Secular Elation

<a href="http://www.fredericknewspost.com/display.cfm?storyid=20226" target="_blank">Commandments Tabled Challenged by High School Senior.</a>

Brave person. But what really infurated me was the last few bits in the article:

So what if he hasn't voted or pays taxes? How does this, in any way, affect the contents of his letter and his reasons for opposing the tablet? What a pathetic reason to criticize the 18-year-old's position!

bonduca

The 79-year-old fogey from the Christian Coalition, you mean? Heh.

When did advanced age automatically confer the right to violate the First Amendment? I must have missed that....

RufusAtticus

Read the Constitution, there is a clear right for the "Right" to oppress the "Wrong."

I think one of the more enlightened comments came from a county lawyer in TN. (I'm paraphrasing here.)

"I don't see why any one wouldn't like the ten commandments, but I guess I might be offended if the roles were reversed."

~~RvFvS~~

Ether

And why we should listen to the Christian Church? I sure don't think they have paid their taxes!

People can come up with such things...

BigBlue2

Mr Tansey should be nicer to younger people. They're the ones who'll choose his Nursing Home.

Seth K

It doesn't. He's just grasping at straws to claim that the kid has no right to disagree with him. (Taxpayer status does affect one's standing to sue in court over it, but effectively anyone residing or owning a business within city limits is considered one regardless.)

I've been involved with local C-S issues, and have noted that it's a common tactic to claim, falsely, that the complainers are "outside agitators" and thus have no right to tell the "community" what to do. In my city, a bunch of local groups got together to persuade the city to stop leasing office space (800 sqft, prime downtown location) to the Boy Scouts for a mere $1/year, due to their discrimination against atheists and gays. One speaker claimed that the head of our local ACLU chapter never lived in the city, and thus had no right to complain. The ALCU guy actually lived not more than 10 blocks from City Hall!

Jamie_L

It's called argumentum ad hominem. It's a logical fallicy. It has no bearing on the weight of the 18-year-old's argument. Unfortunately, ad hominem is tried-and-true, and tends to work very well. *Sigh*

If some 18-year-old church-goer complained about a sign on public property that said "There is no God," would this 79-year-old be so critical of him?

Jamie

Ron Garrett

I sent the following to the entire City Council:

Dear Alderman Kzemchak Ramsburg:

I wanted to congratulate you on your courageous and forceful stand on the issue of government sponsorship and promotion of religion on public lands.

Sadly this statement by Alderman David Lenhart reflects a grossly uninformed view of American history when he states:

"I don't want to hear about the separation of church and state argument," he wrote in the e-mail. "It is a tired, overused argument which most people who use that statement either have no understanding what it means or they forgot that this country was founded under God, not exempt from Him."

Respectfully, this is a religionist’s preferred interpretation of the history of our nation, but it is at odds with the historical record and the writings of the men who did the founding of this nation and the writing of the First Amendment.
I am descended from families who were here for the founding of the nation and the early days of what was then Virginia. My Virginian patrilineage goes back to William Garrett, who arrived at Jamestown in 1619 as part of Peircey’s Hundred. Early on in Virginia, the Anglican Church was the official church supported by government taxation. But in 1776, future Founding Father James Madison was elected to the Virginia Revolutionary Convention along with his colleague, Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, both of whom would be Presidents of the United States one day. Neither man was a Christian, both in fact being Deists who despised the church. Under the law at the time, a man could be jailed for being a non-Anglican, or what was then referred to as “non-conformity.” After the Convention became a state legislature, Madison and Jefferson proposed and gained passage of an act which disestablished the Anglican Church, denied it exclusive legal status and ended its tax support.

In 1784, in an attempt to recoup, religionists persuaded Patrick Henry and George Washington to propose a bill “establishing a provision for teachers of the Christian religion” which attempted to circumvent establishment concerns by giving money to all churches, as is the tactic employed in support of the Faith-Based Initiative. Henry called it “a convenient compromise” but Jefferson and Madison called it, “government enforced religion.” Madison wrote his Memorial and Remonstrance against this legislation and the bill went down to defeat. The legislature then passed Madison’s and Jefferson’s proposed Religious Freedom Act, affirming the separation of church and state, the foundational principle incorporated into the Bill of Rights by these same men. This Act stated clearly, “No man shall be compelled to frequent, or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever.”
These founders would scarcely have accepted the proposition that Catholic Community Services and the Salvation Army are not “places” and “ministries” of religious organizations, or that by providing these organizations tax dollars the federal government has not “compelled” the “support” of these organizations. Nor would they accept that the use of publics lands for display of particular religious teachings and iconography was appropriate in any sense. When these men wrote, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion” they were perfectly capable of saying, “respecting the establishment of a state church” if such had been their intent. Their command of the English language was thorough and exacting.

In his letter to William Bradford dated January 24, 1774, Madison wrote, “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.“ He added in the same letter, “Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects.” In his Memorial and Remonstrance, addressed to the Virginia General Assembly in 1785, he writes, “During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.” This does not strike me as a man that would agree with giving tax money to religious institutions or with using public lands for religious monuments. As President of the United States, Madison vetoed bills that granted land to the Baptist church in Mississippi and one that would have incorporated an Episcopal Church in D.C. He clearly saw government support for any religious organization as unacceptable.

Founding Father and President John Adams, also a Deist, in writing the Senatorially approved Treaty with Tripoli, wrote, “The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, himself also a Deist, spoke rightly when he wrote the following to Richard Price in 1780: “When religion is good, I conceive it will support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors call for the help of civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of it being a bad one.”

I agree with Franklin. I know that if Lutheran Social Services receives a federal grant of support, the funds that were going to support LSS from within the congregation would revert to the mainline religious activities of the Church. If Catholic Community Services gets federal money, its own funds now funding the CCS can instead be used for building religious statuary. I also know that if public lands are used to promote any religion it will inevitably militate toward bigotry against all others or against having none. I will not even address my objections to the notion of Scientologists, Moonies and Krishna Consciousness getting to promote their nonsense with tax dollars or on public lands, yet I suspect Alderman Lenhart would find a statue of Reverend Moon in the public park, or of the analects of the Buddha objectionable.

Founding Father Thomas Paine wrote, “One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.” Founding Father Ethan Allen wrote, “In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.” Perhaps the hidden agenda here is that by supporting and promoting religion instead of science and learning we can hasten a return to barbarism and ignorance, wherein all will return to that old time religion, and government and church can then exert tyranny over the minds of men as they were once able to do? Perhaps it’s my paranoia, but in his letter to Spafford dated 3/17/1814, Founding Father Thomas Jefferson agreed, writing, “In every country of every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”

Though he was not an American, Frederick the Great should have been. When the Bresslau Consistory wrote to Frederick urging state support for the church, claiming “those who believe most are the best subjects”, Frederick replied through his minister of religion Baron von Zeidlitz, “His majesty is not disposed to rest the security of his state upon the stupidity of his subjects.” I likewise am not content to rest my freedoms on the naiveté of those who think religion and government can climb into bed together and no one will get pregnant.

Many Americans are neither Jewish, nor Christian, and many hold no religion at all. They certainly should expect that the government will obey the law and not promote majoritarian religion, which inevitably becomes bigotry and intolerance of non-majoritarian beliefs. I am quite certain that in the beginning the Taliban represented themselves as merely promoting school prayer, morality and patriotism. Fortunately we have a Constitution and body of law that if forthrightly defended will protect Mr. Lenhart's religious freedom and protect our freedom from the imposition of his religion.

Sincerely,
Ronald Garrett

[ May 20, 2002: Message edited by: Ron Garrett ]</p>

Toto

Great letter, Ron!

archtypes

Excellent letter, Mr. Garrett