Same Sex Marriage Now Legal in the Empire State (by ContraSuggest):

Several years ago, this author wrote the following: “The dismal economic conditions in New York State (evident in a $3 billion deficit in 2009 and a projected deficit of $6-8 billion in 2010) will never improve until the bipartisan, institutional corruption that has plagued Albany for decades is rooted out, and the stranglehold that the powerful public employee unions have on taxpayers is broken.  Structural education, Medicaid and pension reform are essential to straightening out New York’s fiscal disaster.  Unless excessive state spending is seriously curtailed, New York taxpayers (individuals and businesses) will continue to suffer under onerous taxation, regulation and hemorrhaging population loss, while the state races toward fiscal insolvency, and eventual bankruptcy.”

During his gubernatorial run, Democrat Andrew Cuomo addressed these vexing problems with a lot of tough talk about disciplined spending cuts, holding the line on taxes, and reforming Albany’s corrupt culture.  Naturally conservatives were more than a bit skeptical.  Looking at Cuomo’s biography and resume didn’t inspire much confidence:  his ideology was forged in the fires of big-spending nanny state liberalism, the son of a big spending former liberal governor; he was a former Clinton administration HUD secretary, and a former activist state attorney general. Was this the guy likely to navigate New York out of the economic wasteland?  Surprisingly, so far, Governor Cuomo has been as good as his word.  He actually offered up a balanced budget that included cuts in funding to local school districts, no real tax increases (even letting a tax surcharge on the wealthy expire), a 2% property tax cap, and state pension reform.  Anyone who hires a good numbers cruncher can propose a balanced budget, but Cuomo also followed through with the politically liable work required to push these needed reforms through the do-nothing legislature, against the resistance of the powerful public employee unions.  He deserves a lot of credit for his vision and efforts in these areas. 

But bad always seems to come with the good.  Cuomo was equally vocal in vowing to sign a Same Sex Marriage bill into law.  Late last Friday, 6/24/2011, the New York State Senate debated, voted on, and passed by a vote of 33 to 29, the so-called Marriage Equality Act (A8354-2011), that was previously passed by the Assembly, and has already been signed into law by the Governor.                   

The following Republican New York State Senators will consider themselves to have been put on notice:  

Ø      Mark J. Grisanti (Buffalo)

Ø      James S. Alesi (Rochester)

Ø      Stephen M. Saland (Hudson Valley)

Ø      Roy J. McDonald (Albany)

 

We here at the OTPE vow to do everything in our power to see that you are defeated in your next reelection attempts.  The only thing that stood between the families of New York State and the abomination of legalized Same Sex Marriage was the Republican controlled State Senate.  Since Republicans hold only a razor-thin majority in that chamber, it was understood from the beginning that just a few gutless turncoats (like you four) would be enough to turn the tide and secure passage of this putrid bill.  We knew what to expect from Sheldon Silver’s hopelessly left-wing New York State Assembly, and from Governor Cuomo, (henceforth to be referred to in these pages as “Cuomo the Homo”).  But senators, like the four of you, were supposed to balance out the fanatic nuttiness coming from the other two branches of the state government.  Well thanks a lot for nothing; you’ve earned the enmity of traditionalists all over the state and will be hearing from us in the next election.  We’re calling on true conservatives to mount primary challenges in order to remove these four RINOs from office.  Your craven flip-flop on this issue is unforgivable, and in the coming weeks we will be putting the rest of your voting records under a microscope, for if you could sell us out on an issue as crucial as this one, what other reprehensible votes are you capable of casting, and what have you gotten in return?

What the hell is wrong with so many elected New York State Republicans?  What is it that makes them go along to get along; makes them feel all tingly inside when the New York Times editorial page praises them for having “grown?”  Why is it considered to be the height of sophistication to sheepishly cave-in to the demands of the chattering classes and the liberal shibboleths that they continuously spew?  Is it really worth endlessly violating everything you claim to believe and bartering pieces of your souls just to get reelected?  This disgraceful behavior has got to end, and quite soon you’re going to find out that some political betrayals come at too high a price.           

This Just In!

Lib OTPE Reader, Phil McCracken asks:  But ContraSuggest, how could you be against SSM; doesn’t that make you an ignorant, knuckle-dragging homophobic, religious zealot?  Shouldn’t any two people who love one another have the same right to get married like you and your exceptionally beautiful and brilliant wife? 

When deliberating on the prospect of legalizing same sex marriage, let’s consider a few basic factual concepts about the relationships between men, women, marriage, and families, before we turn into a bunch of blubbering morons:

• Sexual interaction between men and women results in the procreation of children and the continuance of human society (sexual interaction between men and men or women and women, can never result in the birth of children and so contributes nothing to the continuance of society)
• In order to create a stable functional  atmosphere in which babies can grow up and become stable functional adults, men and women enter into the bond of marriage (although marriage serves other legitimate functions, it always served to nurture the procreative function between men and women; no such procreative function exists between men and men or women and women)
• Marriage reinforces and extends the life-creating relationship between man and woman (a relationship that cannot possibly exist between men and men or women and women)
• Western Society has recognized marriage as a union between men and women for thousands of years, which has been an indispensible element in all successful cultures (it has never recognized marriage as unions between men and men or women and women, which have never been a positive element in successful cultures; historically, same sex relationships have been associated with countercultural debauchery, because it was always properly viewed as a procreative dead-end and an abnormality)
• The best statistical chance that children have to become properly socialized, is to be raised by married, committed, mutually respectful, functional mothers and fathers (the statistical chances are lower for children to become properly socialized when raised by single parents of either gender, or two men, or two women)

It’s perfectly acceptable for duly elected governments to enact laws that benefit or protect kids.  Apparently a majority of New York’s senators just don’t get it.  In America we should be reinforcing the legitimacy of traditional marriage as a time-tested pillar of western civilization, not denigrating it, redefining it, attacking it and watering down its meaning and importance.  When marriage is no longer accepted as a serious institution (a union between one man and one woman), that requires intense commitment on the part of both parties to provide a stabilizing force in children’s lives, then children and our society as a whole suffer.  Legally recognizing the institution of marriage to include anyone other than one man and one woman is already having the effect of trivializing it to the point of irrelevancy.  Once marriage becomes irrelevant, the dissolution of the already embattled American family is not far behind, and by default, the intrusive hand of Big Brother will fill that vacuum.  Same Sex Marriage is not a family value.  Statewide polling data is inconclusive as to whether a majority of New Yorkers support SSM.  In the coming months we will be investigating the possibility of getting a referendum on the statewide ballot in an upcoming election, in an effort to nullify the actions of our clueless legislators and Governor.      

The Top 10 Stupidest Answers to the Question, “What interrogation techniques at U.S. detention facilities do you liberals consider to be torture?” (by ContraSuggest)

10.  The “waterboarding” of dirty prison uniforms in the GITMO laundry room 

9.    “Two-to-the-eyes”

8.    Demerits for throwing feces at GITMO Military Police

7.    Yelling at detainees when they don’t answer questions

6.    “Bush lied; people died!”

5.    “Pantsing” on the chow line

4.    Revoking popcorn privileges on movie night

3.    Any measures that actually prevent plane highjackings, the blowing up of office buildings, or mass shootings          

2.    The prohibition of “Dirty Sanchez” during conjugal visits

1.    The asking of any questions related to the subject of “terrorism”

Theism, the Founders, and Abuse of the Justice System (by ContraSuggest)

Contrary to the contention of many atheists, reason and theism are totally compatible with one another.  The accurate application of reason by the ancient Greek philosophers led to the same conclusion that Judeo-Christian theistic belief eventually led.  For instance, Pythagoras and his followers believed that the universe was ordered in a mathematically calculable fashion, and so, was an intelligible, fathomable puzzle.  Likewise, according to the Bible, God has imposed an order on the natural world, and man is able to predict things accurately, based on the observed regularity in nature.  This concept was uniquely conducive to the scientific method.  Under God, the world is rational and orderly; “God has ordered all things by measure, number and weight” (Book of Wisdom 11:12).  The historian of philosophy, W.T. Jones, wrote that, “This idea taken up by Plato and passed on to Christian Theology, is one of the great heritages of the modern mind.”  The ancient Greek philosophical belief (although not part of the Judeo-Christian tradition) that there is an underlying order which transcends and informs the real world, is decidedly theistic in nature.  Yet atheists continually abandon history and reason in claiming that theism is inconsistent with reason. 

Evident in the Socratic dialogues with the Sophists is the conception of the Natural Law, albeit in its embryonic form.  Socrates rejected the notion that moral and ethical relativism, and the dominance of the stronger over the weaker, did or should rule the societies of men.  When confronted with this argument, Socrates responded that the accepted laws in a democratic society could be reduced to basic moral conceptions arrived at through the application of reason.  His belief that there was a universal truth (or higher law) beyond the opinions of men was, like Pythagoras, theistic in nature.  This concept was alluded to by other Greek figures; the character Antigone, in Sophocles’ play of the same name, defends herself against the charge of violating an unjust law, by citing higher law:

“… Justice, enacted not these human laws. 

Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man,

Could’st by a breath annul and override,

The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven.” 

This concept was later embraced and expounded upon by philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, and became the philosophical cornerstone of the Church, as well as a chief founding principle applied by the Founders of the United States government.  There are those that argue that there is no Natural Law and that man can know moral order and unalienable rights as the result of his own reasoning without the aid of God.  That, however, was not the view of the Founders, because the notion violated their religious faith and their reason.  Since the vast majority of them were believing, passionate, practicing Christians, their faith in God informed everything they did, as voluminously illustrated in their writings and actions.  They believed in science and reason, but worshipped neither. 

This notion that Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists has not loomed large in the Supreme Court’s reasoning is simply ridiculous.  Beginning in 1947, when Justice Hugo Black cited the “wall of separation” in Everson v. Board of Education, he overturned the long-standing balance between government and religion that had lasted for a 150 years.  He also declared that the religion clauses of the First Amendment, only designed to limit the federal government, now also applied to the states, something that the framers never intended.  After that, the phrase “wall of separation” would apply to every case or argument arising under the religion clauses, and has seeped into the American zeitgeist to the degree that many people believe the actual phrase to be in the Constitution.  As recently as 2002, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that our Democracy is threatened, “[w]henever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government.”      

Many Supreme Court Justices are admitted social crusaders concerned not with the constitutional framers’ intent, or accurate interpretation of the law, but with legislating from the bench.  When Associate justice Thurgood Marshall was asked what his judicial philosophy was, he responded, “You do what you think is right, and let the law catch up.”  Associate justice Arthur Goldberg responded to a similar question by stating that his goal was to determine “what is the just result.”  Do these sound like men who gave a damn about what the Constitution said or what the framers’ intended?  Come off it.  Radical individualism, radical egalitarianism, and radical feminism have had more to do with the last 50 years’ worth of Supreme Court decisions than actual interpretation of the Constitution.  Left-wing, chowder-brained social engineering has been the guiding principle of the Juristocracy, as the court has continued to usurp more than its constitutionally granted share of power.  The folly of the court has been greatly magnified as it continues to rule on new cases based upon the many faulty precedents of the past.  Legislative acts and plebiscites consistent with state constitutions and the U.S. Constitution are continually stalled, vilified, and overturned by these activist hippies in black robes.  It’s not just judges that are to blame; unscrupulous, radical lawyers share in this disgrace.      

Lawyers’ efforts to utilize our legal system to dismantle America’s cultural traditions are starkly illustrated in the reprehensible actions of the so-called American Civil Liberties Union.  The principals in that disgusting organization have made careers out of using the letter of the law to circumvent the spirit of the law, in order to further the legal interests of cop killers, rapists, pedophiles, pornographers, abortionists, Christian-haters, anti-Semites, and other assorted types of thugs, criminals and low-lives.  Once in a while, of course, they’ll actually take up cases in which someone’s Constitutional rights have been legitimately violated, in an effort to provide their sleazy defenders a cheap talking point, but the OTPE has got their number.  Their prime target has always been so-called First Amendment violations of separation between church and state.  They know that the surest way to dismantle America and remake it in their twisted image is to strike at the root, by stifling public religious expression.  Founded by self-admitted communists and atheists, the ACLU, for more than 60 years, has been very vocal about their agenda; the organization has been unabashed in their public statements, internal and external memoranda, amicus briefs, and press releases, regarding their nutty, anti-religious, anti-American, counter-traditional, left-wing crusade.  The ACLU’s actions in this regard, and the cooperation they’ve received from activist lawyers and judges, are a matter of public record, and more than validate my “diatribe.”    

One of the major differences between leftist ideology and conservative principles is that conservatives, though hindered by deep personal flaws, acknowledge those flaws, while continuing to shoot for a higher standard; leftists share deep personal flaws as well, but they justify them and rejoice in every warped, perverted human foible.  Leave it to the ACLU, for instance, to jump to the legal defense of the inconceivably evil North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), when the parents of an abducted, raped, and murdered 8 year old boy, attempted to bring suit against NAMBLA, after it was revealed that their son’s murderers had taken comfort in material that they read on NAMBLA’s website.  This material included detailed instruction in how pedophiles could lure young boys away from the safety of their parents.  Not to worry if you’re a self-respecting homosexual pedophile, here comes the ACLU to the rescue!  While at the same time, and consistently over the years, ACLU has been at the throats of Judeo-Christian religious expression.  They regularly provide pro bono defense for the dregs of humanity, while simultaneously attempting to erase the evil Ten Commandments from public view anywhere they are displayed.  Only the hopelessly self-deluded would fail to recognize the explicit connection between the ACLU’s simultaneous efforts to neuter religious expression and to protect and defend morally bereft animals like the sleazebags at NAMBLA.  And they win more cases than they lose. 

The ACLU has used its vast resources to employ an Orwellian public relations campaign which has elevated them to the status of sainthood in the eyes of the public.  It has always concerned itself with obfuscating the meaning of the Constitution, and of law in general, while their ideological brethren have applied the same precepts in the field of politics.  Too many Americans wander through life in a socio-political stupor; the mass hypnosis of Statist thinking has kept the public doped-up on union wages and handouts from myriad government programs.  In this mental state, Americans behave like sheep to be herded into voting booths to pull the lever for the Statists of both political parties, snoozing their way through the erosion of their liberties.  This is the type of thing that the OTPE was created to fight against, by calling attention to the man behind the curtain.  Today we’re being told what foods we may or may not eat while dining in privately owned restaurants, or that we have to crap into an eyedropper full of water in our bathroom toilet bowls (having to flush three times to clear it), or what kinds of light bulbs we must purchase to illuminate our own living rooms, what kind of cars we may drive and when we should purchase them, what kind of health insurance we may have, and what doctors we can and cannot see.  Statists try to convince us that our objections (diatribes) are all a lot of to-do over nothing.  But make no mistake, these government edicts are the mark of a soft tyranny, an attempt at controlling the minutia of individuals’ lives to a degree never before seen in America.  If we continue on this trajectory, soft tyranny will eventually give way to hard tyranny; it’s only a matter of time.  Unscrupulous lawyers and judges twisting and misrepresenting the meaning of the Constitution is a huge part of the problem.  As the public learns more and more about their shameless skullduggery, it will eventually lead to a reckoning.  I only hope that by the time they wake up it is not too late.

Four Canards That Progressives Use to Dupe America, a Primer (by ContraSuggest):

Conservatives are routinely accused by self-professed “Progressives” of leveling baseless criticisms against those on the political left.  Conservatives, we’re told, are just a bunch of uneducated, unenlightened, bigoted, knuckle-draggers, that resort to slurs and hyperbole in an effort to appeal to people’s prejudices.  Due to this false belief, many people who aren’t particularly educated in political matters, but lean conservative, may think that their traditionalist bent is something to be ashamed of, and that the Progressives have got their facts straight.  Well nothing could be further from the truth.  Below are four areas in which Progressives exercise morally and intellectually bankrupt reasoning in order to dupe people into following their failed policies.  So the next time some dopey libtard spouts off around the office water cooler; let ‘em have it!                     

1. Class, Race and Age Warfare

Liberals and Progressives practice the black art of splitting Americans up into groups and then pitting those groups against one another, in order to empower the instrumentalities of the state and expand their own influence.  Whether they’re exploiting the differences between old and young, wealthy and poor, black and white, or men and women, Progressives seek to benefit from the exaggerated divisions and differences that exist among the American public.  Instead of urging Americans to identify with the common bonds that we share as Americans, they instead draw spurious distinctions that stress differences and disharmony, in order to create animosity and confusion.  In that confusion they ally themselves with the “disenfranchised” groups that are largely of their own making, to gain political brownie points in return for votes.  It’s analogous to throwing a handful of marbles on the floor in a crowded room, and picking people’s pockets as they’re stumbling and falling amidst the bedlam.  Demagogic liberal buzz words and slogans (of the ‘Republicans want to take candy away from children’ variety) to listen for:

• We need to end “tax cuts for the rich”
• Any changes to Social Security or Medicare (even ones designed to save the bankrupt programs) will “force seniors to eat dog food,” or “prevent seniors from getting life-saving medical procedures and drugs”
• Any changes to Medicaid (even ones designed to save the bankrupt program) will “hurt the poor”
• Also, watch out for this asinine combination, “Republicans want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid so they can give tax cuts to the rich.”
• Any changes to the federal government’s disastrous role in providing home mortgage loans will “throw poor minorities into the streets”
• And don’t forget this classic, anything that Progressives advocate, no matter how ill advised, it is always “for the children!”

If you hear any of these intellectually bankrupt lies, immediately “call bullshit;” don’t let the minions of the left hypnotize you with their siren song of mendacity. 

2. Tofu Multiculturalism

Liberals and Progressives are big advocates of what they call “multiculturalism.”  But what they call multiculturalism isn’t very multi and it isn’t very cultural.  It’s actually just a left-wing code word signifying an almost Stalinist thinking that says people should look physically different, yet think the same.  The twisted logic goes something like this: we should be accepting of all other cultures except American culture, which, although not really a culture to speak of, what there is of it, is banal, racist, misogynist, elitist, imperialist, and basically evil.  Anyone who adheres to this way of thinking is hereby inducted into the ranks of the multiculturalists.  Students are taught this kind of tripe throughout their educational experience- all cultures are cool except American culture.  Not only don’t “multiculturalists” hold other cultures to the same impossible standard to which they hold American culture; they hold other cultures to no standards at all, often leaving out distressing historical information and ignoring the commission of culture-specific atrocities.  The cultures that are lionized by the left regularly violate the supposedly deeply held tenets of the left.  Cultures praised by the multiculturalists include ones that practice the severing of limbs as punishment for the commission of petty theft, forced female genital mutilation, brutal persecution of gays, women and minorities, and have histories replete with the commission of wholesale slaughter and genocide; these are the antitheses of the stated tenets of the liberal American tradition.  Yet leftists give a pass to, or are outright celebratory, of cultures that stone women to death simply as the result of an accusation of infidelity.  While at home, American Progressives condemn the passage of laws that prevent partial birth abortion, which is the destruction of a fully formed human child, by drawing her down the womb, piercing the child’s skull with a pair of scissors, and sucking the baby’s brain matter out with a vacuum tube.  Laws against that, we’re told, represent an unacceptable violation of the sacrosanct “women’s right to chose.”  The lack of consistency in those views is emblematic of the left’s moral confusion and paralysis of reason.                    

3. De-legitimatization of America’s Founding Principles

Haven’t you heard?  The American Founders were elitist, racist, misogynist, old white men, who left us with a deeply flawed system of government and a historical legacy of which we should be ashamed.  Not only should we not make favorable mention of any of them, but they actually deserve our disrespect.  Our Constitution was originally a pro-slavery document, which counted each black as 3/5^ths of a person; before it was amended by those wonderful Democrats, who also passed the banner civil rights legislation during the 1960s, ending government supported discrimination.  Bla-bla-bla.  This is the kind of rancid bovine excrement in which idiot leftists regularly traffic, most of which actually passes for fact in history textbooks, primary schools and college classrooms.  Actually, in the Declaration of Independence, the word Men, in the legendary phrase “… all Men are created equal …” meant (and means) mankind; which parenthetically, means women and Blacks too.  The God-given natural Rights outlined in the Declaration, in which the Founders deeply believed, are granted to everyone in the species, not a particular gender or race.  Abraham Lincoln used the sentiments outlined in the Declaration as a powerful weapon that couldn’t be rhetorically countered, to condemn the practice of slavery in the 1850s.  The first three words of the Constitution are “We the People,” not We the States, or We the Rich White Men, or We the Aristocracy, or we The Citizens of the United States (with the exception of the women and the Negroes).      

From the day the new American Constitution was ratified, limits were immediately placed on the institution of slavery, and over time those limits grew greater.  The anti-slavery tone was set while the Constitution was still being debated, as the provisional government under the Articles of Confederation passed into law the Northwest Ordinance (1787).  The Ordinance regulated the settlement of the Northwest Territory, which was eventually divided into several states of the Midwest.  It organized the territory into townships, provided for self-government and religious toleration.  Slavery was categorically prohibited.  It was Northerners at the Constitutional Convention that insisted on the 3/5^th of a person designation for slaves, in order to keep the South’s pro-slavery vote in Congress weaker.  If slaves had been counted as whole persons, the South’s pro-slavery voting power in Congress would have been greatly increased, strengthening the institution of slavery considerably.  The long-term plight of black slaves was improved by the 3/5^ths designation, not hurt by it.

A few historical reminders:

• It was the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, which supported and embraced the abolition of slavery in this country
• President Lincoln (a Republican) prosecuted a war against the racist, pro-slavery South (Democrats all).  This war prevented the South’s secession, preserved the Union, and assured the speedy destruction of slavery on the North American continent forever, as the Radical republicans drafted and pushed through Amendments to the Constitution that ended slavery, against the resistance of Democrats     
• Republican President Ulysses Grant introduced the first-ever American civil rights legislation in 1871
• More Republicans than Democrats voted for the legendary civil rights legislation of the 1960s

4. Sympathy for America’s Enemies and Denigration of U.S. Foreign Policy

Progressives have an almost genetic predisposition to denigrate America’s positive historic role in the world and to shore up the image of all our post-World War II enemies, whether it’s Soviet communists, South American socialists, or Islamic fascists; the rhetoric is always the same.  It was the left that came up with the suicidal “unilateral nuclear disarmament” doctrine towards the end of the Cold War, which held that a sure way to end the conflict would be for the U.S. to dismantle its nuclear arsenal, without demanding the same of the Soviets.  In this delusional fantasy scenario, they believed the totalitarian Soviets would dismantle their nukes because America had done so, thus no longer posing a threat.  Under the guise of desiring peace, they were willing to leave the U.S. defenseless against Soviet aggression, ignorantly drawing moral equivalence between the foreign policies of America and the “Evil Empire.”

This doctrine was codified against the backdrop of the failed foreign policy of the Carter Administration in the late 1970s.  President Carter believed that most of the strife in the world was due to America’s flawed foreign policy of interfering in the affairs of other nations.  Based upon this theory, he pursued a foreign policy of non-interference, which included cutting off financial and diplomatic support to U.S. friendly autocratic regimes in strategically vital regions during our Cold War struggle against the Soviets.  He exhibited an infuriatingly high level of naïveté in his rhetoric towards, and dealings with, untrustworthy, dangerous figures such as Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.  The effects of this policy were disastrous for the U.S. and the world, as many countries in key regions around the globe were taken over by totalitarian and or Soviet-friendly puppet regimes.  At least half a dozen American friendly regimes were toppled in the wake of losing America’s support.  In the 21^st century, the world is still suffering as the result of the Shah’s overthrow by the Ayatollahs in Iran, as the West has accepted the inevitability of an Islamic-fascist nuclear Iran.  Carter stopped production of the B-1 bomber, gave away our control of the strategically vital Panama Canal, and made human rights the central focus of U.S. foreign policy, instead of U.S. interests and international stability.  As a result of his strategy, the biggest human rights violators in nearly every region of the world gained power and, on the whole, the world became a far more unstable and dangerous place by many orders of magnitude during his 4 short years as president.          

We’ve seen a repeat of some of these dangerous policy blunders from the Statist Obama Administration.  Although the world is a vastly different place today than it was in the 1970s, the sycophantic rhetoric towards our enemies and the betrayal of promises to some of our allies is all too familiar.  We’ve been hearing this type of hogwash from Progressives for a very long time.  From George McGovern and Jimmy Carter to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn; from John Kerry and Howard Dean to Gore Vidal and Michael Moore, the basic message has always been the same.  These intellectual morons despise America as she exists; the America that they say they love is the one they want to create out of whole cloth, an America in which government technocrats, “intellectuals” like themselves, control and guide ignoramuses like you and me; an America that conducts delusional foreign policy based only upon unsubstantiated, and provably dangerous, leftist criteria.

The Battle Over The First Amendment Continues...

Hello Again True Believers, take a look at my biggest fan's latest comment by clicking on this link

http://contrasuggest.blogspot.com/2011/05/memo-from-otpe.html#comments

And here's what I say to him in response:

What the hell do they teach you kids in school these days?  I can’t believe that I have to explain this to you.  Let’s start from the beginning, and this time I hope to be sufficiently nuanced as to avoid the criticism of simplistic black and white characterizations. 

Natural law is the doctrine that human affairs should be governed by ethical principles that are part of the very nature of things, and that can be understood by God-given reason.  Natural rights are granted by God and are the birthright of every human being.  While governments can acknowledge natural rights, it is not in their power to grant them; while governments can attempt to stifle natural rights, it’s not in their power to take them away.

For many decades, our cultural institutions and the purveyors of political propaganda who control them have tried to convince us that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution share no commonalities.  We’ve been told that the Declaration is a declarative statement of political theory, which, among other things, rejects unjust colonial rule; while the Constitution is strictly a document of law; and never the twain shall meet.  While this assessment is strictly true, the Constitution cannot be properly understood or interpreted without an understanding of the natural law doctrine, so eloquently outlined in the 1^st two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence.  The two are companion documents that mutually define and strengthen one another, to read and interpret either one without knowledge of the other renders an incomplete understanding of both, of our country and the theories that form its foundation.  To state that the first three words of the constitutional preamble posit a connection to the natural law doctrine, is in no way tenuous.  The clearly stated intentions and beliefs of the men who debated and composed the document support this view. 

The Founders, all learned men who were devoted students of history, understood and believed the natural rights doctrine, hinted at in ancient Greece by Pythagoras and Socrates, defined in Rome by Cicero and codified by Aquinas (among others).  In 1765, British legal scholar William Blackstone, also a great influence on the founding generation, outlined his thoughts on what he called “higher law”; he was in fact referring to natural law.  Higher law was always to be placed above man-made law.  The Constitution has been referred to as the higher law, or law of the land, for the very reason that it was drafted by men who well understood and believed in the precepts of natural law philosophy. The natural law concepts of human dignity and equality, outlined in the Declaration, are embodied in the rights outlined in the Constitution.  To ignore this, is to misunderstand the Constitution and its inexorable connection to the Declaration.  Shortly after the compromises that led to ratification of the Constitution, James Madison remarked, “It is impossible for a man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.”  In 1775, Alexander Hamilton said, “Good and wise men in all ages have embraced … [this] theory.  They have supposed that the Deity … has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any institution whatever.”

None of  this means that the Constitution is a collection of natural law or of God’s law, but that it was drafted by men who believed in the Christian God, and natural law, and thus must be viewed through that lens and can only be properly understood in that context. 

Now which notion is more obscure: acknowledgment of God’s authority being assumed in the words of the Constitution; or a casual turn of phrase in an obscure letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802, being repeatedly cited by Supreme Court Justices as impetus to remove religious expressions from the public square?  As you point out, the courts have long rendered inconsistent decisions, but there is no question that the net movement has been towards less religious expression in the public square and less public funding of activities sponsored by religious bodies.  This is what I object to, and the Founders’ intentions, as reflected in the preponderance of their written words and recorded actions, stand against it.  Thankfully there have been some Supreme Court justices who actually understand the Constitution and the framers’ intentions; here is what one of them, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, said of the artificially created primacy of Jefferson’s “wall” metaphor in his dissent in Wallace v. Jaffree (1985):

It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of constitutional history, expressly freighted with Jefferson’s misleading metaphor for forty years.  Thomas Jefferson was of course in France at the time the constitutional amendments known as the Bill of Rights were pressed by Congress and ratified by the States.  His letter to the Danbury Baptist Association was a short note of courtesy, written fourteen years after the amendments were passed by Congress.  He would seem to any detached observer as a less than ideal source of contemporary history to the meaning of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment.

Albeit, Rehnquist takes his criticism of Jefferson a step further than I do, but, as already illustrated, there is prodigious evidence from Jefferson’s other writings and actions that contradict the modern interpretation of the “wall” metaphor. 

The references to “Creator” and “Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence could mean any number of things, some at odds with the Christian idea of God?  Surely you jest.  In a speech delivered on Independence Day of 1837, President John Quincy Adams posed these rhetorical questions, “Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth?  That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?”  JQA disagrees with you.  What about the guy who wrote the Declaration, did he believe in the Christian God, and was he a Deist?  Truth is, we really don’t know for sure, and since there is some ambiguity to what he believed, those on the political left are obsessed with him, he is one of the few figures from the founding generation (along with Madison) that they feel they can co-opt.  All we hear about is “Jefferson/Madison this, and Jefferson Madison that;” where are the references from the other Founders to support your view?  If Jefferson was a Deist, he was a Deist in the Judeo-Christian mode, believing that God created the universe, then stepped back, allowing mankind to administer it by the use of reason.  Speaking about the right of expatriation (to leave one’s native country and take up residence elsewhere) he famously said, “We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of Kings.”  Was this just poetic embellishment?  Who is the King of Kings?  I’ll give you little hint, he was not referring to any of the following: Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, the Horned God, Aiwass, Osiris, Jupiter, Odin, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, Rhiannon, The Jedi Knights, Eric Clapton, or Lady Gaga.  It is Jesus Christ to whom he referred; not some other deity or some fuzzy Deist conception of the godhead, cloaked in ambiguity.  Again, our rights do not come from the great jelly donut in the sky, but from the Christian God.   

In an 1802 letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Jefferson himself rebuked those who claimed he was hostile towards religion, stating that his views on the subject, “are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions.”  I concede that Madison was wishy-washy on the subject of church/state associations.  Yet, he appointed Joseph Story, the Dane Professor of Law at Harvard, to the Supreme Court, who served in that capacity for over 30 years.  Story, in his seminal Commentaries on the U.S. Constitution, wrote (non-contiguously):

Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the amendment to it … sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as it is not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship.

In fact, every American colony, from its foundation down to the revolution, with the exception of Rhode Island … did openly, by the whole course of its laws and institutions, support and sustain, in some form, the Christian religion, and almost invariably gave a peculiar propriety in viewing the Christian religion, as the great basis on which it must rest for its support and permanence, if it be, what it has ever been deemed by its truest friends to be, the religion of liberty.

The duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion, is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men, or to punish them from worshipping God in the matter, which, they believe, their accountability to him requires. … The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the reach of human power. 

The view among the founding generation that religion was the sine qua non of republican government was not the exception but the rule.  If you won’t believe me, then believe them:

… Since we aught to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained:  And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.  (George Washington, First Inaugural Address)

True religion affords to government its surest support (Washington, before the Synod of the Reformed Dutch Church)

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensible supports.  (Washington, Farewell Address)

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.  Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.  Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.  (John Adams)

Religion and Virtue are the only Foundations, not only of Republicanism and of all free Government, but of social felicity under all Governments and in all Combinations of human society.  (J. Adams)

Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.  (Samuel Adams)

The politician who loves liberty sees … a gulph that may swallow up the liberty of which he is devoted.  He knows that morality overthrown (and morality must fall without religion) the terrors of despotism can alone curb the impetuous passions of man, and confine him within the bonds of social duty.  (Alexander Hamilton)

Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore, who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure, which denounces against the wicked, the eternal misery, and insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundations of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.  (Charles Carroll of Carrollton)

Our country should be preserved from the dreadful evil of becoming enemies of the religion of the Gospel, which I have no doubt, but would be the introduction of the dissolution of government and the bonds of civil society.  (Elias Boudinot)

Reading, reflection, and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts … in which all religions agree.  (Thomas Jefferson)

Religion is the only solid Base of morals and Morals are the only possible support of free governments.  (Gouverneur Morris)

The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion.  Without this there can be no virtue, there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.  (Benjamin Rush)

I could go on all day quoting the Founders’ words and describing their actions in support of my thesis.  But enough is enough; let’s get to what this debate is truly about.  The opponents of church/state associations must continually claim their false affinity with the Founders in order to mask their true goals, which are actually the antithesis of the Founders’ goals.  That is why, in words and in practice, the Founders acted contrary to the way today’s Statists act.  So let’s drop the pretense; Statists don’t give a crap about what the Founders did or intended; they want to destroy all rights to public religious expression because they know it is the last bulwark that stands against the dissolution of our moral/ethical cultural tradition and the cornerstone of our civilization: the family.  Excising religion from American public life will further weaken collective morality and secular law, to a degree that will open up the floodgates for a tsunami of permissive, hedonistic narcissism, and the concentration of authority in a massive monolithic federal bureaucracy.  Statists are in earnest when they vociferously declare to love the USA; however, the USA that they claim to love is one that only exists in their masturbatory fantasies.  The Amerika that they love is a place ruled by phony multiculturalism, gay marriage, abortion on demand (even for minors, without parental consent), a second sexual revolution that extends to children of all ages, the emasculation of the military, the legalization of all drugs, the denigration of American traditions, and the invalidation of everything that the Founders labored for so arduously.  This is the hideous mutation that the far left has been trying to transform America into ever since it began taking the reins of government power in the 1960s.  Statists desire an America with no moral boundaries, where churches, synagogues and parents wield no authority, where arbitrarily applied secular law is decoupled from Judeo-Christian law, and where all power is vested in the capricious intellectual technocrats who sit athwart the federal leviathan.               

If you think for one moment that we here at the OTPE are going to go gently into that good night, you’ve got another thing coming.