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Posted on 10/14/2003 5:43:59 AM PDT by SJackson
On September 20, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a group at the UN in New York that the United States is a "Judeo-Christian" country. Immediately Powell felt compelled to amend his statement by saying America is "a country of many faiths." Scratch Judeo-Christian and insert country of many faiths. This qualification put the secretary back on the politically correct side of the ledger, and that was that. Or was it?
Powell's obvious slip of the tongue and his quick attempt to rectify it demonstrate the administration's prevailing mood of indecisiveness and its penchant to appease the rabid minorities that are fast calling the shots for the rest of us in the "land of the free."
What is wrong with referring to America as a Judeo-Christian country?
After all, the basis of our traditional concepts of law, morality, civility, and social order have been rooted in Judeo-Christian principles and ethics, and then translated into personal lifestyles and community mores. For more than two centuries the international community referred to the United States as a "Christian nation." And though it may not have been accurate in the most biblical sense of the term, no one seemed to object.
Who takes to the streets in Muslim countries with the expressed intent of wiping the landscape clean of Muhammad's visage? And who lambastes Islamic representatives at the UN for saying, "Ours is a Muslim country"? Not once has a Muslim recanted with "Uh-h-h, check that. Ours is a country of many faiths."
In a much-celebrated case in Alabama last year, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was suspended for defying a court order to remove a 2,400-kilogram monument of the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building.
Although attacks on displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms and public places have become common in the US, this case contained elements of particular interest.
Judge Roy Moore was a duly appointed Alabama Supreme Court chief justice. He contended the monument did not violate the First Amendment – and even some who opposed him agreed.
This fact, however, did not deter his opponents or Montgomery Circuit Judge Charles Price, who ruled Judge Moore's display of the Ten Commandments unconstitutional.
Tactics aside, the point is that militant minorities are on a crusade to destroy the underpinnings of our Judeo-Christian heritage. In the end, Judge Moore's magnificent monument was shunted off to an obscure room adjacent to a janitorial closet – which may say a great deal about what this struggle is all about.
SOMEONE ASKED why it would not be equally appropriate to display texts from the Koran in American courthouses. Because America is not Arabia. And though many naive Americans may not recognize the difference, Islamic Shari'a law, based on the Koran, is the stuff of insufferable agonies endured by non-Muslims in Sudan, Afghanistan, and other Islamist regimes. It has no compatibility whatever with American constitutional law and justice.
Last July, Federal Judge Napoleon Jones Jr. ruled that the Boy Scouts of America's lease of an 18-acre tract in Balboa Park, California, violates the provisions of the US and state constitutions governing the separation of church and state and is, therefore, unconstitutional.
The organization's major transgression, in the eyes of Judge Jones: its requirement that scouts express a belief in a Supreme Being. The Boy Scouts, therefore, were deemed a religious organization – a church, if you please. After all, the Scouts were using public land – an absolute anathema in the eyes of left-wing purists.
Around the same time, the Muslim Youth Camps of America (MYCA) were granted a lease on federal property in North Liberty, Iowa, by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The former Girl Scout camp will feature a mosque, minaret, and a 1,625-square-meter convention center.
At present we have a mixed bag of prayer before congressional sessions, the words In God We Trust on our currency, and the singing of "God Bless America" at public functions. But make no mistake about it: the militant anti-Judeo-Christian forces will not rest until every evidence of the foundation upon which this country was built is destroyed.
We have often referred to the present war on terror as an all-out fight to the finish. In the end, there will be winners and losers. This is a war of another kind, but a war nonetheless. It is an all-out clash of cultures; and there will be winners and losers.
The process is nothing new. It has recurred time and time again over the course of history. And it inevitably will continue as long as societies accumulate enough wealth, power, prestige, and honor to make them worth confiscating or conquering.
The writer is a prominent Christian author and syndicated radio broadcaster in the US.
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He would have been more accurate phrasing it this way. "And it inevitably will continue as long as societies accumulate enough, wealth, power, prestige, stupidity, moral relativeness, cowardice, and self centeredness to make them worth confiscating or conquering".
Ok... what system of governance would you prefer? Please choose from the following examples:
Muslim
Saudi Arabia
Iran
Sudan
Indonesia
Pakistan
Numerous others...
Hindu
India
Taoist
China
Buddhist
Japan
Jewish
Israel
Atheist
USSR
China (when they aren't giving lip-service to Taoism...)
Judeo-Christian
US
Australia
UK
"Old" (and sadly, dying...) Europe and Canada
Before you choose... consider which of the examples of governance above allows you to be whatever you want to be and which doesn't. Reality: American law and heritage was built on a foundation of Judeo-Christian values. You don't have to be one to participate (that's part of our values) but we sure don't want to see our system changed to another by your ignorance!
"Religion, as well as reason, confirms the soundness of those principles on which our government has been founded and its rights asserted." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1815
"[I]t is the sincere desire of the writer [Noah Webster] that our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament or the Christian religion.
The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety and benevolence; which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free Constitutions of Government.
The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.... All the miseries and evils which men suffer from, vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.
When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprinciped men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good, so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws. Intriguing men can never be safely trusted." -- Noah Webster, "History of The United States", 1832
"The rights of the colonists as Christians...may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the Great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament." -- Samual Adams
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." -- Alexander Hamilton
"The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained." -- George Washington, Inaugural Address, 1789
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." -- John Adams, Signing the Constitution, 1798
"It must be acknowledged that the term republic is of very vague application in every language... Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I would say purely and simply it means a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of direct action of the citizens." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1816.
In this last quote, you find that the meaning of Republican government to our Founding Fathers was based on the will and values of the majority. Seeing as how this nation has ALWAYS been predominantly peopled by Christians, you can excuse us if we believe our values ruled the day. -- Me, now.
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