It is not certain where a step beyond stupidity would land a person, but most people would be wise not to take that plunge. It is also pretty certain that a walking contradiction is not only divided in himself, but causes division wherever he goes.
Yet, taking a step beyond stupidity and being a walking contradiction is the very gait the federal judicial system has chosen to run mainstream America in to practical federal established amorality as it pressured Judge Moore to remove the Ten Commandments monument at the Alabama State Supreme Court.
Our laws and nation rest upon the belief that we “are endowed by [our] Creator with certain inalienable rights.” This rally cry for American Independence is actually shameful propaganda if every person has a different Creator and a different moral law they are allowed to follow. For if everyone can claim a different Creator, then everyone can also claim different rights. Thus, unless the rule of law is first based on the belief that we all have the same Creator, then there is no rule of law, but the shifting sand of a different rule for every person. This can not be what the First Amendment intended by saying, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Here, the Bill of Rights simply intervened to make sure no one took the fact that we all have the same Creator too far. There is a huge chasm between recognizing that we are all bound by the same Creator and proceeding to federally enforce a religious cult that forces worship of the Creator. The Founding Fathers wanted to prevent Congress from proceeding to mandate how the Creator should be understood and worshipped so that the religious wars and persecutions of 16th & 17th Century Europe would not continue in late 18th Century America.
Existing laws that are in agreement with the majority of religious views do not make for the establishment of religion. The agreement with a majority of religious views actually demonstrate the law's grounding in the created world from which it was derived (because of the Creator). Nor does an enumerating of laws as ordered in a more ancient and continuous religion's sacred writings automatically establish a religion. That is why it is so humorous that Judge Moore was asked by CNN if it would be O.K. if a monument to the Koran was placed next to the 10 Commandments monument. Hindsight is 20/20, but what Moore should have said is, “Show me a practicing Muslim who disagrees with one of the Ten Commandments.” CNN won't find any, just differences in how to practice them.
The only differences that will occur amongst citizens who still believe in “their Creator” is how the Commandments should be put in to practice, and here is where Congress is forbidden to tread. Here also we find the reason that the Tenth Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The States or people decide what constitutes murder (abortion). The States or people decide what constitutes adultery and marriage. The States or people decide what constitutes theft. The States or people determine what is needed to protect the “free exercise thereof” (such as leave time from work and public commemoration of holidays). The States and people are very capable of determining unjust discrimination without federal judges over-stepping State's Rights. Until such time as there is an Amendment to the Constitution, the federal government should butt-out.
If we no longer believe in the Creator, then the War of Independence has become a farce for the elite to protect their profits from English taxes while rallying the masses behind the silliness of “inalienable rights.” If the majority of common and educated citizens are now incapable of understanding the Constitution, and only the legal scholars are to be listened to, then tyranny of the elite has been re-established and we are no better of than we would have been under King George.
The Ten Commandments monument that sat under the rotunda at the Alabama Supreme Court was not placed by Congress, nor did it establish a religion, nor did it force anyone to practice a religion; it was a monument that reminded man of what was already in his heart. It was a monument to the oldest law still practiced by most of the world — and one that civilized it.
It is time to resist those who throw around the non-Constitutional catch-phrase “separation of Church and State” when they really mean “the establishment of” practical public atheism and amorality. Public recognition of the Creator's laws in nature is not the same as establishing the practice of religious cult. No man is forced to violate his conscience or forced to worship contrary to his beliefs under such an interpretation of the First Amendment. Nor can one logically argue that because he does not want to recognize the Creator, it is wrong for others to do so when he is present. He is free not to recognize the Creator without harm to his life or liberty, but he is not free to force his minority morality of right and wrong on those who still give such recognition.
© Copyright 2003 Catholic Exchange
Matthew Tsakanikas is married with 3 children and has a B.A. in Theology from Christendom College. He was one of twenty Catholic Press Association representatives from the U.S. invited as a guest of Israel in 1999 to cover Jubilee 2000 preparations in the Holy Land. He is currently working as a DRE and freelance writer and has been accepted to begin graduate studies in Melbourne JP II Institute 2004.
