Thursday.....Politics.....Separation Of Church And State?

I had only read the captions from the stories on Christine O'Donnell's comments on the separation of church and state when I overheard numerous comments on the big story, then I investigated just what had happened. O'Donnell, the Republican candidate to the Senate from Delaware, was speaking  in a debate with her opponent at Widener School of Law when, in the course of that debate she asked "Where in the Constitution, is separation of church and state." There was laughter from the audience and she was severely taken to task the next day by the national media. Once again, there is a story behind the story. Law schools are very much like colleges and universities in general as they are primarily liberal institutions with a few conservative ones that look to the original intent of the authors of our founding documents on issues such as this. The laughter of the students displayed an ignorance of the phrase separation of church and state as it used today. It is a pejorative in that it is meant to purge God from the public square. It fits very nicely in the old Soviet Constitution but is eisegesis in ours. I previously wrote on Thomas Jefferson's use of the phrase and it is utterly misinterpreted as Jefferson was writing to the Danbury Baptist Association encouraging them that the state will stay out of the Church's business. The 1st Amendment begins...Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof. Our Founding fathers were speaking about the separation of the state from the particular religious beliefs of its people. The state will not promote one denomination, nor will it discriminate against another. The usage and intent of the phrase today is not touched upon in the 1st Amendment which describes the relationship of church and state, a relationship that was to be nothing like the state church of England to its people or the persecution of those who fled England to come here. Rather, the intent is an attempt to attach an indicative to the 1st Amendment that is not there. The whole incident speaks to the general knowledge, or lack of it, of much of the public on the issues that divide us. A cursory examination is given on an issue, from sources that are easiest to find (the mainstream media,) from an already biased inclination. This election is once again being fought through television campaign ads, YouTube, Facebook, flyers in the mail, soundbites and talking points although the outrage seen in the Tea Party movement is the result of people with  first-hand experience of the consequences of an eroding constitution and usurping of its  powers by an activist judiciary, bureaucratic takeover of Congressional responsibilities, political correctness, highway robbery through taxation, a weakened national defense, threats to our national sovereignty, a desecration of marriage and a direct assault of that 1st Amendment in that a particular religion-Secularism and its atheist sponsors- is being established while Christianity is being prohibited piecemeal. In the eyes of many today, there is an epidemic in America and it is the quest to read, to investigate and  to discern, as opposed to just listen and accept. If a vaccine is not found to stop this, or a antibody to kill it, the grand design of a socialist country with Progressive ideals will cease and desist and, Huxley forbid, a pandemic might even spread around the globe.