William Rehnquist totally destroys "Separation of Church and State" myth

http://www.belcherfoundation.org/wallace_v_jaffree_dissent.htm ^ | William Rehnquist

[Captain Beyond]

bump

[Roscoe]

Yappy doesn't like quotes. Unless they're fraudulent.

[PhilipFreneau]

>>>> "Our nation had censorship from the beginning at the federal, state and local levels."

>> Help me! -- I can't stop posting this crap!

I knew you would be back. Who in their right mind would believe you when everyone, but you, is familiar with censorship. For example, we know about the "beep" networks use to cancel out curse words on TV (on radio, too). Those of us who are older know that movies and TV are not as censured today as they were in, say, the 1950's, when married couples did not even sleep in the same bed. And all of us know that there are ratings on movies today (for example, "R", "PG", etc.). You live a very sheltered life, sonny.

[PhilipFreneau]

>> Jefferson did not "coin" that phrase, he borrowed it (as did James Madison) from Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island.

Thanks for the info. I always assumed it was from Jefferson.

[PhilipFreneau]

>> You want the gov to censor something that it underhandidly condones.

I am not sure I understand your statement. See my post #104.

[USMMA_83]

God flows throughout our system

The law that allows women the ability to choose abortion, does God flow through that law?

[E Rocc]

Maybe, maybe not; but one of the communist goals is to: "Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state"."

Not from schools....from private schools. Communists of course also seek to eliminate those. Libertarians strongly support such schools.

No one is saying that private schools can't have all the prayers they want. What those of us who believe in separation are saying is that since public schools subsist on tax dollars and can in many cases compel attendance, they must be considered an agency of the government and therefore must not show religious preference.

-Eric

[GailA]

btt

[Jonx6]

ping

[E Rocc]

The important thing about the Danbury letter and the quote from Monopolies, Perpetuities, Corporations, Ecclesiastical Endowments is not so much that Jefferson and Madison believed so strongly in Separation, but that both of them believed that it was established by the Constitution. Jefferson even pointed specifically at the First Amendment as its source.

-Eric

[E Rocc]

First, we must erect a wall of separation between the concepts of a belief in God, and religion; they are by no means one and the same.

Actually, belief in "God" is a religious belief. It is of course distinct from atheism, agnosticism, or polytheism.

The next step is a belief that said God intervenes in the affairs of man. The "clockmaker" variety of Deism does not accept this principle, yet Deists believe in God. Incidentally, the "creator" related lines in the Declaration of Independence are not inconsistent with "clockmaker" Deism.

Once intervention is accepted, monotheism branches off into several different variants. The Ten Commandments only apply to Catholics and Jews...though there's nothing in them that would cause a Muslim to object. Moore's selection of the King James Bible version (as opposed to the US Supreme Court which just shows tablets with Roman numerals) further narrows the interpretation.

Every time that Government endorses one or more steps down this path, in any direction (including atheism), Separation is breached.

-Eric

[xzins]

The deists of early american were judeo-christian deists.

Witness: Jefferson's translation of the bible and high regard for Jesus Christ.

[kidd]

Interesting. From your link:
==========================================================
Two books published this year will help clarify Jefferson's intent. Despite their plain-vanilla titles and drab covers, Philip Hamburger's Separation of Church and State (Harvard) and Daniel L. Dreisbach's Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State (New York University Press) are vigorous critiques of separationist dogmas.

Dreisbach, a professor in American University's Department of Justice, Law, and Society, writes that Jefferson "saw no contradiction in authoring a religious proclamation as a state official and refusing to issue a similar proclamation as the federal chief executive." Dreisbach further argues that Jefferson's wall separated the federal government from churches and state governments, rather than separating churches from all levels of government.

Hamburger, who teaches law at the University of Chicago, inflicts greater damage to absolute separationist readings of American history. Hamburger documents that the contemporary understanding of church-state separation is rooted far less in Jefferson than in Hugo Black, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education (1947). And Black's advocacy of church-state separation, in turn, found its roots in the fierce anti-Catholicism of the Masons and the Ku Klux Klan (Black was a Kladd of the Klavern, or an initiator of new members, in his home state of Alabama in the early 1920s).
==========================================================
These books seem to completely downgrade the importance that is given (in modern times) to Jefferson's statement. Jefferson's remark in his letter to Danbury Connecticut was more of a states rights issue. The modern interprettation of Jefferson's letter is strongly rooted in anti-Catholic bigotry. Just another example of Protestants hurting themselves with their own Catholic bashing.

Thanks for the link.

[PhilipFreneau]

>> What those of us who believe in separation are saying is that since public schools subsist on tax dollars and can in many cases compel attendance, they must be considered an agency of the government and therefore must not show religious preference.

I doubt I will ever understand liberterians. But I do know that removal of prayer in public school, and removal of all referenced to God in public places, was never the intent of the Founding Fathers, nor the intent of those who ratified the 14th Amendment. From what you said, it appears liberterians support usurpation. I do not.

[E Rocc]

The deists of early american were judeo-christian deists.

Witness: Jefferson's translation of the bible and high regard for Jesus Christ.

Jefferson's translation of the Bible left out quite a lot. Particularly Revelations, for very firm reasons:

"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it, and I then considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams... I cannot so far respect [the extravagances of the composition] as to consider them as an allegorical narrative of events, past or subsequent. There is not coherence enough in them to countenance any suite of rational ideas... What has no meaning admits no explanation... I do not consider them as revelations of the Supreme being, whom I would not so far blaspheme as to impute to Him a pretension of revelation, couched at the same time in terms which, He would know, were never to be understood by those to whom they were addressed."

--Thomas Jefferson
to Alexander Smyth, 1825.

As for Jefferson, he considered Jesus a great moral teacher but there is no evidence that he believed him to be a divine figure, let alone the literal Son of God. There is evidence of what he thought of Christian belief surrounding his conception:

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823.

-Eric

[E Rocc]

I doubt I will ever understand liberterians. But I do know that removal of prayer in public school, and removal of all referenced to God in public places, was never the intent of the Founding Fathers, nor the intent of those who ratified the 14th Amendment.

You are reviving a red herring embraced by the anti-Separationists. No one is saying that all references to God must be removed from all "public places". Only that governmental entities may not show religious preference, giving one sect or group of sects privileges not granted to all.

-Eric

[aristeides]

I heard Dreisbach interviewed on WMAL radio in D.C. yesterday. He said he is inclined to believe Moore is right and the federal judges wrong on the law in this case.

[PhilipFreneau]

>> No one is saying that all references to God must be removed from all "public places". Only that governmental entities may not show religious preference, giving one sect or group of sects privileges not granted to all.

You are correct in saying that no "sect" should be given religious preference, but the founders considered a "sect" to be a sect of the Christian faith. Oliver Ellsworth, a Connecticut delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, in explaining to the people the clause that prohibits a religious test for public office, stated, "A test in favor of any one denomination of Christians would be to the last degree absurd in the United States. If it were in favor of Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, or Quakers, it would incapacitate more than three-fourths of the American citizens for any public office and thus degrade them from the rank of freemen."

[PhilipFreneau]

>> You are reviving a red herring embraced by the anti-Separationists.

I forgot to mention this: George Washington, in his farewell address, warned we should forever be "indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts." He went on to add, "With slight shades of differences, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together."

He went on to warn, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them."

Summarizing, George Washington stated that this nation had a common religion (with slight shades of differences), and he stated that if you subvert religion and morality in our nation you are unpatriotic.

[xzins]

Everything you've written simply affirms that Jefferson was focused in a Judeo-Christian direction.

He was a judeo-christian deist. He wasn't a neutral deist.

His thought patterns, issues, writings -- you name it -- focused in a judeo-christian direction.

Additionally, he had a staunch judeo-christian ethic.

"Endowed by their Creator" assumes a creator. That concept of a "Creator" is NOT part of every world religion. It IS, however, a part of the judeo-christian worldview.