"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 19 Mar 2004 17:47:24 GMT, "Gord Beaman" )
wrote:

Guy Alcala wrote:

WalterM140 wrote:

Separation of church and state, anyone?

The president doesn't speak for the state in the same way that the
Queen of
England does, for instance.

Lincoln quotes snipped

The framers wanted Americans to have freedom -of- religion, not
freedom -from-
religion.

In order to have freedom -of- religion, one must also have the option of
freedom
-from- religion, or no freedom exists.

Guy (a life-long agnostic)

That's akin to saying that freedom doesn't exist unless everyone
is free to do whatever they wish. I don't think that I'd like to
live in a country where that was the case, would you?.

Time for the ol' Political Science professor to drop in and point out
some things.

First, the president speaks for the state in a much greater way than
the Queen. The US President is both head of state and head of
government. That being said, however, when a President professes his
own faith and trust in divine providence, he isn't speaking for the
state. And, when an historic presidential statement is made it
reflects more on the sociology of the time than the politics. It
definitely does not speak to Constitutional interpretation.

Following a Christian philosophy is not evangelization.

Then, the oft-quoted conundrum of "freedom-of" versus "freedom from"
is found nowhere in Constitutional law. The religion guarantees in the
First Amendment are in two clauses--separate and not contradictory.

Wrong, "the free exercise theroef" eliminates any possibility of a "freedom
from" religion. The First Amendment is a powerful thing and I have used the
final delcaration myself, to improve regulation.

First, the "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion"--that means not only that the Congress shall not establish a
religion, i.e. a governmentally endorsed faith. But goes a step
further in specifiying that the law shall not "respect" a particular
establishment of religion. In other words, no favoritism for one
religion over another. This is a restriction on the government, not
the citizens. And, by virtue of the 14th Amendment's "equal
protection" provisions it applies to the lesser levels of government
in our federal system as well.

And thus we can have a Southern Baptist Church on one corner and a Methodist
Curch catty corner to it and have no excessive exchange of gunfire.

None of that implys in any way that there is any right to "freedom from"
religion and a constructionist interpretation would need to conclude that an
insistance on "freedom from " religion is in fact a violation of the First
Amendment.

The Forteenth Amendment, it is intended as an enforcement mechanism for the
Thirteenth Amendment. One need only discover the Fifteenth Aendment and the
95 year delay in enacting enabling law to understand how the wind came out
of the Constitutional change sail once the enforcement of anti-slavery law
moved forward. (1869)

Second, the sentence goes on, "...or restricting the free exercise
thereof." That part applies to the citizens. Citizens are free to
practice the rituals of their individual faiths without governmental
interference. (Of course if that practice interferes with the rights
of others, or the 'general welfare" of society, we can constrain the
practice of religion--hence no more virgins in the volcanoes.)

Perhaps, but the Governement's expression of religion is part of our
buildings and money everywhere. It would seem that the general proclomation
of the Forteenth Amendment is being used to circumvent the "free exercise
thereof" explicitly guaranteed under the First.

As for the God-fearing attributes of the Framers, they were
politicians of the time and the custom was to express a level of
civility and piety in their public discourse. Many belonged to
Protestant denomination churches, but many were also agnostic or (as
in the case of Thomas Jefferson,) deists--believers in a Supreme Being
without espousal of a particular liturgy. There's little evidence to
link anything in the Constitution to Christianity.

Even Ed is peddler of revisionionist PC bull****.

Notice how we began at Guy's desire to be "left alone", as guaranteed by
Fourth Amendment, to Ed's activist PC proclomation about it being OK to
attack Christianity.