Posted on 09/02/2003 12:42:01 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The secularists are gloating. They got a court order to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building and another court order to suspend Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore who put it there.
But anyone who thinks this confrontation in Montgomery is just about an inscribed rock and a defiant judge is out of touch with reality. The Ten Commandments dispute is the tip of the iceberg in the ongoing battle to obliterate every acknowledgement of God except behind the closed doors of churches.
The goal of the secularists and the atheists is to treat religious people like smokers. You can continue to exist only if you are out of sight, out of hearing and out of smell.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and other anti-religious groups and atheists have instigated scores of lawsuits all over the country demanding that judges banish God from all public forums. The ACLU lost its efforts to remove the Ten Commandments from courthouses in Kentucky and suburban Philadelphia, but the Freedom From Religion Foundation got a federal judge to ban a Ten Commandments monument from a public park in LaCrosse, Wis., even though the city had sold the land it sat on to a private group.
The city of Everett, Wash., is being sued by Americans United for Separation of Church and State to remove a Ten Commandments monument from city property. It is one of many Ten Commandments monuments donated to cities during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s by the Fraternal Order of Eagles.
The ACLU has already forced the removal of the Eagles' Ten Commandments monuments from eight Utah cities and has announced a scavenger hunt to track down a ninth that the ACLU believes exists but can't find.
The ACLU intimidated the National Park Service into removing plaques from the Grand Canyon that contained verses from the book of Psalms. It was agreed that the Park Service can continue to use the names of Hindu gods for some of the trails and canyon formations.
The ACLU got the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to let stand a federal district court decision banning grace before meals at Virginia Military Institute. The Citadel then announced that it, too, would eliminate prayers before meals, and you can bet that the ACLU will now target prayers at our military and naval academies and onboard ship.
The atheists and secularists are on the warpath to stop the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance because it contains the words "under God." Atheist Michael Newdow was successful in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the ACLU won in Colorado, and we can expect similar lawsuits in the 33 states that require recitation of the pledge in public schools.
In Pennsylvania, a federal judge voided a state law that required teachers to lead students in reciting the pledge or singing the "The Star Spangled Banner" each morning. The animosity against the national anthem is probably because its fourth stanza includes the words "our motto: 'in God is our trust.'"
Suing on behalf of agnostics and lesbians, the ACLU got a judge to banish the Boy Scouts from a San Diego city park where they have met since 1920. The Scouts' offense was that they include God in their membership oath.
The attempt to remove God from all state constitutions is at the heart of the Montgomery dispute. Justice Moore took an oath to uphold Alabama's constitution which, in order to "secure the blessings of liberty," invokes "the favor and guidance of Almighty God."
The silliness of the arguments against Moore's Ten Commandments 5,280-pound granite monument, known as "Roy's Rock" is shown by the repeated assertion that he is trying to establish the Christian religion. The secularists seem unaware that the Ten Commandments predate Christianity.
When chief antagonist Barry Lynn was asked on television how he could oppose the Ten Commandments monument in Montgomery when the U.S. Supreme Court building shows the Ten Commandments on its walls, he said that's different because the Supreme Court also shows the Code of Hammurabi. But Moore's rock likewise displays several other quotations from historic documents.
The secularists and the atheists seek out judges who pretend to find rights in the U.S. Constitution that no one else have seen for over two centuries. The federal judges who believe they can make law, and punish, fine or imprison those who challenge their tyranny, display arrogance like King Louis XIV's famous words, "L'etat, c'est moi" (I am the state).
The American people don't have to tolerate the federal judiciary's totalitarian grab for power.
When Congress returns to Washington after Labor Day, its first order of business should be to use its Article III, Section 1 power to pass a law withdrawing jurisdiction from all federal courts over whether an acknowledgement of God violates the First Amendment.
The solution is really that simple. It's not only perfectly constitutional, it's Congress's constitutional duty to stop the out-of-control federal courts.
A "Humanist" is someone who promotes human interests, or at least thinks he does. This can be secular or religious.
Whatever your religious position, these days the problem is anti-humanists not humanists. That is to say the leftist Kool-Aid drinkers who promote what they conceive of as the interests of the "planet" against human interests.
Old fashioned socialists claimed that doing things their way would make people better off. That made them vulnerable to the argument that socialism doesn't work, which is to say that it doesn't make people better off.
Modern leftism is not vulnerable to such an argument, because human well-being is not on the agenda at all. The position that human well-being should be on the agenda is a moral position, but not a logical defect in their ideology.
At this juncture secular humanists and religious people are to a large extent on the same side, because they are all in favor of the continued existence of the human race.
... don't forget that particularly snide character from the Mikado.
Phyllis Schlafly article, PING!
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