The simple truth of the matter is that every system of government humans have ever gotten together is based on someone's unproven set of moral beliefs. Whether you're talking about Secular Humanism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism or whatever, every system of government ever devised is necessarily tied so someone's unproven set of moral beliefs.
We are no different. Our big problem is that Secular Humanism has been established as our official national belief system in direct contravention of the expressed purpose and meaning of the First Amendment. What's more, this illegitimate establishment of religion has proven why the founders were correct to fortify against the establishment of an official federal religion. Secular Humanism has, as they predicted, used its national position of power to dominate the other belief systems. That is what is at the heart of the cultural wars of our day: Is the federal government to continue to impose secular values on the entire nation, or will we take a step back and re-empower our old system of local community moral self government?
The genius of the American system is the founders recognized the inevitable intertwining of church and state, with cultural issues of speech, press and such that goes with that and instead of merely trying to prevent some form of federal religion, they also did not want the federal congress to make any law that might control what any state might do with religion. Clearly, the words of the amendment, especially the word “respecting” lead to the conclusion that the federal congress is not to make any law, for or against, any establishment of religion. In one clever wording it both prevents the feds from making their own religion, and it keeps them from interfering with any state that might want to.
So the founders didn't even try to prevent any establishment of religion at the state level. In fact some of them probably favored such. Nine of the original thirteen states had established religions as the Constitution came into being. Instead of trying to prevent any kind of theocracy, they were intent on preventing any particular religion from being established at the federal level, from where it might gain undue influence over the other religions.
But then the Supreme Court stepped into it through a misbegotten process detailed here:
https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2023/05/how-first-amendment-was-turned.html?m=1
The abreviated version says
The court ruled, in 1947, Everson v Board of Education, that there existed, in the First Amendment, as seen through the lens of the Fourteenth Amendment, a principle of a strict separation of church and state that would from that moment forward be enforced on the states by the federal courts. The court, after writing so forcefully, then obscured the issue by ruling favorably for the parochial school at issue, and then further obscured the issue by letting it sit dormant for more than a decade. Then, at the start of the 1960's this new principle became the basis for throwing prayer out of public schools. It's been off to the races since then, with every perversion and twisting of the First Amendment imaginable, and the American masses wildly cheering this runaway train delivering them to their doom.
In reality, the First Amendment has been stolen from us and we have to get is back.
The simple ugly truth is that we, the people have been completely flim-flammed on this issue over the course of a number of decades. The best part of this con-job, from the point of view of the con-men, is that we, the people, the victims of the con, are passionately convinced that the flim flam is the truth. The perfect crime has been committed because the victims are convinced that they are the beneficiaries. What we, the victims, don't realize is that this 180 degree twisting of the First Amendment is at the heart of what has gone so wrong with our beloved nation. The simple sad but inescapable truth is that the mythical “separation of church and state” we have so completely committed to as a people is an inevitably tyrannical philosophy of government. The truth is that we, the people, have been completely fooled on this, and we had better get it right pretty soon or we are lost.
Thomas Jefferson said and wrote (all quoted in full in the essay linked earlier) that the states reserved to themselves the right of determining how far speech and press should be allowed to go before they became detrimental to the public good. He also wrote that subjects like religion, press and speech are (I love this wording) “withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals.” Additionally, he said, at his second inauguration, that such moral matters were not federal concerns, but remained under state or church authority.
Using the 14th Amendment to apply the 1st Amendment to the states is a major blunder by the Court, and it should be reversed. I firmly agree with the purpose and goals of the 14th Amendment; ensuring as it does that every citizen has equal rights under the Constitution, and under the constitutions and laws of the several states. That does not, however, encompass the 1st Amendment because the 1st is not a statement of right, privilege or immunity, but is instead simply a limit on the federal government.
So that is the technical argument about the misuse of the 1st Amendment. It's pretty much irrefutable, which is probably why you don’t hear it very often. So what, right?
The so what is that this is much bigger than just speech, press, and religion, as big as those issues are. It goes beyond that to all the other areas of self government, because , after all, every issue is susceptible to moral input and therefore inevitably linked to some unproven belief system.
Maybe we could end corporate personhood, and return many of the powers of corporate regulation back to our local communities. From what I see, corporate policy could use some moral input from local people. Or return many of the powers and responsibilities of social support back to those same communities. Getting all those burdens could be daunting, but at the same time we would have much more say in how things get done, gaining efficiency and a lot of character development.
That's then the big point, isn't it? Free self government takes a lot more individual work than our current form of government does, and we are not sure we want to do that much work. But that really is the point, because it is high time we admitted that we, as a nation, need to do some collective character development. Returning the powers and responsibilities of moral self government to our local communities will naturally stretch us and develop our character. What’s more, it will do so in a far more effective and healthy way than any program of indoctrination that might be handed down from some on high government official.
So that is what is really at stake in getting our 1st Amendment back. We need to re-envision the kind of society we used to be when we had local community self government, when we had a citizenry possessed of those long sought republican virtues, that elusive community spirit. If we did that, if we truly sought to return to that arduous but glorious ideal, we would find that we would become stronger with the effort, strong enough to successfully domesticate the beast of government. When we do that, we will become a people who can domesticate the beast of corporate oligarchy, and go on from there to domesticate the most dangerous beast of all, the industrial high tech revolution.
The first step in this thousand mile journey, the step we must take now, is to wake up and realize the honest and intended use of our 1st Amendment has been stolen from our lives, minds and hearts. We need to get very angry about this theft and con job, and resolve to restore an honest reading of the First Amendment. Thereby we can start to patch back together the broken fragments of our shattered republic. God will once again mightily bless US as we once again choose Liberty.
Contact me: comradeamerica2@yahoo.com
my blog is: lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com
Or go wild and order my book:
Re-Conceiving American Liberty:
How and Why to Put Our Country Back Together
Available on Amazon and Kindle
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