This is a long post, but it’s been a long time in the making and its a complex discussion. When I was about 26 years old, I was having a political discussion at work with a coworker my age about which politician to vote for. She was adamant that she would only vote for a President who would be pro-choice. I asked her about a host of other issues but she only cared about that. This struck me as an absurd position. According to her logic, if our new President ran the country with an iron fist, banned free speech, raised taxes on everyone, destroyed the environment, banned homosexuality and invaded every continent…all of that was acceptable so long as her pro-choice rights were protected. It is this kind of blind obsessiveness over any one particular issue that allows government to rob us blind and we’ll still say thank you.
The reality is, you show me 307 million Americans and I’ll show you their 307 million perfect Presidential candidates. Since it’s impossible for everyone to find their perfect candidate, we must all agree to compromise on certain issues. Right? Wrong. Dead wrong.We can have it all. But you must re-educate yourself first. I’m here to tell you, the public school system has let us all down in this regard.
The irony of this…the absolute Greek tragedy…is that none of us have to surrender any of our positions at all if we understood how the Constitution was written and the differences it outlines between federal and states’ rights. This is the wool pulled over our eyes. This is the lie we’re addicted to. This is why we squabble among each other over issues and surrender some of our beliefs to protect others. It’s all a lie. But if you read and understand the Constitution, you can see the truth.
Think of it this way, the government has re-written the rules of the game. It’s like the family member a lot of us had when we were kids that made up the rules to Monopoly as the game was going on. The rules always miraculously being altered in favor of the rule changer. The other players would squabble and fight with each other under these new guidelines of “altered” rules with nobody ever saying, “Hey…why don’t we just go look at the box and see what the real rules are.”
When it comes to the rules the Federal Government must play by, and not just the ones they’ve re-written to their benefit and taught us…it’s time we all went back and looked at the box.
For all the drama that people subscribe to regarding politicians and their religions, and being an Atheist myself making up only 1.6% of the population (somewhere above Buddhism but decidedly below Pentecostal), you would think I would have the most to fear in a country that is 75% Christian with more than 25 recognized religions.
But I am not afraid of any of that. I am petrified by something entirely different but just as relevant.
There are generally three reasons why anyone would be afraid of religion within America’s government, and unfortunately their fear is misallocated with the real problem being overlooked and significantly more frightening. The real fear is that we’ve lost sight of one of the rules on the box that would make fear of religion in Government irrelevant.
REASON #1
The Risk to Us All
The first would be fear of a theocracy, which is a government based implicitly or explicitly on a religion…any religion. Theocratic nations in existence today include Israel,Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Oman, Iran and Nigeria. In these countries, government is run based on the religious belief of the majority in that country.
Why This Doesn’t Matter
The Constitution protects all of us from a theocracy through the First Amendment and our freedom of religion. As such, we are all free to practice any religion we want, regardless of which one is running the White House at the time. For those chicken-littles that get so rattled about political religious affiliations I would ask them, “If the Founding Fathers wanted an all-Christian nation, why did they bother to create the First Amendment? Why didn’t they just agree to a theocratic Christian government?”
It always seems silly to me when people get hung up on what religion is in the White House as if that fact alone matters at all when we have the Constitution to guarantee our religious freedom and it has done so for over 230 years despite 230 years of mostly Christian Presidents.
REASON #2
The Risk to Us All
The second fear of religion in our own government, would be that religious wars would be perpetrated, as crusades of sorts, based on the possible religious fanaticism of the President, whoever he may be. There are many reasons given to justify U.S. wars. Consider the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and now the Libyan War. Reasons for these wars include arresting the spread of communism, preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction like nuclear bombs or biological weapons, freeing an oppressed society, securing oil and other needed mineral assets, revenge, and of course as a religious crusade to maintain Christian supremacy in the world.
Why This Doesn’t Matter (if we focused on the real problem and not what religion the President is)
Let’s assume all the reasons I listed are true…or false, it doesn’t matter. The last war that the United States engaged in that was actually legal through an official declaration of war as required by the Constitution was World War II. Every war since then, including all the ones I mentioned above have been illegal unconstitutional wars which means whatever the reasons they were fought for (religious crusade or otherwise) are irrelevant as the war should never have happened to begin with. There have been over 125 illegal acts of war due to a unilateral decision made by a U.S. President. His religion, or it being a reason to engage in war, is small beans compared to this frightening fact and abrogation of the Constitution.
People afraid of the religion in the White House are being distracted by political sleight-of-hand to focus on the wrong thing. While they obsess about whatever religion the President is, the Constitutional laws that protect them from having to even care about it at all are being destroyed.
Perpetrating a war against anyone or any country based on religion (or any other crackpot reason) would never happen if the Constitutional laws regarding an official declaration of war had not been ignored for the past 60 years.
Do not fear the level of religious belief from any one man in the White House, fear the level of his contempt for the Constitution. If he is a true believer in the Constitution, then all your other fears are unjustified. If he ignores the Constitution, then his religious beliefs are a very small part of what you should be afraid of, as all of your rights and freedoms are now in jeopardy, not just those regarding religion.
REASON #3
The Risk to Us All
That an overly religious President or Congress would pass laws based on their religious beliefs, such as laws regarding abortion, stem-cell research, banning the freedom of religion, gay marriage or the banning of head scarves in government buildings like schools (such as in France).
Why This Doesn’t Matter (if we focused on the real problem and not what religion the President is)
First, as I stated before, the Constitution prohibits our government from declaring a state religion and from preventing religious freedom. The problem we have today is not that the federal government and its politicians, or the federal court system and its judges, might pass laws limiting or expanding certain rights based on religious views but that the federal government or the courts are involved in making such laws at all.
Warning: Mind-Blowing Fact they Don’t Teach You In School Ahead…
Again, this is where our woefully undereducated students that exit our pro-big-government run schools have been taught the lie and they’ve chugged it down. These decisions, regarding abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, etc… are not for the federal government or federal judges to decide in the first place.
This fact bears repeating. You heard me right all you brain-washed public school kids…as directed by our own Constitution, the supreme law of the land, all socially based legislation is limited to the States, and to the People, not to the Federal Government. In other words, it is illegal for our Federal Government to pass a law or declare a federal court decision on any social issues. The fact that our Federal Government does it anyway is what you should be afraid of and spend your energy on correcting, not being distracted about which God the President believes in.
This petty distraction driven by our government-misdirection educational system will cost you much more than some overbearing religious overlord, it will cost you all of your rights and all of your freedoms, not just this one that you’re hung up on.
If schools taught the truth about the Constitution, kids would realize that the Constitution only gives the federal government about five explicit powers, none of which permits it to get involved in any of these issues. Only States, each of the 50 we have, have the right to create such laws. And each state will pass laws for each of these social issues as the citizens of those states see fit. This is how it was written by the Founding Fathers, not how it currently is or how you were taught.
Consider the legalization of marijuana for medicinal use or California’s attempt to legalize it completely. These efforts should be up to each State to decide, without fear of a federal law overriding what the citizens of those states pass into law. As it is now, if a state decided to legalize marijuana, the federal government will still declare it illegal making it difficult, and still dangerous, for people in that state to benefit from such a state law. This is not how the Founders wanted it. They wanted each state to participate in different social experiments without being subjected to a federal overlord (See Jefferson’s quote below).
If states were allowed to act Constitutionally by passing different laws among them about the same social issues, states would attract people and companies that supported that state’s social laws while people who did not agree had the freedom to move to a state that more accurately reflected their social preferences. As it is now, we are forced to be subjected to the single law of the federal land. We have nowhere to go if we don’t agree with it. Since there are always people on both sides of any social issue, then every federal law subjects some portion of the population, whether large or small, to a law they don’t agree with. If these laws were limited to the States, as the Constitution dictates, then everyone could move to the state that shares their belief system the best.
Today, we have no such choice. Our government has taken this freedom from us. Even though 14 States have declared medical marijuana use legal, they are still subject to Federal law which makes it illegal. It is only a lack of action by the Federal Government that has permitted it to go on. You have to ask yourself, why have the Feds not overruled these 14 states? The answer is because they can’t, constitutionally. But the law exists at the federal level nonetheless and if they choose to enforce it, on you personally, regardless of what state you are in, they can. This is wrong.
Oddly enough, after writing this post, I was just watching ‘Drugs, Inc.’ today and the medical marijuana law in California was discussed. They highlighted an individual from Ohio who suffers from several painful afflictions. The pain killers she was prescribed have destroyed her liver. Her Doctor privately recommended that she consider marijuana to alleviate her pain. Since medical marijuana is illegal in Ohio, she moved to California. This is an excellent example of how the Founders expected the states to operate…independently from federal oversight. Without States’ rights, free from Federal intervention, this women would have been forced to suffer in severe pain for the rest of her life. How is that acceptable to anyone? This should be the same outcome for all social issues.
So once again, undereducated chicken-littles focusing on government magic tricks are so worried about what religion the President is, they don’t even realize that as long as we enforce the Constitution and elect only strong supporters of the Constitution, we need not fear what religion our President is because it makes no difference when the Constitution is being respected and enforced.
The Thomas Jefferson side story…
Thomas Jefferson was a strong supporter of religious freedom and often wrote about its importance, citing the success of religious freedom experiments in other states…
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth… Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without any establishment at all. The experiment was new and doubtful when they made it. It has answered beyond conception. They flourish infinitely. Religion is well supported; of various kinds, indeed, but all good enough; all sufficient to preserve peace and order: or if a sect arises, whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors, without suffering the state to be troubled with it. They do not hang more malefactors than we do. They are not more disturbed with religious dissensions. On the contrary, their harmony is unparalleled, and can be ascribed to nothing but their unbounded tolerance, because there is no other circumstance in which they differ from every nation on earth. They have made the happy discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them. Let us too give this experiment fair play, and get rid, while we may, of those tyrannical laws
This is also an example of why the Founding Fathers wanted each state to “experiment” with social laws on their own, without Federal regulation that binds all of the states to one law. By doing it this way, with each state performing social experiments, all other states learn what works and what doesn’t. Social laws that are popular or successful are adopted by other states and bad laws are dropped or rejected.
Categories: 2012 Election
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