>:|From: RhymeCon <bob4@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>:|Newsgroups:
>:|alt.politics.usa.constitution,alt.atheism,alt.religion.christian,alt.politics.bush,alt.society.liberalism
>:|Subject: Re: Egregious errors in civic textbook
>:|Date: Thu, 8 May 2008 05:39:43 -0700 (PDT)
>:|Organization: http://groups.google.com
>:|
>:|RhymeCon wrote:
>:|
>:|
>:|This may be unethical but I'm posting here a reply to Buckeye's thread
>:|("Rhymecon/ McCain") of about May 5 which is addressed specifically to
>:|me but I can't use that thread because I've apparently used up my
>:|quota of 5 groups.
>:|
>:|Well, I for one am opposed to the Separation of Church and State
>:|because it's misleading, confusing, and often interpreted as saying
>:|the exact opposite of what the First Amendment says. The First
>:|Amendment (which, unlike the Sep. of C. & S. is in the U.S.
>:|Constitution) prohibits government from influencing religion but
>:|extends freedom of speech and the press to religion as well as every
>:|other group you can think of. Many people, including the late Assoc.
>:|Justice Hugo Black are of the opinion that churches must not discuss
>:|government. In his infamous Everson opinion of 1947 Hugo said <http://
>:|www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/everson.html> that
>:|"Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly,
>:|participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups
>:|and vice versa". Well, that oddly chosen term "vice versa" means that
>:|Churches can't participate in the affairs of government which is the
>:|duty of all Americans, and can't even say "Don't forget to vote
>:|Tuesday" or in a past era "Outlaw slavery" or "Don't send American
>:|citizens to prison for years just because their parents were Japanese"
>:|or in the present era "Outlaw abortion".
>:|
>:|That last example, BTW, illustrates the stupidity of the Christian
>:|Right for their past efforts in convincing the nation that abortion is
>:|a religious issue in the first place. I don't know that anyone has
>:|even found it in the Bible, and some of the most outspoken anti-
>:|abortionists have been atheists! And people of every state were
>:|opposed to Roe v. Wade until the fundamentalists asserted over and
>:|over again that it's impossible to be anti-abortion unless you're a
>:|born-again Christian, and everyone naturally assumed that those
>:|fundies care more about proselyting than they do about fighting
>:|abortion.
>:|
>:|And interestingly the founding manifest of the Americans United for
>:|Separation of Church and State set one of its primary goals to
>:|OVERTURN that 1947 Everson decision sup****ted by Justice Hugo Black!
>:|
>:|Regards, RhymeCon
>:|http://rhymecon.tripod.com/2/
>:|
PART #3
Message #8285 of 10639
Re: Tom Jefferson's Other Letter
Mon Feb 19, 2007 9:09 am
--- In HRSepCnS@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"rhymecon" <bob4@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>In the below opinion, "Neither a state nor the Federal
> Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of
> any religious organizations or groups,and vice versa."
> Oops! The high court was doing fine until they added that "or vice
> versa." Here's the converse of the sentence:"No religious
> organization or group,can, openly or secretly, participate in the
> affairs of any state or the Federal Government." A church can't
> petition the government?
That isn't what it said. Lame try on your part
Let's print it out fully
"Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly,
participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or
groups,and neither religious organizations or groups can, openly or
secretly, participate in the affairs of neither a state nor the
Federal Government "
What it is about the word participate do you not understand?
It doesn't say a word word about not being able to petition the
government.
>A group of church members can't urge other
> members to vote "their" way?
that is actually another matter the matter being tax exempt. However,
once more I have to ask,
What it is about the word participate do you not understand?
>The very amendment that prevents
> Congress from passing laws "establi****ng religion" is now turned
> around to prevent freedom of speech, and the press, and petitioning
> government, for churches?
False and you are caught once again trying to sell a bill of goods.
What it is about the word participate do you not understand?
To further establish accuracy I present this:
James Madison vetoed an Act of Congress for the very reason under
discussion here
Some of The First Official Meanings Assigned to The Establishment Clause
http://candst.tripod.com/madvetos.htm
Having examined and considered the bill entitled "An act
incor****ating the Protestant Episcopal Church in the town of
Alexandria, in the District of Columbia," I now return the bill to the
House of Representatives, in which it originated, with the following
objections:
Because the bill exceeds the rightful authority to which
governments are limited, by the essential distinction between civil
and religious functions, and violates, in particular, the article of
the Constitution of the United States, which declares, that " Congress
shall make no law respecting a religious establishment." . . .
Because the bill vests and said incor****ated church an also
authority to provide for the sup****t of the poor, and the education of
poor children of the same; an authority which being altogether
superfluous, if the provision is to be the result of pious charity,
would be a precedent for giving to religious societies, as such, a
legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.
and
James Madison on Separation of Church and State
Direct references to separation to be found in the writings of James
Madison
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/qmadison.htm
----------------------------------------
OCTOBER 1, 1803
Notes for annual message, Oct. 17, 1803: alterations and additions,
etc [1]
(3) after "assure"-are proposed "in due season, and under prudent
arrangements, im****tant aids to our Treasury, as well as," an ample
etc.
Quere: if the two or three succeeding paragraphs be not more adapted
to the separate and subsequent communication, if adopted as above
suggested.
(4) For the first sentence, may be substituted "In the territory
between the Mississippi and the Ohio another valuable acquisition has
been made by a treaty etc."[3.] As it stands, it does not sufficiently
distinguish the nature of the one acquisition from that of the other,
and seems to imply that the acquisition from France was wholly on the
other side of the Mississippi
May it not be as well to omit the detail of the stipulated
considerations, and particularly that of the Roman Catholic Pastor.
The jealousy of some may see in it a principle, not according with the
exemption of Religion from Civil power. In the Indian Treaty it will
be less noticed than in a President's speech.[4.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1.] For TJ's third annual message to Congress, Oct. 17, 1803, see
Ford, VIII, pp. 266-7)
[3.] TI's message announced the acquisition of territory by treaty
from the Kaskaskia Indians; see
Ford, VIII, pp. 269-70.
[4.] TJ accepted JM's suggestion to omit any discussion of Indian
treaty requirements to maintain a Roman Catholic priest, leaving the
stipulations in the treaty to "the competence of both
houses.... as soon as the senate shall have advised its ratification";
see ibid.
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, Wa****ngton,
Oct. 1, 1803, Notes for annual message, Oct. 17, 1803: alterations and
additions, etc.[1.],
The Republic of Letters, the Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison, 1776-1826, Edited by James Morton Smith, Vol. II,
1790 -1804, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, London, (1995) pp 1297-98)
---------------------------------------------------
JUNE 3, 1811
"To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North
Carolina I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my
objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist
Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always
regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil
Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by
the Constitution of the United States, I could not have other wise
discharged my duty on the
occasion which presented itself"
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Letter to Baptist Churches in North Carolina,
June 3, 1811. Letters And Other Writings of James Madison Fourth
President Of The United States In Four Volumes Published By the Order
Of Congress, Vol..II, J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, (1865) pp
511-512)
-----------------------------------------------------------
MARCH 2, 1819
"The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated
hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its
functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and
the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have
been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from
the State."
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Excert of a letter to Robert Walsh from James
Madison. MARCH 2, 1819 Letters and Other writings of James Madison,
in Four Volumes, Published by Order of Congress. VOL. III, J. B.
Lippincott & Co. Philadelphia, (1865), pp 121-126. James Madison on
Religious Liberty, Robert S.Alley, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y.
(1985) pp 82-83)
----------------------------------------------------------
1817-1833
"Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and Gov't in
the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by
Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents' already
furnished in their short history"
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Excerpt from Madison's Detached Memoranda.
This do***ent was discovered in 1946 among the papers of William
Cabell Rives, a biographer of Madison. Scholars date these
observations in Madison's hand sometime between 1817 and 1832. The
entire do***ent was published by Elizabeth Fleet in the William and
Mary Quarterly of October 1946.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
JULY 10, 1822
"Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation
between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of im****tance; and I
have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one
has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in
greater purity the less they are mixed together"
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Excerpt of letter to Edward Livingston from
James Madison, July 10, 1822. Letters and Other writings of James
Madison, in Four Volumes, Published by Order of Congress. VOL. III, J.
B. Lippincott & Co. Philadelphia, (1865), pp 273-276. James Madison
on Religious Liberty, Robert S.Alley, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y.
(1985) pp 82-83)
--------------------------------------------------------------
SEPTEMBER 1833
"I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every possible
case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion
and the civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions
and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to a usurpation on one
side or the other or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between
them will be best guarded against by entire abstinence of the
government from interference in any way whatever, beyond the necessity
of preserving public order and protecting each sect against tresp*****
on its legal rights by others".
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Letter written by James Madison to Rev. Jasper
Adams, September, 1833.Writings of James Madison, edited by Gaillard
Hunt, [not sure what the volume number is but have enough information
presented here to locate the letter] microform Z1236.L53, pp 484-488. )
*********************************************************************
> I agree with you completely. Jefferson's letter is not a law but is
> often treated as if it were, by people including Hugo Black in
> saying the wall must be kept high and impregnable, etc.
Who cars how people treat it. it isn't law. Black never said nor
implied it was. it was a catchy phrase to end up that actual rule of
law with, nothign more, nothing less. Black used far more actual
historical evidence and previous legal inforamtion than that to state
the rules of law for the Establishment Clause
You are incorrect again
|
