This is America. The same America to which our forefathers fled to avoid religious persecution. An America where ALL are created equal. It is an America that doesn’t, or at least, shouldn’t pick religious favorites in its zest for safety and security.
Just to set the record straight, the idea of separation of Church and State is NOT addressed in The Constitution. Look it up. However, that idea was addressed by our forefathers elsewhere and often. It is a very basic concept within the vast (thankfully!) scope of American freedom and choice.
The folks who attacked us on September 11, 2001 were evil people. Yes, they were Muslims. Bad Muslims. But they are not representative of the whole of the Muslim community, either in America or elsewhere around the world. Just as Timothy McVeigh, a devout Christian, was a bad Christian. Responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, he certainly did not represent the views of other Christians, in America or elsewhere around the world.
The Americans that died in both of these tragedies were of every faith. I’m sure there were also many like myself who died... hardworking Americans who were not associated with any traditional religion.
Terrorists, no matter where they are from, don’t care.
I don’t care what religion you are. You have a right to build a church, a mosque, a temple, or a deli any frickin place you want in America.
Done.
1 comment:
The phrase “separation of church and state” is but a metaphor to describe the underlying principle of the First Amendment and the no-religious-test clause of the Constitution. That the phrase does not appear in the text of the Constitution assumes much importance, it seems, only to those who may have once labored under the misimpression it was there and later learned they were mistaken. To those familiar with the Constitution, the absence of the metaphor commonly used to describe one of its principles is no more consequential than the absence of other phrases (e.g., Bill of Rights, separation of powers, checks and balances, fair trial, religious liberty) used to describe other undoubted Constitutional principles.
Some try to pass off the Supreme Court's decision in Everson v. Board of Education as simply a misreading of Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists--as if that is the only basis of the Court's decision. Instructive as that letter is, it played but a small part in the Court's decision. Perhaps even more than Jefferson, James Madison influenced the Court's view. Madison, who had a central role in drafting the Constitution and the First Amendment, confirmed that he understood them to "[s]trongly guard[] . . . the separation between Religion and Government." Madison, Detached Memoranda (~1820). He made plain, too, that they guarded against more than just laws creating state sponsored churches or imposing a state religion. Mindful that even as new principles are proclaimed, old habits die hard and citizens and politicians could tend to entangle government and religion (e.g., "the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress" and "for the army and navy" and "[r]eligious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts"), he considered the question whether these actions were "consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom" and responded: "In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion."
The First Amendment embodies the simple, just idea that each of us should be free to exercise his or her religious views without expecting that the government will endorse or promote those views and without fearing that the government will endorse or promote the religious views of others. By keeping government and religion separate, the establishment clause serves to protect the freedom of all to exercise their religion. Reasonable people may differ, of course, on how these principles should be applied in particular situations, but the principles are hardly to be doubted. Moreover, they are good, sound principles that should be nurtured and defended, not attacked. Efforts to undercut our secular government by somehow merging or infusing it with religion should be resisted by every patriot.
Wake Forest University recently published a short, objective Q&A primer on the current law of separation of church and state--as applied by the courts rather than as caricatured in the blogosphere. I commend it to you. http://tiny.cc/6nnnx
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