Mark said to dmb:
... From my following of recent talking heads, there is nothing in the
constitution which demands the separation of church and state (in fact the
houses start each day with a prayer).
dmb says:
Yea, that's what Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell said on TV recently. As
Steve pointed out, O'Donnell revealed "her fundamental misunderstanding of what
our Constitution is" when she said that. "That's in the First Amendment?"
O'Donnell asked again, eliciting further laughter from the room. Any Senate
candidate who doesn't understand that certainly deserves to be laughed at. As
Obama said in a speech recently, this is the essence of who we are as a nation.
If O'Donnell wins she'll be taking an oath to preserve, protect and defend a
constitution that she does not understand. In that same debate, in fact, she
staked out positions that violate that particular constitutional principle -
the teaching of creationism in public schools.
I can't imagine that any talking head would deny the separation clause of the
first amendment, except on FOX. The idea is well established in law and history
and the law school audience that laughed at O'Donnell knows that all too well.
And every American really should understand that. The first amendment is
arguably the central pillar of our democracy. It's central in the list of
principles that Pirsig uses to describe intellectual values, the values that
should be used to guide society and to protect the process of intellectual
evolution from social level interference.
I've noticed that religious people sometimes have trouble grasping this
concept. That's not just a co-incidence, I suppose. There's plain old ignorance
of course but there are ideological static filters at work too. They correlate
so strongly that it ALMOST seems like religiosity itself CAUSES confusion about
the First Amendment. Almost. It almost seems like one's understanding and
appreciation of the separation principle is in direct REVERSE proportion to
one's wish for the establishment of religion. In other words, it is misread to
the extent that it undermines one's wishes. Psychologically speaking, this is a
fascinating phenomenon.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas interprets the first amendment is the
weakest possible way. He thinks it only prohibits the establishment of a
federal church by the national Congress and that the 50 State legislatures
should each be allowed to impose a State religion on its citizens. Does that
sound like freedom of religion to you? Not me. I think that's morally
outrageous and wildly unAmerican.
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