Moving Beyond Ignorance

I ran across a quote today that I felt compelled to share... it so powerfully sums up the issue of promoting credulity above reason.

"Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck." --Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.

On what it means to be an American.

In responding to an article on the Backyard Beacon entitled "No Ron Paul relief for New Orleans", I went on a bit too long and decided to post my comment as an article on here and simply link to it.

I could probably have continued on, touching on things such as the government and media denial of the North American Union, despite a variety of news coverage, already passed legislation, government meetings and even government websites detailing parts of the plan etc. But I'll leave that for another post.

For now, here is my comment:

I think what binds us is that we share a common privilege of being part of what was founded as the greatest nation on Earth, primarily for the reasons of its diversity and freedoms. We were a nation that ensured equal status for people of any nationality or religious belief. People could come here from foreign countries for a new start and know that they would have the equal grounding to begin from. This was the great American dream of coming here to rise through the ranks through hard work and provide for your family and descendants etc.

We are united in the patriotism we feel that we were a nation that threw off the shackles of a foreign imperial power to fend for ourselves on the world stage and through American ingenuity and hard work became the dominant world power, based on the principles of freedom and equality for all engendering a spirit of progress and competitiveness.

Americans take pride in being a part of the "land of the free and the home of the brave". They like to feel that the government is here to protect that institution and preserve the sense of liberty and freedom espoused by the founding fathers.

Many of these points could probably be argued when contrasted with the historical facts or motivations of particular people, but the point stands that most Americans feel and believe in these ideas. Just as the soldiers who sign up to fight and die in foreign lands believe so strongly in their hearts that they are fighting and dying to protect those most precious principles.

What Paul proposes is not to completely cut off the current system, but to return to the rightful system of states' rights and states' responsibilities. A state has a right and an obligation to govern its own people as it sees fit, to make laws on the state level and to provide for its people on the state level.

The Federal Government's role is that of arbiter of international conflicts, interstate commerce, interstate disputes etc. It is not to govern the people of every state individually, that is the role of the state government.

If a city floods, that is the role of the state government. If a drought hits or a depression occurs that affects the nation as a whole, that is a national disaster.

First off there should not have been a city built on the gulf coast in the line of hurricanes that was below sea level and relying only on a levee wall to keep it from being submerged. Secondly the state should have been responsible for ensuring the safety of a city built in such a foolish location. It is not the responsibility of other states to have their tax dollars used to fund the fools errand of protecting a city below sea level hundreds or thousands of miles away.

I think it almost goes without saying that if a city is built in such a foolish location, they should have planned ahead and created emergency procedures, evacuation routes etc.

To rely on the Federal government to use billions of tax dollars from across the nation to take care of them, and then bail them out when everything goes wrong is to demand and rely on a welfare state. A socialist government that takes from one man to give to another. Not a free society of individual responsibility and opportunity.

I hear over and over again that the government failed in their responsibility to the people of New Orleans, but the reality is that the Federal Government had no such responsibility to the people to begin with and was in the wrong in creating such bureaucratic monstrosities such as FEMA and the DHS to begin with. They should have never been responsible for building the levee. They should have never been responsible for bailing the people out or taking care of them after the fact.

There is a problem here with confusing State Government with Federal Government. People cannot seem to differentiate the two. They just ignorantly see "government" and expect to be taken care of it.

I should point out that I am in Michigan and thus did not see the disaster first hand. My cousin is in the National Guard and spent several weeks in New Orleans helping with the rebuilding etc. In the interest of full disclosure.

I worked for a Tribal Government here in Michigan for several years and we had implemented a variety of disaster related procedures. Evacuation routes, rescue procedures, locations for different bases of operation, methods for cooperation between law enforcement, medical, government, media, etc.

There was nothing preventing New Orleans from planning for this possibility and having a system in place to facilitate a disaster prevention and recovery operation, moving the people out of danger zones, providing safe refuge through the storm, channeling relief supplies and coordinating volunteers to assist in the recovery etc.

There is nothing preventing the nation from an outpouring of assistance and volunteering, from one end of the country to the other. But it should have been the responsibility of the state to coordinate these things and channel the proper funds, goods and personnel to the proper places.

Instead what we got was a bunch of Federal Government bureaucracies and mercenaries creating a perfect storm of red tape, government largesse, unConstitutional actions, incompetence at essentially every level and a waste of tax dollars at a staggering level. Interference, if not outright prevention, of independent relief efforts at every turn etc.

I'm sure that many of you who were there could vouch for these things better than I.

The point is that many many mistakes were made here in almost every possible aspect of the situation, starting from years in advance up until the present day situation of refugees still languishing in squalor, still waiting for the hollow promises of the Federal Government to bail them out.

The solution is not to hope in vain for the Federal Government to solve the problems while pointing the finger at them for their failure to prevent it, but to look more closely at the factors that led to this. To understand the responsibility of the different parties involved on both the State and Federal level and the important differences between them. The failures in state and local preventative planning. And possibly most importantly, looking to the future and in how to avoid a repeat of this disaster, which may very well include the obvious option of leaving the area.

There are lessons to be learned from this, but they are certainly not that we should sit idly by relying on an authoritarian government to police and provide a welfare state for the entire nation, but that we are a nation of proud patriots that celebrate our freedom and liberty and can take care of ourselves on the state and local level when left to do so. That we don't need a Statist big brother to direct our lives and provide for all of us by taking from one neighbor to give to another just because one neighbor might have a better job or been luckier. That we can rely on ourselves to govern ourselves and to support our communities and our neighbors. To have faith in the human spirit of accomplishment, of compassion... the great American spirit of Adventure, of Discovery, of Invention... the great "American Ingenuity" that was spoken of in years gone by.

We need to return to the great nation our founding fathers built for us and turn away from this horrible descent into a Statist and Socialist Authoritarian and Totalitarian Theocratic Dictatorship.

The direction we are heading is in every way, and at every step, the very antithesis of what our founding fathers intended and created for us. Suspension of Habeus Corpus, suspension of Posse Comitatus, suspension of due process, of right to privacy, of right to bear arms, of separation of Church and State, of freedom of speech, of right to protest, right to property, of protection from search and seizure, of representation and on and on.

Our Constitution and our Republic are being openly and systematically dismantled before our eyes under the ageless guise of trading our most fundamental freedoms and liberties for an utterly false sense of security.

We need to take responsibility for our actions. Take pride in our communities and in our country. Respect the rights of our fellow man to his life, liberty, beliefs, property and pursuit of happiness (all of which are mentioned in the documents which founded our nation). Respect the rights of foreign sovereign nations to govern themselves by their own laws and customs. To aid only those foreign countries in need and only by consensus of the people as laid out in our Constitution and not to wage preemptive wars or enter entangling alliances with foreign powers. To return to a sound currency for our nation instead of relying on an unbacked paper currency implemented by a private bank to control every aspect of our society and government from the very top to the very bottom. To abolishing the income tax and returning our country to the Constitutional government system we had before 1913 where a man was free to enjoy the fruits of his own labor, thus enabling a great amount of income to go back into the hands of the people to be used directly in the economy and not instead go into the government coffers to be used at the whim of a bloated government acting largely in the interest of corporations and lobbyists, where companies take the profits but the American people pay the price of failure, thus perpetuating a one way flow of wealth away from the people.

When I look around me and see all the hallmarks of the fascist states we so soundly denounced over the past half century, I am appalled. When I hear what so many of my international friends, and the friends in foreign lands of all of us American people, think of our current government... it deeply saddens and disheartens me. When I see our media lying to the people and covering up the most important events of our time, because a handful of powerful companies own essentially all the sources of mainstream information and are in bed together with the government that enables them... it angers me. When I see our government openly being converted into a theocracy in violation of the Constitution, Creationism and biblical fundamentalism displacing the teaching of scientific fact and critical thinking skills in our schools, of a nation increasingly devolving into divisions of race, gender, sexuality and beliefs... echoing the unconstitutional change of our national motto from "E Pluribus Unum (out of many [come] one)", which celebrated the strength of our nation through its diversity, to the divisive "In God We Trust", which states that to be an American is to be a Christian and espouse Christian beliefs, which in turn shuts out millions of Americans who hold different beliefs or whose lifestyles don't match the arbitrary biblical morals of the Christian majority... I am pressed to rise up, to speak out, to rage against the criminal injustice being done to our nation as a whole.

We are showing almost all of the symptoms of the most heinous regimes in modern history and it is frightening to the extent to which the American people seem apathetic to and unaware of the dire warnings history holds for us.

There are countless direct parallels today between the United States and Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, Communist China, etc. The American heart and soul recoils at such claims, but the reality is there for those brave enough to look, see the evidence and act as true patriots to protect our country, our people and our Constitution which is at the very heart of it all.

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
-- Thomas Jefferson, November 13, 1787

So stated by the author of our own Declaration of Independence. A true patriot seeks always to guard against the consolidation of power by the government, to be ever vigilant in protecting our liberties. To maintain a spirit of resistance. To call the government into account for its actions.

I feel the desire to go on about how we cannot be set right as to the facts, as Jefferson proposes above, because our government has invented scores of illegal "top secret" classifications that violate the rule of law, because they have invented ways to prevent people from speaking out about what is being done to them, because they have destroyed vast amounts of incriminating evidence, in direct violation of the law, because they openly state that they are not beholden to the law and have the absolute authority to grant themselves any powers they so choose, at their own discretion and without the need to reveal their actions to anyone.... and on and on.

I can only hope people can start to open their eyes to what is happening. To what history tells us. Look at the facts and the evidence. Don't be afraid to ask questions, to research, to try to understand. Use your common sense, reason, critical thinking skills, rational and logical thought gain a greater understanding of the world you live in... of the great country you are a part of that is in imminent danger of fundamentally losing it's very foundation.

(There is so much more to these issues, but I must stop at some point and submit this... I fear that I've gone on too long as it is... I lack the gift of brevity it seems.)

Ron Paul is the Thomas Jefferson of our time and the only viable 2008 Republican option.

As Allen Holm states in his The Conservative Voice article Reasons for Republicans to Vote Paul, "Ron Paul is going to win the nomination of the Republican Party or the party is going to lose in the general election. Take that as a guarantee. One I would bet money on."

He closes out his excellent article with a number of quotes that I literally thought were from Ron Paul when I started reading. They so poignantly illustrate how Congressman Paul's stance echoes that of the author of our Declaration of Independence and one of the most influential founding fathers of our country.

We should also take a moment to note that yesterday Ron Paul set another campaign record by raising over six million dollars in 24 hours, beating his previous record of $4.2M in 24 hours, which was itself a record in the GOP.

http://ronpaulgraphs.com/dec_16_vs_nov_5_total.html

We should also take note again of the blatant, if not criminal, bias being shown by the mainstream media in openly trying to keep Ron Paul out of the limelight.

"You say Ron Paul doesn't have a chance? But who is giving you that idea? The major media outlets."

“I am for preserving to the states the powers not yielded by them to the union; and for preventing the further encroachment of the executive branch on the rightful powers of congress. I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, and for retiring the national debt, eliminating the standing army, and relying on the militia to safeguard internal security, and keeping the navy small, lest it drag the nation into eternal wars. I am for free commerce with all nations, political connections with none…. I am for freedom of religion, and for freedom of the press. And against all violations to the Constitution to silence our citizens” - Thomas Jefferson on his positions for the 1800 election.

“Paper is poverty…it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself” –Thomas Jefferson

“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be” –Thomas Jefferson

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them” –Thomas Jefferson

“I sincerely believe that banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies” –Thomas Jefferson

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” -Thomas Jefferson

“I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its Constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Paine, 1798

Restore the Republic. Restore the Constitution. Restore Freedom and Liberty to our nation.

Please vote for Ron Paul for President of the United States of America in 2008.

Excellent article on Ron Paul's historical relationship with Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson

I just read an excellent article that sheds some light on the issue surrounding the possible reluctance of people who might be hesitant to vote for Ron Paul on the grounds that they feel his reforms might be too radical.

The author goes on to cover the legacies of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, who both made similar, if not even more radical, changes during their presidencies, and how that actually garnered them re-elections and massive public support after initially narrowly winning the elections.

An excellent read!

Discrimination against Atheists

Another post from my discussions on another forum that I felt should also be posted here.

I know the story is from a couple months ago... but it begs discussion. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPHnXrU5JzU

One of the first, and most ridiculous, things I noticed was the fact that on a show about discrimination against Atheists, they make a panel that includes no atheists. How stupid is that?

That aside, the black guy came the closest to getting the point... the two ladies were total idiots. This is not a Christian nation and was never intended to be one. The Supreme Court has even begun to partially accept that fact and rule according to the Constitution. There is to be no establishment of religion and that is precisely what was done in the mid 1950's to counter the "Godless heathens of Communism" during the McCarthy era "Red Scare". "In God We Trust", "Under God" etc. All added between 1954 and 1957 in violation of the Constitution by acts of Congress.

Many of our founding fathers were Deists, not Christians, and understood the importance of maintaining a secular and neutral government in order to facilitate the equal treatment of all beliefs, religious or not religious. As Thomas Jefferson said: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Jefferson, for those who don't know, wrote the Declaration of Independence.

And while he made a few deistic references in it, such as divine providence and man's creator, these are distinctly absent from the Constitution save for the parts where religion is specifically mentioned solely to note it's willful exclusion, as in the cases of there shall not be any religious litmus test for office and specifically spelling out the oath of presidency, conspicuously lacking any religious reference etc.

Those points aside... the two women in the video repeatedly state that they should have the right to have prayer in school etc. What they are obviously too stupid to understand is that as fellow American citizens, we have the right NOT to be forced to participate in your religious beliefs. You cannot legally force a child to say "under God" in the pledge and the supreme court supported this. Our problem is with the stupid Christian belief that they have the right to force Christianity on non-believers, but non-believers don't have a right to speak up against it. I don't trust in God and my government is not supposed to be speaking for me or promoting such a belief. The founding fathers understood this and it wasn't until almost a century after its inception that the larger blows were stricken against freedom of religion.

She is patently wrong is saying that freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom to not believe. That's precisely what it means! It means the freedom to believe in what you want, even if that means no God... as Thomas Jefferson himself plainly stated!

Atheists are tired of being forced to recite religious statements when they don't believe in them. Of having their children forced to recite religious observance statements in school, or participate in religious activities. Of having science replaced by religion in schools etc.

Atheists have just as much of a right to have their opinions heard and to be free of being forced to participate in another persons religion just as much as those stupid bitches on that show whining about the Atheists speaking up about their rights.

It honestly shocks me how they could make such obviously completely hypocritical statements without batting an eyelash! It belies the fact that they don't see Atheists as fellow American citizens. They don't understand the concepts of Freedom and Liberty... of a Neutral and Secular government protecting the rights of ALL of its people to believe as they will... to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. They believe that THEY are right and Atheists are wrong, so Atheists need to shut up and not have any rights.

*sigh*

It's this kind of ignorant Christian bullshit that makes me hate Christianity and religion. I have to applaud the black guy for at least understanding the concept that Freedom means that even if you don't like what the other person has to say, you have to allow them the right to say it. They have just as much of a right as you do. Freedom doesn't mean "only what I want to hear" or "only what I want you to believe". Freedom of religion is the freedom to believe what you want to believe and not suffer oppression or persecution for it. And that is most certainly precisely what the Christians are trying their damnedest to do.

PS: I just remembered.. I also hate the egregiously ignorant statement "Atheists don't believe in anything."

How fucking ignorant and stupid is that? Atheists most certainly do believe in quite a number of things. They specifically believe that the idea of a extra-dimensional omnipotent, omniscience man in the clouds who created the universe in 7 days etc... and generally most of the garbage written in the bible, is ridiculous and flies in the face of common sense, logic, and centuries of scientific advancement and human understanding. They believe a whole variety of individual things... they vary from person to person. But them believing, for good reasons, that the mythology of the bible is self-contradictory, evil and ridiculous to say the least... is a belief in itself based on facts and evidence. It is diametrically opposed to a "belief in nothing". As a matter of fact, given the juxtaposition of Christians and Atheists, it is in fact Christians who could more accurately be said to believe in nothing... having a belief in a whole slew of things with cannot be seen, touched, smelled, tasted, tested for, proven, or disproven. Their belief is in the utterly unseeable and unknowable, and goes so far as to not only be unseeable, untestable and undetectable in any way, but also flies in the face of everything that mankind has learned in the millenia since the mythology was written.

Now who believes in "nothing"? It is painful just how stupid Christians can be.

I realize I get a little snitty in my wording, but I don't feel like rewriting it. The points are very clear and stand on their own.

Separation of Church and State

I've covered this issue in various ways in past posts, but felt I should write a clean, coherent post on the subject to hopefully clarify the issue.

First I'll include some posts I wrote on another forum, and then follow that up with some further explanation.

I ran across this article around 5 years ago, written by Rev. Charles Henderson. To give you an idea who he is, I've included an excerpt from his bio on his website "GodWeb".

It's refreshing to see a Christian who understands the fundamental importance of a separation between Church and State.

Here's the bio excerpt:

Who is Charles Henderson?

The Rev. Charles P. Henderson, a graduate of Princeton University and Union Theological Seminary, is a Presbyterian minister. He has led churches in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and has served as a chaplain at Princeton. He is the author of numerous articles and books including God and Science (John Knox / Westminster Press, 1986). He has taught and lectured at Princeton, Columbia, Yale Divinity School, Union Seminary, Harvard Divinity School, and others. He is Executive Director of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, an interfaith organization that publishes CrossCurrents, an academic quarterly and is President of the Society for the Arts, Religion and Contemporary Culture. Rev. Henderson is a founding member of CIE/ the Consultation on Interfaith Education.

He lives in New York City with his spouse, The Rev. Katharine Rhodes Henderson, Executive Vice President of Auburn Theological Seminary. The Hendersons have three children and two grand children. When not working on the projects mentioned above, Charles Henderson may be out sailing in the waters of New York harbor or beyond.

And here is the article itself in full:

A Wall That Should Not Fall
While some propose tearing it down, the wall separating church and state must stand

This is not the first period in our history when there has been a widespread debate over the posting of the Ten Commandments on school house walls. In 1844 there were riots in the streets of Philadelphia over the question of which version of the Ten Commandments would be so posted. In these riots six people were killed. Note that the 19th Century debate was not whether the Commandments should appear on school house walls, but only which version. But religious passions ran so strong around the issue that blood flowed in the city's streets.

I mention this obscure event in American history because it illustrates a problem I have with President Bush's effort to provide direct federal support to faith based organizations. When asked recently what the federal government could do to control the allegedly harmful effects of popular media: music, movies, and such, that appeared to be "bringing our country down," Bush again referred to his proposals to fund "character education" programs in the public schools. These new programs would not be run by the schools themselves but by private "faith-based" organizations, churches, para-churches, and the like.

You bet there's things the government can do. I would greatly expand character education funding. I think that after-school money ought to be available for faith-based programs and charitable programs that exist because somebody has heard the call to love a neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself. -- George W. Bush October 17, 2000

During last year's presidential campaign there was little debate about all this because Al Gore also announced his support for similar initiatives. Indeed, the extent to which religion factored in the presidential campaign is only one part of a much larger story. For several years now, in various ways, we have witnessed a major re-alignment in thinking in the highest reaches of power about the relationship between religion and public life, between church and state. Federal funding for character education programs in the schools and "faith based" poverty programs that would replace traditional welfare are only the tip of the iceberg.

Indeed, some suggest that if the last great event of the twentieth century was the fall of the Berlin wall and the emergence of a new world order in which capitalism prevails, the first great event of the twenty-first century may be the fall of the wall separating church and state in the United States and the emergence of a new "politics of redemption" in which the line between private faith and partisan politics disappears. Some welcome this trend, seeing it as the key to our future; others are deeply alarmed. And perhaps the most interesting thing about this discussion is that traditional differences between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, born again Christians and others less clear about their religious commitments are breaking down. New alliances are being forged, and old friendships tested.

In a recent article in the New York Review of Books, Joan Didion traces the roots of what George Bush has referred to as "compassionate conservatism." While the term is open to many possible interpretations, Didion credits (blames?) Marvin Olasky, a journalism professor at the University of Texas, who has been a Bush advisor since 1993, with doing more than anyone to influence the candidate's thinking on the topic. Olasky is a born-again, evangelical Christian and author of a highly influential book, The Tragedy of American Compassion. Published in 1992, the book so impressed William J. Bennett when he read it in 1994 that he gave it to Newt Gingrich as a Christmas present; Gingrich recommended it as required reading for all Republican members of Congress. Olasky has further refined his thinking in this year's Compassionate Conservatism, which is nothing less than a manifesto for the transformation of political life in America. Candidate Bush contributed a foreward for Olasky's latest book. In it he writes: "Marvin offers not just a blueprint for government, but also an inspiring picture of the great resources of decency, caring, and commitment to one another that Americans share."

In these books Olasky spells out the critical role that "faith based" organizations will play in the politics of redemption. He also makes an important distinction between newer "faith based" organizations and traditional ones like Church World Service or Catholic Charities that have long worked hand in hand with government. Writes Didion:

This use of "faith-based" is artful, and worth study. Goodwill was founded by a Methodist minister and run during its early years out of the Morgan Memorial Chapel in Boston, which would seem to qualify it as based in faith, although not, in the sense that Olasky apparently construes the phrase, as "faith-based." "Faith-based," then, is, as Olasky uses it, a phrase with a special meaning, a code phrase, employed to suggest that certain worthy organizations have been prevented from receiving government funding solely by virtue of their religious affiliation. This is misleading, since "religiously affiliated" organizations can and do receive such funding. The organizations that have not are those deemed "pervasively sectarian," a judgment based on the extent to which they proselytize, or make religious worship or instruction a condition of receiving aid. This, the Supreme Court has to date maintained, would violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Olasky believes that the very concept of a "wall" separating church and state is a fiction, a myth that should be exposed as such. Writes Olasky, "There's nothing about 'separation of church and state' in the Constitution or the First Amendment. That was Thomas Jefferson's personal expression in a letter written over a decade after the amendment was adopted.... The founding fathers would be aghast at court rulings that make our part of the world safe for moral anarchy."

Which brings me back to 1844 and those Philadelphia riots. In the third debate George Bush repeated over and over again that the problem with "Washington" is that people tend to be divided along partisan lines. Democrats and Republicans engage in too much " bitterness and bickering," and thus can't get anything significant accomplished. Wouldn't it be wonderful if, rather than dividing along partisan political lines, our leaders could unite around basic precepts such as the Golden Rule, which in the George Bush version declares that everyone should "love their neighbors as they'd like to be loved themselves."

In every instance where my administration sees a responsibility to help people, we look first to faith based organizations, charities and community groups that have shown their ability to save and change lives. ... We will change the laws and regulations that hamper the cooperation of government with private institutions.
-- George W. Bush July 22, 1999

Generalities like this make "compassionate conservatism" sound like something that all Americans could join in supporting, wholeheartedly. The problem is that just as there are differences with regard to the Ten Commandments that were so strongly felt that they caused riots in the streets of Philadelphia, there are also grave differences with regard to the Golden Rule and what it requires. While some believe that the Golden Rule (and the command to "love thy neighbor" with which George Bush confuses it) requires that Christians and Jews should learn to live together peacefully, respecting each other's beliefs, others passionately believe that neighborly love requires that Christians inform their Jewish neighbors that they are in mortal danger of facing an eternity in hell if they do not convert. Likewise, while some believe that the Golden Rule requires that gay and lesbian persons be treated as equals in every possible way, others believe with equal passion that the Golden Rule requires that one should inform gay and lesbian persons that they are living a life of sin. In fact, religious communities all across America are deeply divided in their understanding of what the Golden Rule requires with respect to issues like abortion, the relationship between the genders, capital punishment, gun control, school vouchers, or homosexual unions. Indeed, the courts of our churches are as deeply divided over many of these issues as is Washington. If you want to see examples of the partisan "bitterness and bickering" that George Bush finds is the heart of the problem in Washington, all you have to do is attend the national meeting of any of the major religious groups in America. Few of these meetings take place inside the Beltway.

If Bush advisor Marvin Olasky believes that Supreme Court decisions upholding the wall of separation between church and state have served no better purpose than to make room for "moral anarchy," I have news for him. The way out of moral anarchy cannot be found by turning our school systems, our poverty programs, or our public life generally over to the leadership of "faith based" organizations that are themselves deeply divided over basic questions about what true "faith" is. Religious passions and religious differences are the stuff that wars are made of. The founders of our republic knew this very well. That is why they erected the wall that was designed to separate religious passion from the more rational deliberations which they believed would contribute to good government. The founders of our republic got it right. Religious passions are important; they are the motivating force of my own life. They are also powerful and potentially dangerous, as the victims of religious persecution around the world can testify. We dismantle the wall the separates these passions from the seat of government at our own grave peril. This is one wall that should not fall.

The emphasis at the end is mine.

scourge99 said: Many people are very confused on what this means. The key word here is "establishment". The forefathers did not want a national church that existed in some European countries. So basically the US is not allowed to have a nationally recognized church or give preferential support to any religion.

Gee, expressly making it a law to have "In God We Trust" and "Under God" as parts of our government, pledge of allegiance, national motto and on our money etc... wouldn't happen to be preferential support for a religion would it?

When my government makes the express statement that to be an American is to believe in God, they are falsely speaking for me. They are asserting that I believe in God when I do not. They are clearly expressly supporting religion, expressly Christianity.

This quite clearly goes against the wishes of the founding fathers whose deliberations on this topic are available to understand the context in which they wrote it, including Thomas Jefferson, who authored the Declaration of Independence and who was influential in the creation of the Constitution and drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. He wrote "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." as well as making it clear that the government should not act to speak for any man by asserting for that man a believe in God.

While the root of the movement was to prevent the establishment of a church in relation to what had happened in England, through deliberation it was clearly deemed that to take any particular religious stance would necessarily diminish the equality of any other religious stance and thereby infringe upon the natural rights of man.

scourge99 said: There is no law or amendment that says, "Don't make laws just because your religion thinks it knows the only moral truth." My point is its scary to think that the US could become similar to a theocracy. The US may not be allowed to recognize a national church but it could recognize a bunch of laws stemming from a particular religion. Is there any way to circumvent this from happening?

However, on the flip side, if I am extremely religious, I believe my religion has the only answers, and in many cases, I would believe that others should follow my religion so they are "saved." So why shouldn't I attempt to have laws passed to have you "saved" if thats the will of the majority?

Is there some middle ground?

I think that was something important about the constitution and many of the documents involved in its creation, which are taken into account when interpreting constitutional rights. Our rights are not limited solely to what is spelled out explicitly in the constitution and bill of rights etc. It is not meant to imply that if something is not listed there, that you do not also still retain such other rights. It is more to cover simply a few of the most important as well as set some specific limitations and guidelines for the Government etc.

This is one of the reasons why so many supreme court decisions have still found in favor of "separation of church and state" because of the logical conclusions based on the full body of evidence etc.

I think some other important things to note are that the founding fathers had not only seen religious persecution in other countries, but had also seen it here in the United States before its inception with the infighting and persecution of the Puritans towards other Puritans and other Christians of differing beliefs, over differences of interpretation, or of the accusations of witchcraft or heresy etc.

They understood the idea that it was wrong to force another man to believe in your religion, and that by establishing a state religion, you effectively diminished the rights of any other religion that was not the favored state religion. That man had an inherent right to choose his beliefs for himself and that the role of the government was to stand on a neutral, secular ground in its laws to protect all religious beliefs equally. When a government takes a specific stand on the side of one particular religious belief, it inherently diminishes the protection and rights of all other religious beliefs.

In short, the government is establishing a state religion when it expressly states that all Americans believe in and trust in a Christian God. When they change the motto from the unofficial motto of "E pluribus Unum" (Out of many, [come] one.) to the official motto of "In God We Trust", they make the clear move from celebrating the diversity of ethnicities, beliefs, cultures etc of its constituents to the stance of labeling all citizens as Christians who believe and trust in God. Effectively labeling us a Christian nation, in spite of historical facts to the contrary. Then they officially add this motto to our paper currency, which is the only legal tender for all debts, public and private as a citizen. Then they add "under God" to the pledge of allegiance, requiring all citizens who wish to pledge allegiance to the United States, to pledge allegiance to it as a Christian nation, espousing a Christian doctrine.

I fail to see how people cannot grasp how this inherently diminishes the rights of people of different beliefs or non-believers. When we clearly see such quotes from George W. Bush himself as

Sherman: What will you do to win the votes of the Americans who are atheists?

Bush: I guess I'm pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in God is important to me.

Sherman: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?

Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

Sherman (somewhat taken aback): Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?

Bush: Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I'm just not very high on atheists.

This sentiment is echoed throughout the government and in turn throughout the citizenry. Atheists are considered the least trusted minority group in America on the basis of race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender and sexuality.

To not believe in God is to not be a patriot, to not be a true citizen of this Christian nation.

Time and again we hear the phrase "This is a Christian nation." or more specifically "This nation was founded as a Christian nation." While the former may sadly be true today, this nation was not founded as a Christian nation. This nation was founded by men of varying beliefs with the intention of preserving a freedom for its people to believe or not believe in the religion of their choice without reprisal, ill treatment or oppression. Whether they used the moral principles of their personal religious believes as guides in their decision making or not, and we know that most obviously did as an inherent part of who they were, is irrelevant.

The Separation of Church and State is not meant to oppress Christianity, or any other belief for that matter, but to instead preserve the rights of the citizens to believe in Christianity or any other religion or lack thereof by maintaining a neutral stance in its role and thus protect all beliefs equally. Taking a specifically Christian stance, requiring a pledge to that expressly Christian nation, inherently diminishes the rights of all other religious beliefs. It implies that to not believe in God is to not be an American because all Americans believe in and trust in God.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..."
— from the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

"... no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
— from Article VI of the U.S. Constitution

"The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
— from The Treaty of Tripoli, written during the administration of President George Washington, signed by President John Adams and unanimously approved by the Senate in 1797. (And in case you wanted to argue this point, the text that was signed by President Adams and reviewed and approved by the Senate did include that phrase.)

Ron Paul makes some serious fallacious claims.

I was reading another article today and ran across a link to an article by Ron Paul that immediately threw up a red flag. I decided to debunk his false claims here. I'm also a bit depressed to see this, as Ron Paul has thus far had a surprisingly solid record on the veracity of his claims and views etc.

From http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul148.html

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

The highlighted section is patently false in the case of the Constitution, and makes a false connection between Christianity and what are only deistic references, quite contrary to Christianity in reality, in the Declaration of Independence, which was written by Thomas Jefferson, who was probably the biggest proponent of Separation of Church and state in the history of the founding of our country, having drafted Virginia's Statutes on Religious Freedom, which espoused his views on Separation of Church and State, and also clearly stating his views in other other correspondence;

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

His references to the deistic God in the Declaration of Independence were "Nature's God", "Creator" and "Divine Providence". Jefferson made it very clear that he was not a Christian and generally abhorred organized Christianity, the church etc.

He even went so far as to re-write the bible in order to remove dogmatic teachings and references to Jesus' divinity etc.

Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, but he had high esteem for Jesus' moral teachings, which he viewed as the "principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of God, to reform (prior Jewish) moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice & philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future state." Jefferson did not believe in miracles. He made his own condensed version of the Gospels, omitting Jesus' virgin birth, miracles, divinity, and resurrection, primarily leaving only Jesus' moral philosophy, of which he approved. This compilation was published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible.

The only references to Religion in the Constitution are expressly to restrict them or forbid them. There is no mention of God whatsoever anywhere in the Constitution or any of its amendments.

The last paragraph of Article 6 states:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

And the first amendment states in part:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Those are the only mentions of religion anywhere in the Constitution or any of its amendments.

The Constitution even goes so far as to explicitly spell out in Article 2, Section 1 the oath of Presidency to remove any reference to God or religion, in line with the assertion made in Article 6.

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

This is regularly violated immediately with the swearing in of Presidents, as they add the "so help you God" to the end of the oath, even though the Constitution itself forbids a religious litmus test and explicitly states the oath to attempt to prevent alteration of that oath.

It should be clear at this point that Ron Paul's assertions are plainly completely fallacious and rather quite contrary to the truth of the matter.