“We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land—nor, perhaps, the sun or stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. That chart is the Constitution.” — Daniel Webster

“I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.” — Fredrich August von Hayek

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. 

Seems pretty clear, doesn’t it?

• The Constitution doesn’t allow Congress to pass a law either for or against religion
• If the Constitution doesn’t allow the Federal government to do something, nor prohibit the states from doing something, then that power is reserved to the 50 individual states, or to the people

Now I’m not a lawyer, and maybe that’s a good thing, because it sounds to me like any single state could pass a law establishing a religion — or perhaps just allowing school prayer. I don’t lie awake nights trying to figure how I can weasel out of a perfectly good Constitution. I don’t try playing with words to see what I can get away with. Unlike some judges, it seems.

Last year, U.S. District Judge David Hamilton ruled that official prayers of the Indiana House cannot refer to Christ and must be nondenominational. (Question: If a prayer is nondenominational, who the heck are you supposed to be praying to?) Now looking over the Constitution, it seems to me that we have a problem. The right to pray is not granted exclusively to the Federal government, nor is it prohibited to the States. Therefore, according to the Constitution, that right is reserved to the States, or to the people. So why, pray tell (pardon the pun), is Judge Hamilton sticking his judicial nose into the mix?

Well, I’ll see your judge, and raise you a Representative. In an attempt to allow Indiana legislators to continue to do what they’ve done for the past 180 years or so, U.S. Representative Mike Sodrel has introduced a bill to remove the Judicial Branch’s jurisdiction over free speech. WDC Media News has the story:

A Congressman from Indiana has introduced a bill that would protect prayer in state legislatures.

The bill comes in response to an Indiana judge prohibiting prayers that mention the name of Jesus Christ during Indiana House sessions.

Congressman Mike Sodrel doesn’t think judges should have the power to regulate religious speech – especially prayers that are a part of legislative proceedings.

However, Hamilton’s ruling did not deal with free speech, per se, but with “the constitution’s ban on government establishment of religion”. News flash, Judge Hamilton. Praying is not establishing a religion. Religion has to exist in the first place. Prayer comes from that, it’s an expression of something that already exists.

It’s kind of like which came first, the chicken and the egg? As a Christian, I believe the chicken came first, because God didn’t create animals and birds as embryonic life forms, he created them in their final state with reproductive capacity.

Now on to the next question. Judge Hamilton ruled against what he perceived to be a government establishment of religion. But in doing so, he prohibited the free exercise thereof. The free exercise of religion belongs to everyone, not just ordinary citizens. Our representatives can pray, too (and hopefully they do). So in attempting to correct one perceived “wrong”, Judge Hamilton creates another.

One of the bedrock principles of the American system of government is our system of checks and balances. Our government is divided into three separate branches — the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial. Each is separate and distinct from the others, and has its own function within our government:

• The Legislative Branch makes the law
• The Executive Branch enforces the law
• The Judicial Branch interprets the law

The duties assigned to each branch are established in the first three articles of the United States Constitution. But what happens when one branch assumes duties for which it is not empowered, and there seems to be no oversight to prevent this? The Supreme Court and even lower courts are interpreting laws (including the very foundational law which establishes our government, the United States Constitution) to mean things which the original framers of those laws never intended. In modern times, this began when the Supreme Court outlawed most school prayer in two rulings in the early 1960’s - (Engel v. Vitale, 1962 and Abington Township School District v. Schempp, 1963) - using the fallacious “separation of church and state” argument.

That same flawed argument is being used today in such a way as to cause this writer to believe that America is heading toward another revolutionary state some 230 years after our Declaration of Independence became the glove slapped across the face of Britain’s King George, precipitating the Revolutionary War.

In the article which established this site, I stated that “…it seems somehow as if we’ve lost our sense of direction … we’ve been adrift in a sea of mediocrity, having no sense of direction for the ‘home port’ to which we might return, no tiller to choose our course.” The lighthouse which would allow us to establish our position and strike out on a sure course is being moved from place to place, its light shrouded and unclear, by liberal courts and judges. The lighthouse I’m speaking of is our own Constitution.

In any society, for government to work there must be an agreed-upon set of rules which levels the playing field and establishes the “rule of law” which everyone should respect, paying the consequences when they do not. Our Constitution is the set of rules which has served us well for almost a quarter of a millennia. The reason our government is one of the longest-lived on the planet is because of, not in spite of, those rules. When men of lesser stature and less pure motives than our Founding Fathers seek to twist those rules into something that they were never intended to be, they set America on a downward spiral from which she must be rescued.

Why is this so? Because where there is no law, anarchy rules. We become a nation ruled by those in power, not by our Constitution, and the powerful are never known to give up their power willingly. Essentially, the Constitution is our ideal, something which we must always live up to. When we usurp the ideals of our most basic legal document - or allow others to - we do so at our own peril.

John Adams, our second president, stated that “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 is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.” What he was saying is that our government requires morality and religion in order to operate. Our Constitution is not designed for a government which does not recognize a greater power than itself.

George Washington agreed with this principle in his Farewell Address in September 1796 when he said, “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to  expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” This statement from the Father of our Country quite firmly ties religion to morality.

Years ago, I learned a theorem in Geometry class that I can still recall. That theorem stated that if “a=b and b=c, then a=c”. Applying that here, if religion is required for morality, and morality is required for our Constitution to work, then religion is required for our Constitution to work. But is this allowed by the Constitution, or did the framers not intend for government to be involved in the exercise of religion at all?

America has no “official” religion, although it can be argued persuasively that the defacto religion is the many flavors of Christianity offered by the various denominations. But many references in the writings of our Founding fathers and in various state and federal government documents expressly mention either God or Christianity. For instance, did you know that every single one of the 50 State Constitutions refers to God in some form or other? Further, John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, and son of the second president said, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” [emphasis added]

But what happens when the Judiciary, under the guise of its mandate to interpret the law, completely changes the meaning of the law, in effect creating a new law? It is the first step in whittling away the freedoms that we hold so dear. After all, if the courts decide that instead of Freedom of Religion we have Freedom from Religion, then our freedom to worship as we please is eroded. If you don’t believe this, I’ll refer you to an article dated November 4, 2003, on WorldNetDaily. It contained the following facts:

• In Texas, a U.S. District judge decreed that any student uttering the word “Jesus” at his school’s graduation would be arrested and locked up. “And make no mistake,” announced Judge Samuel B. Kent, “the court is going to have a United States marshal in attendance at the graduation. If any student offends this court, that student will be summarily arrested and will face up to six months incarceration in the Galveston County Jail for contempt of court.”
• In Missouri, when fourth-grader Raymond Raines bowed his head in prayer before his lunch in the cafeteria of Waring Elementary School in St. Louis, his teacher allegedly ordered him out of his seat, in full view of other students present, and sent him to the principal’s office. After his third such prayer “offense,” little Raymond was segregated from his classmates, ridiculed for his religious beliefs, and given one week’s detention.
• In New York, kindergartner Kayla Broadus recited the familiar and beloved prayer – “God is great, God is good. Thank you, God, for my food” – while holding hands with two students seated next to her at her snack table at her Saratoga Springs school early last year. But she was silenced and scolded by her teacher, who reported the infraction to the school’s lawyer, Gregg T. Johnson, who concluded that Kayla’s behavior was indeed a violation of the “separation of church and state.”

What happens to our morality when judges tear at the fabric of the traditional family by somehow finding in the Constitution that a woman has a right to terminate an unborn child growing within her womb, without allowing the father of that child even a whisper of a voice in the outcome? Someone show me the law which allows pregnancies of convenience! Show me the law that says even though it takes two to create a child, only one has the right to determine whether that child is born or is aborted! You can’t, because there is no law like that. Why then does it happen? Because the Federal Judiciary, including the Supreme Court, now consistently oversteps its Constitutional authority by interpreting laws to mean things which were never intended by those rightfully empowered to enact legislation, the Congress of the United States.

Courts are now even going so far as to look at the laws of other nations when considering cases. All this means is that we as American citizens can no longer depend on a single lighthouse - our Constitution - to guide us. We now find a host of wavering beams of light trying to guide us to safe port. This is utterly ridiculous, and the American people must take matters back into their own hands before the elite judiciary has gone so far as to be unstoppable.

What’s to be done about it? I firmly believe that if our Founding Fathers were alive today, they’d find a pot of tar and a bag of feathers and throw a little middle-of-the-night party for certain members of the Judiciary. Those justices would be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail. I find myself somewhat saddened by the fact that men of such backbone generally do not exist today.

Since tarring and feathering is not a feasible option, we must use other means. The Declaration of Independence states that “… governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” [emphasis added]. We have to give our consent. In a Republic such as ours, this consent is given through our elected representatives. It is imperative that we contact our congressmen and demand that they stop the liberal courts from creating laws out of thin air. We must demand an accountability of our Federal Judiciary. There must be some means of overriding a bad judicial decision, even when - no, especially when - that decision emanates from our Supreme Court.

TD