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Great post. The Founding Fathers would be shocked if they were able to see today's courts and our use of litigation to solve trivial matters.
Exactly the point, which is why they are striving to make God "obsolete." It is notable that the secularists/liberals/Bolsheviks - whatever one wants to call them - are working both outside and inside the Church (like Frank Griswold, the misguided ECUSA bishop with his actions to consecrate homosexual priests and bishops, as well as bless same-sex marriages).
We should make no mistake about this: It is a movement, and it's happening all over the world. Every sacred institution is under attack, the Church, the Second Amendment, the Constitution itself, education, marriage, you name it - then think about it. When multi-billionaires like George Soros appear in this country and begin spending big bucks in concert with the UN, the ACLU and people like Michael Moore, and at the same time the SCOTUS goes nuts with its various decisions against God and to usurp property rights (THE basis for freedom), you have to see that their movement is gaining speed, and even our "conservative" politicians don't acknowledge it any more than they recognize the danger of the invasion from Mexico and points south.
The Big Picture is damned scary. It might not have panned out in the Soviet Union, but that isn't stopping these freaks.
"If the state says God does not officially exist, who -- or what -- endows the individual with certain unalienable rights? ......"
Since G*d hasn't been down here in a long time, we shall have to make do on our own. If I may be forgiven for even mentioning his name on FR, the founder of ACLU aptly stated "They have rights who will fight for them".
Unalienable rights exist for all men, but they must be willing to insist on them. The Iraqi people did this in their recent election. Ironically, as the Iraqi's exerted their Unalienable Rights, the Supreme Court egregiously restricted the property rights of Americans
Whether or not one believes G*d gave man rights is not the issue. Is society predicated upon those Unalienable Rights? Is that society's populace willing to fight to keep their Unalienable Rights?