M.C. Busman

Feel free to add your thoughts to this.

What really brings home to me the fact that most of the people trying to push God into our constitution are clueless are some of the following:

1. If this was supposed to be a Christian nation, why a bill of rights with 10 original amendments INSTEAD of simply adopting the 10 commandments as our national law?

2. Why such vagueness in the Declaration of Independence concerning the term and phrasing of "...their Creator..."? After all, the author could just have written Jehovah, Yaweh, or Jesus. People offended by the vagueness could have refused to sign the document.

3. Why are phrases like "In God We Trust" and "...Under God..." so...so...RECENT? Were the founders, the original authors and signors of our nation's foundational documents too stupid to include specific references to God...or did they have a good reason NOT to do so?

4. Why no national institution of religion, even a semi-secular or inclusive Christian one? Why the apparent attempt to separate chucha nd state if for a reason other than the founders knew it could only lead to harm and oppression? This did not forstall private churches preaching in public.

I often feel that "God" is pushed so hard today in public as politicians' nearly foolproof method of avoiding real issues and facts. That there is such a wide majority leading us, corpulent with ignorance and having absolutely no clue as to the meaning of most of these writings is beyond sad...it approaches frightening.

It would behoove these folks to read some of the writings of the "minority" members of the first congress, including Thos. Jefferson and Thos. Paine, who are clearly deists (I can't remember the names of others offhand--I have read the works of these two). Jefferson openly expressed contempt for the Christian Bible in letters to his son while Paine's "Age of Reason" ripped into the bible and Judeo-Christian thought in general. Nobody sought to have the names of these two stallwarts blotted from the annals of American history, or ripped from the D of I (O.K., Paine had to move abroad when the uneducated masses heard rumors of his being an Atheist).

It has also become clearer to me after 9/11 (when I was no longer the only person on our block to fly a flag ) that many of these "god-sy" folks are becoming the very thing they decry in the middle east--religious extremists. Think of other countries which are so stringent about suddenly inserting "God" into their constitutions. In Japan, there was an emperor-god. In Iran, God (represented by armed revolutionaries) overthrew the shah...to take away the rights of the people and impose a holy theocracy. Take a look at the rest of the middle east...physical terrorism is backed by psychological control. Women who go without headscarf are shot...because they are disobeying God's command. Now, isn't it nice that so many people are rushing to do God's work? This frees God to do a little gardening and enjoy a nice cool glass of iced tea...I suppose.

Perhaps the modern founders of the American Nation were wrong, after all. Maybe they should have imposed a theocracy upon the people, with a mighty American Pope at the helm to enforce God's laws...as the church/state saw fit. It would have done away with all this Civil Rights gobbeldy-gook, that's for sure.

But we know that is not the way it happened, that the guys who formed the foundtaion of the nation were smarter than that, and saw through the veil of religion, saw how religion could prop up a dictatorship and smash the rights of the individual. We know. Why doesn't everyone else?

Read...your...national documents! Daily!

Take Care, all!

M.C. Busman

[ July 18, 2002: Message edited by: M.C. Busman ]</p>

Buffman

"...one nation, under Greed and Superstition,..."