Saturday Politics : the First Amendment, the Founders, and Progressive Democrat Subversion of Religious Freedom

Sometimes Saturday Politics is about religion. The First Amendment to the US Constitution states : "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." • • • MELANIA RECITES THE LORD'S PRAYER. Daniel John Sobieski, a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and other publications, wrote an article in American Thinker on Wednesday about "Church, State, and Melania Trump." In it Sobieski said : "Those who have made a career of trying to drive all vestiges of religion from the public square, from manger scenes at Christmas to mentioning God in the Pledge of Allegiance, were not happy when First Lady Melania Trump recited the Lord’s Prayer at her husband’s rally in Florida. The fake 'tolerant' left mocked the accent of a woman and an immigrant who speaks five languages. They moaned that it was an affront to those who are not Christian. And they brought out that old canard about the separation of church and state." • • • THE FOUNDERS : FREEDOM OF, NOT FROM, RELIGION. The First Amendment guarantees freedom OF religion -- not freedom FROM religion. George Washington is said to have gotten down on one knee in prayer at Valley Forge. The 1780 Massachusetts constitution authorized towns, parishes, precincts and other bodies politic to levy taxes "for the institution of public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality." Connecticut and New Hampshire had similar laws. Virginia, on the other hand, moved after the Revolutionary War to disestablish the Anglican church and separate the state from formal religious institutions. We should note that no Framer of the Constitution ever declared that Massachusetts, with its state-supported religious education, or Virginia, with its official secularism, were guilty of violating the First Amendment or any other fundamental constitutional principle. • The phrase "separation of church and state" actually doesn't appear in the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 to a group of Danbury Baptists assuring them that the First Amendment prohibited Congress from establishing a national church, such as the Church of England. Jefferson also wrote in a letter written to his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush dated September 23, 1800, the words that were later carved into the Jefferson Memorial : "I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Thomas Jefferson also wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our unalienable rights come from our Creator, not government or Progressives. He feared what the British Crown had done could happen in America -- impose a state church on all the American people. But, the fact remains that in Jefferson’s time, the state and the church were in fact inextricably linked. • Sobieski says : "The Founding Fathers did fear the possible establishment of a national church like the Church of England and to prevent it they wrote the First Amendment to say that 'Congress' shall make no laws regarding the establishment of religion, meaning any particular religion. But it says nothing about the states and also says that Congress shall make no laws restricting the free exercise of religion. The Constitution mandates government’s neutrality to religion, but its alleged desire to avoid any endorsement of religion has mutated into unmistakable hostility. Perhaps the most egregious example occurred in April, 1995, when the Murrah Federal Building was bombed and attorneys for the Clinton administration were ready to deny churches the same disaster assistance that every other building with collateral damage received because of the alleged separation of church and state. It took special congressional action to prevent this absurdity. I don’t think this is what Thomas Jefferson had in mind." • • • TEACHING KIDS ABOUT ISLAM APPARENTLY DOESN'T VIOLATE THE FIRST AMENDMENT. The Patriot News Daily online reported Tuesday that parents in Chatham, New Jersey, are demanding answers from the local board of education concerning what their children are being taught in their 7th grade social studies class. According to Nancy Gayer and Libby Hilsenrath, their children are being given lessons about Islam that would never be acceptable if they were about Christianity. In fact, Gayer said at a board meeting on Monday that her son was specifically chastised a few years ago when he gave a PowerPoint presentation that briefly mentioned his religious views. Gayer said he was told to stop “proselytizing” when he included a Bible quote in his slideshow. The teacher told him that a quote like that “belongs in Sunday School.” Gayer and other parents asked the board to explain why that was forbidden, but it was perfectly fine for the teacher to have the students learn about the religious tenets of Islam. Gayer said : "“My sincere issue -- according to policy 2270 -- the board of education directs that no religious beliefs be promoted or disparaged. I’m asking the board meet with the policy committee and eliminate the teaching of Islam and all other religions.” At the school board meeting, Hilsenrath passed out materials being used in the classroom, which included a cartoon that made extraordinary statements about Islam. Hilsenrath explained : “It even goes so far as even making a statement 'There is no God except Allah,' in the video that also states that Allah is the maker of everything, the one true God, etc. The main character in the cartoon video is looking for converts.” Hilsenrath said the argument that the educational materials would expose the students to religions they don’t know much about did not pass muster. She argued that many of the students were almost certainly ignorant about the finer points of Judaism and Christianity as well, yet those religions were barely mentioned in the classroom. Certainly, she said, they were not taught in the same way as Islam. The Patriot Daily News concludes : "It’s real simple: Either religious studies need to be barred from public schools, or there needs to be equal time given to all of the world’s major religions. Anything that strays from that premise invites unnecessary controversy, especially when the teachings are as off-the-wall as the ones seen here. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen parents outraged over islamic indoctrination in the school system. The more it occurs, the more you have to wonder if there isn’t something a bit more sinister going on behind the scenes." • America has drifted a long way from the Founders’ clear intent about the relationship between the free exercise of religion and the government being prohibited from interferring. Today, Americans are no longer free to apply their religious beliefs to their businesses -- as the vendettas against Hobby Lobby and the Little Sister of the Poor show. America was founded by those seeking freedom of religion and the free speech and free exercise that comes with it. When Melania Trump recited the Lord’s Prayer at a public event in the public square, she was making Thomas Jefferson proud. • • • AMERICA vs PROGRESSIVISM. Despite the enormous agenda Trump and his Cabinet have taken on and the strides they have made in just one month, there are no signs that the Progressive Democrat war on President Trump is abating -- whether religion or sexual orientation or immigration is the issue. There may be fewer street protest right now, but the protesters have moved into traditional townhalls -- where citizens and their elected officials come together to discuss current issues -- are now full of hatemongers attacking House and Senate members with signs, shouts, whistles and ugly words. And, every day there are videos of small protests shown on MSM, used to pound home the Prog-Dem narrative that somehow America disagrees with President Trump, although surveys and the massive crowds the President turns out for his rallies belie this kind of Progressive fake news. And as I write this blog, Representative Keith Ellison, the radical Moslem who supports the Moslem Brotherhood and CAIR, and who has a good chance of being elected the next chariman of the Democratic National Committee, has called for the impeachment of President Trump. Ellison told CNN, as reported by the New York Post : “‘I think that Donald Trump has already done a number of things which legitimately raise the question of impeachment. On day one, he was in violation of the emoluments clause. This is a part of the Constitution that says as President, you can’t get payments from a foreign power." The CNN audience, assembled for a TV debate between prospective DNC chairs, broke into applause. Ellison added : "The day people checked into his hotel and started paying him, who were foreign dignitaries, he was in violation of that law. There’s already a lawsuit filed against him. And right now, it’s about only Donald Trump. It is about the integrity of the presidency.” • Ellison probably has conveniently forgotten that Trump has assigned all payments made by foreign officials anywhere in the world while he is President to the US Treasury. • Wars begin when, in a major crisis, no peaceful solution can be found. America seems near that point. The war is political, but Progressive Democrats have taken it to the streets as violent protest against any act or word they consider conservative, Republican or otherwise representative of Trump and his supporters, whopm they see as deplorable, irremediably evil and dangerous. This is how they justify engaging in violence, sending their version of "Brown Shirts" into streets and townhalls and college campuses to prevent conservatives and Republicans from even speaking. Their ministry of propaganda (a.k.a., the mainstream media) is working full time, vilifying and lying about every action President Trump takes. Their armies of lawyers intend to clog up the courts with so many lawsuits and other legal tactics that the Trump administration will be prevented from achieving anything. Progressive Democrats will not yield without political bloodshed -- jamming airports, blocking highways and shutting down choke points of US infrastructure, with as many protesters as Soros money can buy. Why?? They face a game-changing loss of political power. Their nightmare scenario is that a year from now, Trump's policies will have worked, improving the US economy so much that a large majority of Americans will be grateful to him and to the Republican Congress. Prog-Demw have gotten to the destructive place where they believe anything good for America is now fatal for them. They see Progressivism permanently discredited, out of power, and cut off from the billions upon billions of dollars they now wallow in at the expense of regular Americans. That's also why Trump is being attacked so viciously in the European media -- Europe is already Progressive, but its leaders know that if Trump succeeds, he will pull into power in Europe many other national populists who want to re-create government as an institution run by the people for the people. • • • DEAR READERS, Lincoln was right when he spoke those immortal words at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863 : "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." • We are "now engaged" in a new civil war. There may not be massed armies facing each other, but the stakes are just as high as they were when President Lincoln spoke 154 years ago. America is in play and we are the soldiers in the war to save the Republic and its citizens -- to prove once again "that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." The First Amendment is a symbol of our fight. So, let's end the week with this : God bless President Trump, God bless Americans, and God bless America.