Rightank

In the first of the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding the civic display of the Ten Commandments, McCreary County v. ACLU, five Justices held that a courthouse display of the Ten Commandments along with eight other documents (including the Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and Star Spangled Banner) that “played a significant role in the foundation of our system of law and government” violated the Establishment Clause. See Justice Scalia’s dissent, pages 20-21.

Justice Souter’s opinion is unpersuasive. Relying on a Court-driven precedent of religious neutrality, Souter dismisses the religious historical underpinnings of our Nation’s laws (including the Ten Commandments) as a contradictory bother to the Court’s coddling concern for members of minority religions and atheists. For example, Souter writes the following:

[T]he Commandments have had influence on civil or secular law; a major text of a majority religion is bound to be felt. See Justice Souter’s opinion, page 21.

Justice Souter, do think that the Framers would have have written the Constitution so that it constitutionally prohibited a “major text” of the “majority religion” from being displayed in any public setting, let alone a courthouse? The thought is imbecilic at best.

Justice Souter also creates his own National history by claiming that the Fourteenth Amendment is the most “significant structural provision” since the Founding. Why? Not because the Amendment freed slaves. But, because the judical activists on the Court have created a doctrine called substantive due process (more like substantive B.S.) whereby the Court has found the right to privacy to rule that abortion was constitutional (Roe v. Wade) and that States could not prevent gays from sodomizing themselves (Lawrence v. Texas).

Ultimately, it is the Court’s precedent of neutrality “government may not favor one religion over another, religion over irreligion” that trumphs our Nation’s history as a religious and Christian nation:

A record of inconsistent historical practice is too weak a lever to upset decades of precedent adhering to the neutrality principle. See Justice Souter’s opinion, page 31 footnote 25.

Thus, with one broad judical brushstroke, Justice Souter and his cohort of four rely on their own policy preference of neutrality (which is not what Establishment means) to remove the Ten Commandments from a courthouse.

Justice Scalia, in his dissent, effortlessly but relentlessly picks apart Souter’s opinion, calling his logic “a thoroughly discredited say-so.” Scalia discusses the history of our Nation’s acknowledgment of God in statute, Presidential proclaimations, and prayers (judicial and legislative). Rightfully so, Scalia zeroes in the meaning of the Establishment Clause:

Historical practices . . . demonstrate that there is a difference between the acknowledgment of a single Creator and the establishment of a religion. See Justice Scalia’s dissent, page 10 (emphasis mine).

Among many examples of historical acknowledgment that do not establish a religion are the frequent displays of the Ten Commandments woven through the Supreme Court’s courtroom, doors, and gates. See Justice Scalia’s dissent, page 23. Why doesn’t Souter quiver that each and every atheist that comes to the Supreme Court must walk by such rampant religiousity?

Scalia solves the riddle of Souter’s discombobulated reasoning:

What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle. That is what prevents judges from ruling now this way now that–thumbs up or thumbs down–as their personal preferences dictate. [McCreary] forthrightly (or actually, sometimes less forthrightly) admits that it does not rest upon consistently applied principle. See Justice Scalia’s opinion, page 7.

McCreary is about five Justices’ policy preferences overriding a locality’s decision to display the Ten Commandments in a public forum. It is not about precedent or the rule of law. McCreary is yet another manifestation of the irrational doctrine of separation of church and state that has replaced the First Amendment’s prohibition of religious establishments with a preference of religious exclusion from public places and discourse. Sad indeed.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will issue their decision on whether the Ten Commandments can be displayed in county courthouses without violating the First Amendment, specifically that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Given the horridness of this Term, I wager that the Court will rule that having the Ten Commandments within a courthouse violates the First Amendment. I hope not. The Supreme Court has a painting of Moses and the Ten Commandments and begins each day’s session with “God Save This Honorable Court” ringing in their ears. Would they then remove the painting?

There is no doubt that the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State desire to remove any inkling of religion out of our schools and places of government. Will the Supreme Court fall for this ruse? It’s anyone’s guess.

Ultimately, the religiosity of our Nation will depend on the piety of its citizens. However, if the Supremes (5 of them) decide to remove the Ten Commandments, the effect will undermine the protections embodied in the First Amendment and represent a travesty for our Country and another step toward a Nation full of Christians but ruled by an Atheistic government. The intent of the Establishment Clause was not to remove any religious artifact or symbol from the pedestals of government, rather it was, among other things, to prevent the subsidization of a specific religion (e.g., Methodists, Presbyterian, etc.) via federal not state taxation. The Ten Commandments are one of the foundational documents of our society and represent many of the social mores the Framers and others have codified into our Constitutions. The removal of the Ten Commandments would be terrible. I hope the Supremes give more credence to George Washington then the homeless atheist who says his feelings are hurt when he sees the Ten Commandments.

In the recently announced United States Supreme Court decision, Cutter v. Wilkingson, the Supreme Court held that the Religious Land Use and and Institutionalized Persons Act permits any prisioner, regardless of their religous persuasion, be afforded the artifacts necessary to worship as they please (excluding legitimate safety concerns of the prison administrators). This unanimous opinion is important, not in its judicial blessing of Satanists and witches to practice their devilish creeds, but that it further engrained the distasteful rhetoric of separation of church and state.

Justice Ginsburg, the radical feminist who hates Mother’s Day, wrote the unanimous opinion. The separation of church and state is a court-created doctrine, a Justice’s liberal spin on a letter authored by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists. Ginsburg and others on the Court desire its continued entrenchment in the constitutional decision-making of the Court and other governmental bodies. Here’s the separatist quote:

The Religion Clauses of the First Amendment provide: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The first of the two clauses, commonly called the Establishment Clause, commands a separation of church and state.

This is a great example of how liberal jurists construct a statute or constitution for their ideological benefit. The Establishment Clause does not command a separation of church and state. In fact, it makes no such reference to separation or church or state. The First Amendment only says that Congress shall not make a law that establishes a religion. Justice Ginsburg’s transmogrification of the constitutional text into a secular commandment of the state imposes even more deeply a chasm that was not intended by the text of the First Amendment nor by the Framers.

Cutter: The welcoming of Satanists and Wiccans into protected status among the other mainstream religions (i.e., Christianity, Judiasm) and the continued legitimatization of Everson and the separation of church and state. Not good. Not good at all.