{"id":11199,"date":"2010-10-20T15:27:26","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T15:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/10\/20\/christine-odonnell-and-the-first-amendment\/"},"modified":"2010-10-20T15:27:26","modified_gmt":"2010-10-20T15:27:26","slug":"christine-odonnell-and-the-first-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/10\/20\/christine-odonnell-and-the-first-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"Christine O’Donnell and the First Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although O'Donnell  comes across as an airhead, she was actually right: there are no such words as "separation of church and state" in the First Amendment.  The Establishment Clause reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ."  Chris Coons got it wrong when he misquoted the clause as "Government shall make no establishment of religion."  Not government, but congress<\/em>.  William A. Jacobson<\/a> explains why this matters  Not "make no establishment of religion," but "make no LAW RESPECTING an establishment of religion."  In other words, Congress shall not enact any law that sets up any particular religion as the state religion.  (But it seems it also can be interpreted  to have the further meaning: Congress shall enact no law that disestablishes<\/em>  any particular religion that happens to have been established.)<\/span><\/p>\n

I refer you to Professor Jacobson<\/a> for detailed analysis.<\/span><\/p>\n

And another thing.  I have never understood why liberals oppose the posting of the Ten Commandments in, say, a judge's chambers. (Well, I do understand why they oppose it; my point is that I can't see that they have a logical or First Amendment leg to stand on.)  First, the Decalogue is not specific to Christianity or to the other two Abrahamic faiths: it is precisely common to all three in virtue of its Old Testament provenience.   Hence even if its posting could establish a religion as the state religion it would be no particular religion that would be thereby established.  Second, and more fundamentally, it is ludicrous to suppose that the mere posting of the Ten Commandments could have the effect of establishing any particular religion as the state religion.<\/span><\/p>\n

What motivates leftists (and contemporary liberals whose slouch towards leftism leaves them for all practical purposes indistinguishable from the former) is hatred of Judeo-Christian religion, and with, it hatred of the morality that such religion conveys.  Note that I wrote 'Judeo-Christian' and not 'Abrahamic.'  For it is a bizarre fact about the Left that they are soft on that religion which is uniquely violent and uniquely anti-Enlightenment at the present time, Islam.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although O'Donnell  comes across as an airhead, she was actually right: there are no such words as "separation of church and state" in the First Amendment.  The Establishment Clause reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ."  Chris Coons got it wrong … Continue reading “Christine O’Donnell and the First Amendment”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-u-s-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}