gsx1138

What! When did France conquer Canada? I heard those French were excellent fighters but I had no idea.

It doesn't help when well known polititians get up on their soapbox and spout off Christian fundy lies about the founding fathers.

ELECTROGOD

I nominate the religion "Goobly Googoo" as the state religion.

dangin

Actually, my favorite thing about the first amendment is how much babtists wanted it. They were on the side of Jefferson and Madison. They wanted to bring down, or take the power away from the Anglicans. It's just so funny that today, to me anyway, Babtists are among the worst at chipping away at the wall that their ideological forefathers helped create.

Grad Student Humanist

I think the best argument against the notion that this country is founded on the Xtian religion (or religious principles if you will) and for the separation of church and state is the fact that the Founders has ample opportunity to establish not only a state church, but a theocracy if they so chose. They could have made Xtianity a requirement for citizenship or to hold office, and they could have emblazoned the name of Jesus Christ on every page of the founding documents. But instead they gave us a secular constitution which doesn't even mention God once.

Now if the constitution were being re-written today and let's say you had a couple of "good Christian gentlemen" like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson directing the project, what are the chances that the name Jesus Christ doesn't show up in every other line?

Praise the Lord that our Founders were Enlightenment men and not fundies.

capnkirk

I have read through this entire thread, and the only thing that HAS been said that I can take issue with is about Europe...I thought WWII ended Europe and all that was left was a bunch of foreign countries?!?

SOOooooo....let me toss in a live grenade!

In the light of the intended purpose of the Establishment Clause as expressed on this thread,

How does a school voucher program that enables me to take my kid out of a failing public school and put him in another school OF MY CHOICE, be it parochial or not, public or private, violate this clause? It is not government that is directing where the money will go. I AM!!

Stephen Maturin

Disturbingly enough, at least one current Supreme Court justice wouldn't mind seeing a return to the "good old days" in this regard. Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrence in last year's school voucher case in which he suggested that the Establishment Clause shouldn't be applied to the states, or at least not with the same rigor that it's applied to the federal government. Apparently, Clarence would have no trouble at all with a Church of Ohio or Our Lady of Arkansas.

On the bright side, Thomas's view is so goddamned loony that none of the other justices, not even Scalia, would sign on. On the not-so-bright side, silence doesn't necessarily imply disapproval.

Oresta

It may be your choice, but it ain't your money, and it sure as hell doesn't come from the voucher fairy.

capnkirk

How (so far as establishment clause (EC) goes) is this any different from the woman who tithes some or even all of her welfare check to her church? Or should that be illegal too? The point is: What places school voucher money in a different category vis a vis EC than any other money that government dispenses to persons?

And I'll argue that it IS SO my money! It's a partial refund of tax monies I have paid! The Gov't doesn't have any other kind of money. It's ALL our money!

See, I warned you it was a live grenade!

Toto

School vouchers can involve an excessive entanglement of state and religion, what with the government having to impose standards on the schools that receive the vouchers and audit how the tax money is spent, and the motive of the legistlature is usually to promote religion.

But I think it is a close call, constitutionally speaking. I think that the public policy reasons against vouchers are more compelling.

capnkirk

Who says government has to impose any additional standards on private schools just because I use a voucher to send my kid there? Does the government impose additional standards on grocery stores that accept food stamps? Same difference! That claim is just anti-voucher propaganda. My sister is a teacher and has been given talking points literature to that effect from her union.

I went to a small town school that specifically refused to accept any state money because doing so made the school subject to the state's dictation of curricula and textbooks. Because of that refusal, fully 50% of the graduates who attended college consistantly stayed on honor roles there. This high school graduated about 50/yr, about half of them hispanics. In 1961, Project Talent (a govt study to evaluate school performance) picked my school as one of 1000 to be tested. My little school only placed first overall. So pardon me if I'm not very sympathetic to insistence that states need to impose more standards on schools. The mountain of standards they have already imposed on public schools certainly hasn't had such a positive effect so far.

Auditing need not ascertain anything more than that there was no criminal fraud involved (i.e. It is a REAL school and the student is actually enrolled there.).