| First, Big Timber Constitutional expert weighs in on the separation of church and state in a magnificent piece of vitriol editorially titled "We should listen to God, not the deceptive ACLU." I am mistified by her ability to quote the right portion of the Constitution amnd then completely misunderstand it. She writes:
That phrase (separation of church and state) is not in the Constitution. It derives from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson years after the Constitution was adopted to a Baptist church concerned that the federal government might interfere in their church affairs. He reassured them with "There is a wall of separation between church and state."
He referred to the one-way wall created by the First Amendment. "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
It is fair to say that Jefferson firmly believed in a separation of church and state because of a danger to church. It is absurd to use that in an argument against the ACLU, who have done more to protect the free exercise clause than perhaps any other group. The total truth about the religion clause in the Constitution is that there is an intended tension. The two clauses are intended to work against each other, so that the rights of individuals to be religious and philosphical are unabridged by some government establishment of a national religion.
Practically, the establishment of religion comes down to a fairly simple test that blocks majority religious philosphies from creating a culture of insiders and outsiders. I think that it is fair to say that the author of this letter is perfectly fine with a culture of insiders and outsiders so long as it is recognized that she is one of the morally pure insiders, not one of the barberous outsider heathens.
Her attack on the ACLU, on the other hand, springs from a complete unfamiliarity with what the ACLU is actually up to. They are not selective about which civil liberties they protect, or which groups of people deserve to have civil liberties and which do not--it is fair to note that the ACLU recognizes that some groups of minorities likely need more help to protect their interests than do mainstream religious sects with massive legal funds to challenge those pesky abortion protections.
She ends:
What we need now is a return to the restraints of the 10th Amendment and reliance on the wisdom of the God of the universe. The ACLU is just not smart enough to run the world.
It must be hard to see the plebs from so high up on that horse, not to mention her uncanny knowledge of God's one truth. That aside, the Tenth Amendment has nothing to do with God. It preserves those powers not enumerated, to the states and the people respectively. This clause makes boldface the notion that the federal government is a government of limited power.
Second, the UN rejected a call from some followers to recognize the Jedi religion. I include this story in this discussion because this is precisely the kind of controversy that the American freedom of religion clause eliminates. Any American person is free to be religious in any way they choose and the government cannot say boo about it, regardless of what rating the religion gets on the Irrationality-of-Faith-O-Meter. |
