(Jim Blockey) - Proof of this would be in the 1844 U. S. Supreme Court case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors. In the unanimous decision Justice Joseph Story wrote in his commentary about the original meaning of the First Amendment,
“The real object of the First Amendment was not to
If we would have taught the true history of America in our schools this debate of the Muslims shoving their Mosque in our face would not be taking place. The First Amendment was not intended to give freedoms to America’s enemies.
What would have happened 50 years ago to an American that started preaching communism? He would have been put in prison, or worse, for treason.
Because of our lack of education in the true history of this country we have this false belief that the First Amendment protects our enemies in their quest to take over America. Communism and Socialism are America’s enemies as is the Muslim religion. If you doubt that, here are some quotes from the Quran:
• 5:49-51 – O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.
• 5:33 – The punishment of those who pit themselves against Allah and His Messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned.
• 8:39 – And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should only be for Allah.
• 9:3 – Announce painful punishment to those who disbelieve.
• 9:14 – Fight them: Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and assist you against them.
This is not a peaceful religion. Any Muslim that takes Americans as friends is either lying, manipulating us or is an enemy to their god. The First Amendment was not intended to protect all religions; it was intended to protect America from one Christian denomination being in control, such as happened in the Church of England.
John Adams said it best in his address to the military on October 11, 1798, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
What he was saying is that immoral people would take our Constitution and use it against itself. Do you honestly believe that the Founding Fathers of America wrote the First Amendment to protect our enemies and things like pornography? No!
If America’s education system would teach the truth about our history we would not be in the upheaval we are currently facing. The Federalist Papers explain the true intentions of the founders and what they were trying to accomplish. Why are we not teaching that? Thomas Jefferson said,
“On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
The Federalist Papers were the only way to carry out his request, yet very few people in America even know what they are. So now we have people squeezing whatever meaning suits them as well as inventing issues against it (separation of church and state exists nowhere in any part of the Constitution, Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence).
So I say it is not only inappropriate for you to build the mosque near ground zero, but you do not even have the right to do so. Read YOUR bible, your religion is an enemy of America.
(Jim Blockey is an educator and authored “Teachers… It Ain’t Your Fault.” He also has a blog “The Real Education Expert” at www.educationalknowledge.wordpress.com. Jim will be doing a book signing Saturday September 4, 2010 at Borders Book Store on Lake Mead and Rainbow at 1pm.)
The phrase “separation of church and state” is but a metaphor to describe the underlying principle of the First Amendment and the no-religious-test clause of the Constitution. That the phrase does not appear in the text of the Constitution assumes much importance, it seems, only to those who may have once labored under the misimpression it was there and later learned they were mistaken. To those familiar with the Constitution, the absence of the metaphor commonly used to describe one of its principles is no more consequential than the absence of other phrases (e.g., Bill of Rights, separation of powers, checks and balances, fair trial, religious liberty) used to describe other undoubted Constitutional principles.
Some try to pass off the Supreme Court’s decision in Everson v. Board of Education as simply a misreading of Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists–as if that is the only basis of the Court’s decision. Instructive as that letter is, it played but a small part in the Court’s decision. Perhaps even more than Jefferson, James Madison influenced the Court’s view. Madison, who had a central role in drafting the Constitution and the First Amendment, confirmed that he understood them to “[s]trongly guard[] . . . the separation between Religion and Government.” Madison, Detached Memoranda (~1820). He made plain, too, that they guarded against more than just laws creating state sponsored churches or imposing a state religion. Mindful that even as new principles are proclaimed, old habits die hard and citizens and politicians could tend to entangle government and religion (e.g., “the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress” and “for the army and navy” and “[r]eligious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts”), he considered the question whether these actions were “consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom” and responded: “In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.”
The First Amendment embodies the simple, just idea that each of us should be free to exercise his or her religious views without expecting that the government will endorse or promote those views and without fearing that the government will endorse or promote the religious views of others. By keeping government and religion separate, the establishment clause serves to protect the freedom of all to exercise their religion. Reasonable people may differ, of course, on how these principles should be applied in particular situations, but the principles are hardly to be doubted. Moreover, they are good, sound principles that should be nurtured and defended, not attacked. Efforts to undercut our secular government by somehow merging or infusing it with religion should be resisted by every patriot.
Wake Forest University recently published a short, objective Q&A primer on the current law of separation of church and state–as applied by the courts rather than as caricatured in the blogosphere. I commend it to you. http://tiny.cc/6nnnx
I see Doug is another secularist who insists on squelching the truth that it was the various Christian denominations who created the colonies and their eventual statehoods. Those “fire & brimstone” Christian would never have signed a constitution which would prohibited their denominations from running each’s State. At least nine of the States had state mandated religions and at least five had state-sponsored religion. Of the first 108 universities in the colonies/US, at least 102 of them were single denomination created and managed institutions. None of the Presbyterians, Quakers, Lutherans, so on denominations would have signed on to giving up their control to non-believers (who were very few) or to other religions such as Islam. The primary divergence of the “Deists,” who were very devoted to the Christian philosophy of God, was they wanted to move to the country more to mult-denomination institutions. For example, Jefferson did not found the University of Virginia to be secular, but to be a source that a student from any Christian denomination could attend. http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=21076
“Three distinctive features characterized most universities founded in America prior to the University of Virginia. Those universities commonly: (1) were founded and controlled by one particular denomination, (2) housed a theological seminary for that denomination, and (3) had a minister from that denomination serving as president of the university.
Illustrative of this pattern, in 1636, Harvard was founded by and for CONGREGATIONALISTS to train Congregationalist ministers (as was Yale in 1701 and Dartmouth in 1769); in 1692, the College of William and Mary was founded by and for the ANGLICANS to train Anglican ministers (as was the University of Pennsylvania in 1740, Kings College in 1754, and the College of Charleston in 1770); in 1746, Princeton was founded by and for PRESBYTERIANS (as was Dickinson in 1773 and Hampden-Sydney in 1775); in 1764, the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University) was founded by the BAPTISTS; in 1766, Queens College (now Rutgers) was founded by and for the DUTCH REFORMED; in 1780, Transylvania University was founded by and for the DISCIPLES OF CHRIST; etc.
Jefferson and his Board of Visitors (i.e., Regents) founded the University of Virginia as a school not affiliated with only one denomination; it was specifically founded as a trans-denominational school. Consequently, it did not incorporate the three features so commonly associated with other universities at that time, thus causing modern critics wrongly to claim that it was founded as a secular university.
In implementing a trans-denominational approach, Jefferson was embracing the position that had been nationally set forth by an evangelical Presbyterian clergyman, Samuel Knox of Baltimore, whom Jefferson later asked to be his first faculty member at the University of Virginia. 8 In 1799, Knox penned an educational policy piece proposing the formation of a state university that would not have just one specific theological school but rather would invite many denominations to establish schools at the university; the various denominations would therefore all work together in mutual cooperation rather than in competition. 9 Jefferson agreed with this philosophy, and it was this model that he employed at the University of Virginia.
James Madison, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
In 1785 at a session of the General Assembly of Virginia he said, “Before any man be considered as a member of a Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.”
Let me ask you; if the founders wanted the church seperate from the state, then why did they demand prayer in Congress, in schools and promoted it daily? Noah Webster said, “Eduation without the Bible is useless.”
Why was the only book used to learn how to read in the education system the founders approved of… the Bible.
George Washington said in his farewell address to the country “Reason and experience both forbid us to believe we can have a national morality with religious priciples.”
If you read Jefferson’s entire letter to the Danbury Baptist you will see that he was saying that the state needed to stay out of the churches business… nowhere did it say that the church should stay out of the states business.
Becuase our education system has stop teaching the true history and greatness of America, few know the truth. We have been lied to or at the least the truth has been kept from us.
Evil knows Hosea 4:6 very well, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” So our education system keeps us ignorant of the truth, remember ignorance is just the lack of knowledge.
You know it was Jefferson that was most worried about the power of the Supreme Court. Trying to make sure they always kept righteous he said, “On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
Our founders were so intelligent they knew that the Constitution could be used against itself if evil, immoral men got a hold of it. The Federalist Papers are where all the discussions of the Constitution are found, where is that taught? Not even to attorney’s anymore.
John Adams told his troops, “Our Constitution is made only for a religious and moral people, it is wholly inadequate for the use of any other.”
Let’s be real honest with ourselves… do you really believe that the First Amendment was intended to protect pornography and the speech and actions of our enemies?
Get Real.
As usual, those who attempt to interpret the U.S. Constitution, achieve mainly misinterpretation; be they Supreme Court Justices or whatever. The first amendment was worded to keep the Federal Government from intervening, in any sense, in religious matters —- thus separation of church and state. Read the first two paragraphs of this amendment. What do they say?
Jim,
Take care in quoting the founders, particularly on matters such as this. Fake quotations abound, including the one you attribute to James Madison. See http://candst.tripod.com/misq1.htm
I have read Jefferson’s entire letter to the Danbury Baptists, and it cannot be discounted, as some suggest, to be solely about the free exercise of religion and not government establishment of religion. The Baptists expressed their concern about Connecticut’s religious establishment, and Jefferson took the opportunity to offer his own views of the First Amendment’s meaning. His only mention of the free exercise clause was in conjunction with reference to the establishment clause, which together erect the wall of separation. His words: “. . . I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature would ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”
You ask about the founders calling for prayer in Congress and wonder how that squares with intending separation of church and state. As it happens, Madison answered just that in his Detached Memoranda, excerpts of which are quoted in my earlier comment. After stating his understanding that the Constitution prohibits the government from promoting religion by such acts as appointing chaplains for the houses of Congress and the army and navy or by issuing proclamations recommending thanksgiving, he posed the further question: what to make of the government’s actions in our nation’s then “short history” doing just that. Ever practical, he answered not with a demand these actions inconsistent with the Constitution be undone, but rather with an explanation to circumscribe their ill effect: “Rather than let this step beyond the landmarks of power have the effect of a legitimate precedent, it will be better to apply to it the legal aphorism de minimis non curat lex [i.e., the law does not concern itself with trifles]: or to class it cum maculis quas aut incuria fudit, aut humana parum cavit natura [i.e., faults proceeding either from negligence or from the imperfection of our nature].” Basically, he recognized that because too many people, perhaps like yourself, would be upset by reversing these actions, it would be politically difficult and perhaps infeasible to do so in order to adhere to the constitutional principle, and thus he proposed giving these particular missteps a pass, while at the same time assuring they are not regarded as legitimate precedent of what the Constitution means, so they do not influence future actions.
In its jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has, in effect, followed Madison’s advice, though not his suggested legal theories. The Court has confirmed the basic constitutional principle of separation of church and state, while also giving a pass to some governmental statements or actions as “ceremonial deism” or some such.
You suggest that the founders did not intend separation of church and state, noting that they looked quite favorably on religion. The religiosity of the various founders, while informative, is largely beside the point. Whatever their religions, they drafted a Constitution that plainly establishes a secular government on the power of the people (not a deity) and says nothing substantive of god(s) or religion except in the First Amendment where the point is to confirm that each person enjoys religious liberty and that the government is not to take steps to establish religion and another provision precluding any religious test for public office. All of this is entirely consistent with the fact that some founders professed their religiosity and even their desire that Christianity remain the dominant religious influence in American society. Why? Because religious people who would like to see their religion flourish in society may well believe that separating religion and government will serve that end and, thus, in founding a government they may well intend to keep it separate from religion. It is entirely possible for thoroughly religious folk to found a secular government and keep it separate from religion. That, indeed, is just what the founders did.
YOU ARE RIGHT ON! THANKS FOR HAVING THE GUTS TO PUBLISH THE TRUTH!
It is easy to say that anything published from the past is a lie, because those who said it are not around to defend themselves.
This is what historical revisionists count on and that is why America has become weak… we have allowed the enemy to manipulate the truth, to turn it into an opinion… thus making everything, especially the truth, open to interpretation.
As far as your last statement John Quincy Adams said on July 4, 1821, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it conneded in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”
Does not sound like seperation of chuch and state…. OOOOHHHHH, I forgot… he really didn’t say that, it is just my opinion that he said that…. B.S. He also said on that same date, “From the day of the Declaration… they (the American People) were bound by the laws of God,”
Lie to yourselves, lie to others, the fact is this country was founded on the principles, morality and trust in God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.