in New York's Central Park, they say. In reality, Gorky Park was a safe place to walk at night because of fear of government officials, not moral and religious conviction. Godless societies must use the iron fist to supplant morality and religion in order to control lawlessness.
Some say laws don't change a person one way or another. But one still bears personal responsibility to behave in a civilized manner. The truth is that a large number of the populace falls into hopelessness and despair when morality is removed from any expectation of them. Freedom is redefined as complete, unbridled pandemonium. Everything is suddenly about me and what I can get. What can the politicians GIVE me?
Remember the words of President John F. Kennedy when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." This is a biblical principle. He understood the importance of raising expectations of general behavior. He, like James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), saw that what made American democracy work was religion and morality and the characteristic local institutions they produced - families, churches, schools, local government, voluntary associations, etc. These men understood that American democracy DOES NOT work without religion and morality in the public realm.
We can choose to pretend that the Constitution protects us FROM religion, or we can read it for ourselves and see that it clearly states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The way to twisting those words to say something it does not is to insist that all observance of religion in the public sphere of influence is establishing a religion or somehow prohibits another.
Rather than restrict religious symbols in society, wouldn't the ACLU cause be better served to ensure all religions get equal status? Doesn't the Constitution say in essence that Congress, and therefore legislation, should not prohibit free exercise of religion? Yet the ACLU prefers concealed, behind closed doors exercise of religion.
"Give me liberty or give me death" was Patrick Henry's cry. I would be embarrassed for him to see what we have come to. God help us.
