“I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot
sleep forever.”
~ Thomas Jefferson ~
The
legislative and judicial branches of our government are systematically
destroying America’s religious foundation and whether you personally believe
in God or not is irrelevant to the danger inherent in that.
The fact is the vast majority of Americans do believe in God and
religion is and has been a strong foundation upon which they depend to fill many
needs in their lives—regardless of which religion they follow.
Religion
was so critically important to the Founders, that effective December 15, 1791,
America ratified its position on the relationship between religion and
government and summed it up very clearly and simply in the very first section of
the First Amendment of our Constitution. Religion
was the ‘first of the first’ so to speak in the eyes of our Founding
Fathers:
"Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof..." ~
First Amendment ~
To
contrast the position of our modern day courts and say that the founders
intended to prohibit people from mentioning God, the church or religion in and
around the American state is a perversion of the facts.
On the contrary, the First Amendment very clearly says that it is the
state, in the form of Congress, who cannot prohibit the free
exercise of religion by the people; it doesn’t restrict or
prohibit the people from freely expressing their religion in any way!
Free exercise thereof means exactly that to my simple way of
interpreting this and I have to believe the founders knew exactly what they were
writing when they put pen to parchment—it’s the people that are the free
element here and congress the restricted element. Congress shall make no law prohibiting that freedom of the people,
no mention or restriction of where, when or how as I read it.
In fact, everything the founders did in the first 10 Amendments was
designed to specifically protect individual rights.
Keep in
mind also that the founders witnessed the real danger to individual freedom of a
state established church as exemplified in England and it was an official state
church, overseen and directed by government, they desperately wanted to
prohibit.
If we
look deeper into the founder’s views of religion via their own words, separate
from the Constitution, it’s unmistakably clear what they thought…
“Religion
[is] the basis and Foundation of Government.”
~ James
Madison ~
“No
power over the freedom of religion…[is] delegated to the United States by the
Constitution.”
~ Thomas Jefferson ~
“While
just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion afforded
to government is its surest support.” ~
George Washington ~
Does
this sound like men who intended to go where the judiciary has taken us over the
past 40 years? Presidents
Washington, Jefferson and Madison would have been hauled away for publicly
making such statements today given our modern courts.
Over the past 40 years however, there’s been a concentrated effort to
contort this concept of religious freedom and generally exterminate religion
from the public sector by placing the prohibition referred to in the First
Amendment on the people instead of the government!
Starting
in the early 60’s when Madelyn Murray O’Haire convinced the Supreme Court
that school prayer was some kind of national threat, we’ve been running God
out of town on a rail of pandering atheism ever since. We went to moments of silence in order to compromise with an
uncompromising left and from displaying the Ten Commandments to a taxpayer
funded display of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung—all in the name
of separation of church and state and constitutional freedom?
People can’t even pray at public events now according to some
courts…even if the majority of the people at that event want to pray.
Now how in the world does prohibiting prayer at football games for
example square with the concept “…free exercise thereof.”
Our courts have simply declared war on public religious expression and
have used the First Amendment as the justification to do so!
But my
next question is this, ‘why attack and destroy religion?’
Whether
you are an atheist or follow a religion of some nature doesn’t matter in this
case. The point is religion has
always been a foundation upon which people heavily depend—a foundation
independent of the state. The
current trend in this and other areas of our society, as we’ve all seen in our
lifetime, has clearly been to create greater dependency on government. Therefore any foundation, religion or otherwise that isn’t
government centric must be removed and the state put in its place to fill the
vacuum. It clearly comes down to
this: Governments have always
wanted to dictate and control ever increasing aspects of people’s lives,
forcing them to rely on and look solely to government for everything. Anything, like religion, that provides a foundation
independent of government must be replaced…and therein lies the common
danger—atheist or believer—government control is a threat to all.
Like it
or not, agree with religion or not, this country was founded on Judeo-Christian
principles and they are inconsistent with the move toward the Godless state we
have seen coming over the last 4 decades.
Wouldn’t
it be interesting if we could bring back George Washington and ask him what he
thought about all this? Well, in a
way we can, so let’s ask him.
“President
Washington, what do you think about this trend of interpreting the Constitution
to actually restrict free and public expression of religion?”
“If
I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed
by the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the
religious rights of any ecclesiastical Society, certainly I would have never
placed my signature to it.” ~
George Washington ~
Thank
you Mr. President. That’s what I
thought you’d say.
As
I’ve contended in past columns, I know some legally trained folk will object
to my views of the Constitution but I’m just reading the words as written
under a light of what I think is simply common sense.
Post
Script for Thomas Jefferson. Sir, I
too tremble for my country at the thought of a just God but in my own way, I
welcome Him to stop by and sit a spell, but again, that’s just the view from
my saddle…
Contact
Colonel Dan: coloneldan@bellsouth.net