Posted on 03/27/2008 5:43:12 AM PDT by Jay777
A nearly 50-year-old monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments does not violate the Constitution just because it sits nearly alone on public grounds in a Washington city, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday.
The division between church and state is a core principle of American democracy, but courts have long struggled to find exactly where the dividing line falls.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals cited precedent rulings in this latest case, which involves a 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) granite monument near the Old City Hall in Everett, Washington, about 25 miles north of Seattle.
The court found that the monument did not have a solely religious purpose. "Nothing about the setting is conducive to genuflection," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for a three-judge panel.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
More accurately, a mutated principle created by a judicial tyranny in the 1950's.
It's a miracle!!!!!
Your post demonstrates the difference between
“Constitutional Law”
and
“The Constitution”
Did hell just freeze over with flying pigs over head?
Somebody ping Judge Moore in Atlanta....
Wowser.
Thanks, we need those pigs flying over frozen hell after this decision by the 9th Circus.
What’s the catch? I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Bwahahahaha! Surrounded by drunken panhandlers, is it?
If I were in the area, I'd go over there and genuflect, just for spite.
Beat me by 45 seconds! GMTA!
NOW FOR THE BAD NEWS!
Since this ruling is from the 9th circus, it WILL be overturned.
Easy target :-). 9th Circuit judges clearly aren’t getting enough oxygen to their brains.
Not so fast. It was only a 3 judge panel. The plaintiff might just request an en banc hearing where all three rings of the 9th circus can correct this anomaly.
God must be so relieved that these judges upheld His Ten Commandments...
>>>What’s the catch? I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Well, if they are going to allow the State to post these laws, perhaps the court will require the State to enforce all of them.
I seem to recall that ... about 2 or 3 months ago.
What’s the catch? I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Apparently, the 9th said the monument could stay as long as all the “nots” were removed.
Oh, so the 10 commandments is OK as long as you don’t show them any reverence?
These arrogant libs really take the cake.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
Well, it's not like there's a custom among Christians or Jews of genuflecting (or praying, or singing hymns, or sacrificing chickens) at monuments carved with the Ten Commandments. Apparently this judge thinks there is, and that we'd be doing this if only the monument were in a better part of town.
Anyway, I think they're really worried that someone might get the idea that obeying the Ten Commandments is better than not obeying them ... and we can't have that in a free country!
This from the 9th Circus? ??
Maybe things are starting to turn around a little.
I have yet to get a good answer out of a leftist to the question:
What harm will befall someone that obeys those commandments?
I also have come to realize, recently, that the commandments are NOT (solely) restrictions on behavior and a means by which to show your obedience to God. They are a set of rules that, if followed, protect YOU from hurt and harm.
For example, “thou shall not covet”. It’s not that it’s going to harm your neighbor if you envy his stuff. It harms YOU, because you’ll be dissatisfied and unhappy with your lack of stuff. And, you’ll probably go into debt to get it, leaving you enslaved to someone else. Not to mention having the wrong focus, on the stuff instead of on God (2nd(?) commandment - make no idols).
Some people feel that their lives are meaningless without the excitement of committing adultery, stealing, and killing. And we wouldn't want them to feel bad about themselves, would we?
They are a set of rules that, if followed, protect YOU from hurt and harm.
That's only your personal interpretation of "hurt and harm". Others have a different reality which is just as good as yours! After all, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." (Justice Kennedy)
>>>I have yet to get a good answer out of a leftist to the question: What harm will befall someone that obeys those commandments?
It would put a crimp in the paycheck of many an NFL football player. 8^)
“Every new and successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
“We maintain that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.
To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the evil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers. or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor.”
“Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?”
It was a three judge panel. Presumably plaintiff will ask for an en bank review when they will have an opportunity to reassert the vital interests of the collective.
Yes, that is Madison rationale for the ‘establishment’ clause. Which is far less reaching and only one-way compared to the principle of separation of church and state established by the courts in the 1950’s.
I'm teaching my kids to distrust anyone that has this view of the nature of "truth".
After all, who would be more likely to deceive you?
Someone that believes there is no objective truth, or someone that believes the truth is defined by God?
9th Circuit?????
Is this the proverbial nut for the blind squirrel?
The stopped clock at one of the two times per day?
BS alert. The courts know where the line falls, but the power hungry socialists don't like it.
Noah Webster, the man personally responsible for Art. I, Sec. 8, ¶ 8, of the U. S. Constitution, explained two centuries ago:
The duties of men are summarily comprised in the Ten Commandments, consisting of two tables; one comprehending the duties which we owe immediately to God- the other, the duties we owe to our fellow men.
While the first 5 Commandments are between a person and their God, the latter 5 defines crimes committed under natural law. These are the crimes punishable by man, NOT whatever the government has decided was 'illegal'.
-----
It's also the origins of the concept of 'separation of Church and State'.
The "catch" is that, unfortuately in this case, a large percentage of 9th Circuit rulings are later overturned.
Thanks for ‘clarifying’ that for me. The founder who wrote that there should be “Perfect separation” between church and state didn't at all mean the establishment clause to advocate the principle of separation of church and state. Makes perfect sense......if you like revisionist history.
Oddly, then he should have wrote separation or perfect separation and got it passed. But he only wrote establishment, and that is what was passed. What Madison may have wanted passed does not change what was actually passed.
Do you think we should ignore the intent of our founders when interpreting the Constitution? What about the concept of “original intent”?
The meaning of the establishment clause is clear. As is the intent of the framers in passing it.
They wanted separation. They got separation.
As Madison predicted, it has served us well.
You have missed the self-enforcing attributes of the Tenth Commandment. When people desire something, they band together to get it. Once they band together, they need an agent to enforce their will. They empower that agent to control the property. That agent then accrues power by which to control that covetous majority.
That's why democracy is so dangerous to private property.
Just another facet of why such a simple set of 10 commandments cover every aspect of human behavior and failings.
Since everyone has a sin nature, no one should be empowered and entrusted with control over others’ lives and property - it’s too tempting. Governments should only be instituted and empowered to secure the rights to life, liberty, and property.
His tool to carry out this intent was the establishment clause.
No, it was the establishment clause in balance with the free exercise clause, both to be constrained by the Tenth Amendment. Thus, not only was the Federal government constrained from imposing a national religion or precluding religious worship, a local community could operate under religious laws (if they so wished) and the Federal government could do NOTHING about it.
Do you think we should ignore the intent of our founders when interpreting the Constitution? What about the concept of “original intent”?
Sure. You might learn about how it worked before implying what is effectively a 14th Amendment argument that the Feds should enforce "the wall of separation" at the expense of free exercise, which effectively imposes a uniform secular culture, which the Founders would have found abhorrent.
Sure, but just because Madison had a more purest view does not change the meaning of what was actually passed. Madison wrote a phrase that he thought that could get passed, which is a compromise from his more extreme view. Madison explained the meaning of the phrase here:
Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contary to their conscience, or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform (Annals of Congress, Sat Aug 15th, 1789 pages 730 - 731).
So yes, the original intent of what was passed is important to consider, but the personal thoughts of a more radical principle should not. If Madison that a more radical meaning phrase could have been passed, he would have presented it. But he did not, so it is irrelevant.
Yup, it's brilliant. Had the people followed the Mosaic law, they would have needed NO government at all, as 1 Samuel 8 laments.
Since everyone has a sin nature, no one should be empowered and entrusted with control over others’ lives and property - it’s too tempting. Governments should only be instituted and empowered to secure the rights to life, liberty, and property.
The power to secure is the power to control. I see government's role is to settle disputes, enforce contracts, and organize common defense.
So did the founders.
Then the supreme court decided within a decade to usurp this limit on the federal government.
“Politically Incorrect Guide to US History”
“P.I.G. to the Constitution”
The line doesn't exist, except in the minds of liberals.
Sound reasoning!
Skinning Cats Legal Means to Disarm the Second Amendment
Kelo and the 14th Amendment Exploring a Constitutional Koan
t was not all as is portrayed.
We have the most religious culture in the Western world, while many places with “state-Churces” (England) have almost abandoned religious sentiment. Once more showing how prescient Madison was.
That being said I agree with the 9th (don't say that often) that a 10 commandments display in no way establishes a religion.
The Madisonian ideal was that government would have no ‘awareness’ of religion. It has nothing to say on the matter either for or against other than in ensuring the right to freedom of worship (freedom of conscience) and the right to peaceably assemble.
“We maintain that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.”
You weren't talking about the free exercise clause, you were holding up the establishment clause without even mentioning it.
We have the most religious culture in the Western world, while many places with “state-Churces” (England) have almost abandoned religious sentiment. Once more showing how prescient Madison was.
It is nonsensical to presume that such was an endogenous response with so many other factors involved.
That being said I agree with the 9th (don't say that often) that a 10 commandments display in no way establishes a religion.
And I didn't say that you had.
The Madisonian ideal was that government would have no ‘awareness’ of religion.
The Founders' First Amendment applies only to the Federal government. Maryland was principally Catholic, Pennsylvania Quaker, New England Protestant, and the South largely Baptist. Had one of them chosen to write religious homogeneity into its State constitution, the Feds would have had nothing to say about it.
It has nothing to say on the matter either for or against other than in ensuring the right to freedom of worship (freedom of conscience) and the right to peaceably assemble.
Which was not my point. I was pointing out that it was entirely permissible under the original Constitution to have a "state religion" in one of the several states.
“We maintain that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.”
Which carries a presumption of purely secular governance by which the propensities of a population must be denied. Should the people of a State wish to institute Biblical penalties into their laws (such as a death penalty for adultery for example), it may not be popular in the whole country, but the Constitution would have allowed it. Natural Law competition was to be the source of discipline in the marketplace of ideas. You 14th Amendment secularists would thus deny their free exercise of their religion.
Religious laws NECESSARILY impinge upon matters of civil deliberation as is obvious from an even cursory reading of the Old Testament. Pretending otherwise as if such a wall could exist, is a statist fantasy.
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