I normally try to refrain from expressing my political opinions due to having my Facebook page lit up with vitriol whereby the fools who have accused me of racism and of not caring for homosexuals or the poor think they are going to change my views by force rather than engaging me in artful debate. However, in the wake of two of the many major themes our federalized government system -- national, state, and local levels -- have failed in preserving the natural rights of American citizens in not observing the American people's right to freedom of religion nor strictly adhering to the doctrine set forth by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution of separation of church and state, I now feel compelled to write a commentary expressing my displeasure and disgust at both Republicans and Democrats for failing all Americans by trampling upon their rights to a government where there are no religious institutions in control such as what exists in Great Britain or allowing the population to not only worship any religion it desires, but to do so in any fashion it so chooses.
Most of you by now know where my political allegiance lies, but if not, I am a conservative Republican who tends to lean on more libertarian principles prevalent in the philosophy such Founding Fathers as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison extolled to a fledgling nation fighting to maintain its autonomy after 150 years of such a lifestyle until the government of British prime minister George Grenville, at the direction of King George III of the House of Hanover, began to tax its subjects in the American colonies at the conclusion of the Seven Years War/French and Indian War around 1763. More to the point, though, is that the Founding Fathers believed less government represented a nation laden in strength through liberty, and the American War of Independence was fought based on these parameters. Upon the signing of the Declaration of independence on July 4th, 1776, the Founders sought to formulate a government devoid of tyranny and secure with the blessings of liberty and the opportunity for prosperity. The first document to be deemed the supreme law of the land was the Articles of Confederation, which was imperfect because it gave too much power to the states and failed to vest enough power to govern within the national government. During the 1780s, such factions as Federalists and Anti-Federalists clashed over the viability of the Articles; the Federalists, led by such brilliant political philosophers as future Secretary of the Treasury under presidents Washington and John Adams Alexander Hamilton, future president of the United States James Madison, and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Jay who penned the collection of political commentaries known as "The Federalist Papers," won the war of ideas, and in 1787, the Constitution of the United States of America was adopted as the supreme law of the land, guaranteeing the American people a strong central government as well as a system of checks and balances so as to avoid allowing one branch of the federal government to grow too powerful.
Within the construct of the Constitution is a very important doctrine our Founders expressed to be a subject of the utmost importance by dent of separating the fledgling American government sharply from its former rulers in Great Britain: the new nation would not have an established religion, nor would it allow organized religion to directly influence government policy. This doctrine, known as "the separation of church and state," separates the United States from Great Britain because unlike Britain, who since the 16th Century the Church of England had been used to keep tabs on taxes collected, there would be no such overarching church meddling in government policy. The United States was the first democracy since ancient Athens, and within the construct of every democracy is the right to vote.
There can be no doubt religion has played major roles in the voting behavior of Americans for more than 235 years. Today, both Republicans and Democrats depend on covenants with religious special interest groups and PACs in their quests for power. Sadly, the directives of the Constitution are being ignored because of this very behavior. I have read much in the way of American historical narratives and literary works, and I believe the beginning of majority of the problems with adhering to constitutional doctrine on separation of church and state and the Bill of Rights' First Amendment guaranteeing the American people freedom of religion began at the beginning of the 20th Century. At that time, women and Christian political figures such as William Jennings Bryan began pushing for legislation that would ban the selling of alcohol in America. Christian political figures argued drinking alcohol was a sin and led to problems within the home, while women wanted to end violence in the home brought on by inebriation. In 1919, Prohibition was sent into motion through the passage of the 18th Amendment, and I have no doubt that Bryan had much to do with this amendment's passage. Further down the line, Bryan was the prosecutor in the Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, where the decision by the court was that the theory of evolution could not be taught to school children because it conflicted with teachings from The Bible. In 1968, laws such as the state of Tennessee's Butler Act were overridden nationally that originally prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution, no doubt by judicial and legal activists within the Democratic Party. To this day, no public school teacher is allowed by legal precedent to teach the theory of evolution without also teaching the concept of creationism.*
The trouble with government being embroiled in religion, whether it be in the practice of worshiping or whether religious ideals or entities influenced government policy, raged on through the rest of 20th Century on into the 21st. Figures such as Madeline Murray O'Hair, who through her lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court in 1963 titled Abingdon School District v. Schempp, ended mandatory Bible recitations in public schools. In 1962, the Court ruled in Engel v. Vitale to end mandatory prayer in public schools. For the previous thirty years prior to O'Hair's lawsuit against Abingdon School District, America only experienced eight years with a Republican in the White House (Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-1961). In that time, the Democratic presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman packed the Supreme Court with liberal justices who considered the then-current establishment of Christian values and practices within government operations to be unconstitutional. The tradition of biblical recitations and prayer within schools stretched back to the very founding of the American continent by English settlers in both 1607 in Jamestown and in 1620 in Plymouth; this new breed of social liberals in America sought to turn the tide of such traditions and extricate religion from the face of the U.S. government at all levels. The problem these liberals ran into, however, was in not trampling the states' rights. These liberals in the Supreme Court were activists, just as the liberals in Congress and the White House during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were, and they sought to legislate through their court rulings which also influenced the changes during the Civil Rights Movement. The conservative establishment fought back with Arizona senator Barry Goldwater in 1964, but it was not until the Reagan Revolution came to pass beginning with his landslide victory over liberal Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980 that the liberal stamp on curtailing the existence of Judeo-Christian vestiges within government infrastructures through the 1960s and 1970s would be seriously challenged.
Ronald Reagan was the first of the new age conservatives to occupy the White House, but he was certainly not the first in Washington. Barry Goldwater holds that distinction, and Reagan, in fact, delivered a speech during the Goldwater campaign to support the Republican candidate for president in 1964 titled "A Time for Choosing." While America was not ready for such a drastic change in philosophy in 1964, it would be in 1980. Just seven years before Reagan was elected president, Roe v. Wade was ruled in favor of legalized abortions by the mostly liberal Supreme Court. Christian conservatives tried to thwart the raging tide of liberals who sought to legalize the practice of abortions, but failed. In 1984, President Reagan instituted the Mexico City Policy, which prohibited funding to foreign nations for abortions as a means of family planning and birth control. Much of President Reagan's support stemmed from Christian Evangelicals vociferously opposed to the practice of abortion for religious reasons. The law has been shot down twice, first by former president Bill Clinton in 1993, then again by President Obama in 2009. Christian conservatives have been bitter over the Roe v. Wade ruling for forty years, and to this day still battle to prohibit the legalized practice of abortions domestically. Other people bitterly opposed to the practice of legalized abortions argue that life begins at conception. These same people argue that since life begins at conception, it is murder to perform an abortion, that the baby has the right to life, liberty and the eventual pursuit of what Jefferson called "happiness" and English philosopher John Locke referred to as "property."
Today, one of the issues our country faces involving the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion comes in the form of the topic over gay marriage. Christian conservatives are bitterly opposed to this practice, citing that The Bible states that marriage is a holy covenant between a man and woman, and that clergy should not be forced to perform marriage rituals for same-sex couples since that would be a violation of the freedom of religion as prescribed doctrinally by the Bill of Rights in the First Amendment. In my opinion, the Christian conservatives are exercising their right to free speech in both their vociferous complaints and in their desire to practice their religion as they see fit. The federal government has no right according to the Constitution to interfere with Christian conservatives' right to freedom of religion and free speech. This is a matter that should be taken to referendums at state and local levels of government because each state is different from other states in different geographic regions of the United States; each state has its own political and religious culture. In the practice of voting in democracies, might always makes right whether or not it is not morally justifiable. We cannot avoid the natural human phenomena of social Darwinism domestically without the directives of the Constitution.
So there it is. We must take great pains to adhere to the directives of the great document that is the Constitution of the United States of America. To that end, we must remember that in order to be a truly free nation, we must exclude religious influences from the policies enforced by all levels of government. At the same time, government cannot infringe upon the free speech doctrine behind freedom of religion either. The Founding Fathers sought to perfect our government and society from the flawed British system, and they did so in the closest thing to a perfect government document the world has ever seen. Despite this still unprecedented accomplishment by America's Founders, our government has lost its way over the course of the past 235 years, with Democrats trampling on the rights to free speech and freedom of religion while Republicans, through their alliance with Christian Evangelicals, fail to adhere to the policy of separation of church and state. There is no reason why America cannot be a nation imbued with a Christian culture, but that culture, the entities governing large numbers of denominations of Christian churches as well as the other religions present domestically, must not be allowed to influence what laws our government passes. Likewise, government should allow Christians to practice and worship as they so choose so long as their practices do not harm others. Government cannot become aligned with any religious institution or persuasion, and it must never deny the prevalent Christian establishment, or any other religion, its rights to free speech and freedom of religious practices.
No comments:
Post a Comment