AUTHOR'S NOTE: THIS ESSAY, WHICH WAS WRITTEN OVER 20 YEARS AGO IS EVEN MORE RELEVANT THAN EVER TODAY; THUS WE REPUBLISH IT IN THE YEAR OF LORD, 2013, WITH ONE ADDED FOOTNOTE BECAUSE SINCE THIS PIECE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED THE AUTHOR LEARNED ABOUT GEORGE WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION OATH ON HIS MASONIC BIBLE.
A Monograph in Response to Michael Carpenter,*
Atty. Gen., State of Maine
February 3, 1992
by Pauly Fongemie
"In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson
"There is above all, the supreme stamp of the barbarian: the sacrifice of the permanent to the temporary."
G.K. Chesterton
America is said to have no official state religion, and to all too many, it follows that, if there be no established religion, then creed can be dispensed with, which is oxymoronic, since the dispensation from creed can be said to be a creed, a specific one, from which no dissent from its "orthodoxy" will be tolerated. If America has no official traditional religion, it cannot be said it has not adopted a civil religion, that holds as its creed, that there are no more right and wrong that bind as absolutes [per Carpenter, first day of Constitutional Law class], and thus, in our laws and the social mores reflected in them, we are trapped into all sorts of ironic inconsistencies, such as absolutizing what one claims no longer exists as an absolute; such as in our claim to know when death occurs, but not when life begins. [Medical science clearly states, however, that life begins at conception, but because of the fast paced technology available, we are no longer as definite about when death can be established, exactly opposite of the doctrines of the hegemony of liberalism, our civic "religion".]
While it is a good thing that religion cannot be imposed as a system of belief on those who choose not to believe, in no way can it be verily said that America had no creed as such. That system of belief whatever one may wish to name it, was a creed, the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed the source of all authority and of all law and the purposes for which government exists: to safeguard the right to life, liberty, property, among other prerequisites for the pursuit of happiness, and to which end self-evident and [unalienable] rights cannot be abrogated, since they are derived from God, and are not made and granted by men.
The modern dogmas of Constitutional supremacy and judicial review [now unjustly exercised as a form of abrogation by reinterpretation, not interpretation], have put the Supreme Court in conflict, on a collision course with the very purpose of self-government as posited in our national warranty or creed, now superseded by the audacious predilections of men and women raised to the highest bar in the land. Let us examine the corpus delecti:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident ..."
The current Court under which we suffer a tyranny as severe as if under an unjust king, is dedicated to the proposition that in law there is no right or wrong, no self-evident truths, only moral relativism, [Ibid.] an assertion at odds with eternal verities known by reason. The foundation of any law, if it is to inspire confidence and thereby gain compliance, is that it conveys a sense of conviction of these ineluctable first things, and applies them in justice, thereby a reasonable certainty is guaranteed, given that man is fallible, and an essential continuity, from year to year, generation to generation so that men know what it is that is expected of them, in what consists one's duty, responsibility, and the guarantee of inherent rights, and privileges, viz. a viz. his fellow citizens in accord with human dignity and human nature.
Man does not merely exist through random forces, he was created for a purpose by his Creator, and the social order that reflects that end, depends on the right relation of the law, property, and men. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men enact laws, but rather, because these human goods exist a priori and are indispensable, it is that men make laws.
"That all men are created equal ..."
The Court has denied that which is most binding on humankind, acknowledgment of the Divine, by sequentially and incrementally, negating the licitness of any expression of that Creator in our public institutions, especially in government schools where young minds are molded. Even voluntary prayer is now banished in some districts as too intrusive. Supposedly religion is so private a matter, we must never impose it, even on ourselves, with free will, in deference to the "sensibilities" of others. Under the rationale of avoiding the "unfair despotism" of the majority, we have enshrined the absolute dictates of the few over the many, to benefit the minority, and not the many who have retained the use of reason. An oligarchy of anarchy or the anarchical implosion of common sense and reasonable tolerance by oligarchy.
[Having said this, in no way do I ascribe to the notion that all men are created equal, as this violates Catholic teaching. However, what should have been this part of the Declaration is that all men have a Creator and that because only He can judge our worth, all men are equal before the law. Be that as it may we must deal with our national charters as they are.]
It is inconceivable that our Founders did not know their own intent in the matter of religion, for history is replete with examples of federal enactments supporting this or that religious enterprise, for the good of the people, and eventually we inscribed the sovereignty of God on our coins. The Founders were establishing a government of the people that had as its foundation the natural law of our Creator because self-government can only succeed where the people are moral and or religious. [Washington and John Adams]. Justice Douglas acknowledged that "we are a religious people" in reference to the same. But, for the sake of argument, let us assume that somehow the Founders did not know their own minds and were in error, and that because of our so-called progress or enlightenment, we suddenly discover the hidden wall of separation, which has revealed itself. Why then, was it that the assault on religious exercise and expression was waged by degree, rather than entirely all at once? If this new found necessity for liberty was valid and imperative for justice, why deprive the people of such a good by making them wait for years?
Only those blinded by ideological intent could fail to comprehend that the incremental installment plan was deliberately promulgated, precisely because the intent was in violation of the fundamental principles of our Constitutional Republic and the natural law. Ergo, the people have to be "conditioned slowly" until they lack the will to resist, at which time, all mention of God will be stripped from every building, every coin, and even our Pledge of Allegiance. Praying silently in public will be an offense. Even now there have been sporadic forays from the ACLU to impinge on private prayer in public. In Tennessee a little Catholic girl, with handicaps, was fond of holding a set of rosary beads in her hand on the bus and praying silently. The ACLU spearheaded a trial case. It did not even need litigation, for the very threat of ACLU involvement was enough. The little girl was told she could not pray by herself.
And almost no public outcry. Perhaps it was only because she was Catholic in a nation where anti-Catholicism is the only politically correct bigotry. Perhaps it was that creeping lethargy that saps our will to engage in eternal vigilance. I say without hesitation if she had been a young Muslim with Koran in hand, not a peep by the ACLU would have been raised. You know it within your heart as I do and I know you know it, because the assault on religion is always and only on those who espouse various Christian creeds, with scarcely an exception, that serves to prove the very rule. The occasional exception, carefully chosen to misdirect until no longer required as a stratagem, grows rarer as we grow older but not wiser.
"With certain unalienable rights; that among these is life ..."
And this is the crux, the heart of the matter. As Joseph Sobran, from whom I have adopted the framework for my own analysis, has so incisively said:
"The Court has now adopted, in opposition to the Declaration, the great heresy of the 20th century: that government has not the duty to recognize and protect ["secure"] innate human rights given by God, but the arbitrary power to create or destroy positive rights at whim." [SINGLE ISSUES, p. 113.]
Let us look at the social-pyschological dynamics underpinning the Roe v. Wade decision and discovery of the penumbra in re privacy, a dynamic influential twenty years later.
The definition of a penumbra is twofold:
1. Astronomy.
a. the partial or imperfect shadow outside the complete shadow of an opaque body, as a planet, where the light from the source of illumination is only partly cut off.
b. the grayish marginal portion of a sunspot.
2. a shadowy, indefinite, or marginal area.
At least we can say that penumbra, an indefinite, shadowy area describes accurately the deceptive means of the Court to impose the Roe decision of which I provide the pertinent paragraphs, red text my emphasis: Note the subtle shifts of traditional medical terms from one of biological certainty as found in all my textbooks, to one of potentiality, human proportions, not human beings, etc. Truly shocking and indefensible. Moreover, the majority of the Court found that one cannot destroy in this case. Yet an abortion is designed to do this very thing. This is not only obfuscation or penumbras, this is bold face lying! As for the Rites of Baptism not being performed, you are referred to the essay on Shibboleths, in which I address the false claims of the Court. Murder, committed behind close doors, in private, is always a public act as it involves the violation of the rights of another person without his consent. Having denied the personhood of the baby in the womb by penumbras the Court used it as a rationale for validating penumbras themselves. What circular, demonic reasoning. Regarding the failure of prosecutors to obtain a conviction of homicide in fetal death as a rationale for declaring the unborn child a non-person, this is actually irrelevant. Just because one officer of the Court is negligent or unable to effect a conviction does not negate the law, in this case the natural law. It is evidence of nothing of the sort, simply evidence of a discrete incidence of failure, and only that. It is as if to say that because A fails to protect a neighbor of B, for whatever reason, B no longer has rights. This is irrational.
ROE v. WADE, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)
410 U.S. 113
ROE ET AL. v. WADE, DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF DALLAS COUNTY
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF
TEXAS
No. 70-18.
Argued December 13, 1971 Reargued October 11, 1972
Decided January 22, 1973
"To say that life is present at conception is to give recognition to the potential, rather than the actual. The unfertilized egg has life, and if fertilized, it takes on human proportions. But the law deals in reality, not obscurity -- the known, rather than the unknown. When sperm meets egg, life may eventually form, but quite often it does not. The law does not deal in speculation. The phenomenon of [410 U.S. 218] life takes time to develop, and, until it is actually present, it cannot be destroyed. Its interruption prior to formation would hardly be homicide, and as we have seen, society does not regard it as such. The rites of Baptism are not performed and death certificates are not required when a miscarriage occurs. No prosecutor has ever returned a murder indictment charging the taking of the life of a fetus. This would not be the case if the fetus constituted human life."Thus, the courts are not making law by judicial legislation so much as they are nullifying the evidence of our predominant, common experience, Western tradition, in the name of safeguarding that tradition. Certainly it is more than a bit odd that after 200 years of certainty, the Court found itself to have been walking in the dark all along, and eureka, they have suddenly "seen a great light." How peculiar that the Framers of the Constitution, which is rooted in the Declaration, had no sense of their own intent.
The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891), the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969); in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 8-9 (1968), Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 350 (1967), Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886), see Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting); in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S., at 484-485; in the Ninth Amendment, id., at 486 (Goldberg, J., concurring); or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923). These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy.
But what is even more curious, is precisely how conveniently that the "new found meanings" in the Constitution, the "penumbras" [so inelegantly and ill-suited to judicial language] fit so snugly with left wing ideology, a near perfect fit of the ACLU agenda. The founder of the ACLU, Roger Baldwin, admitted that his purpose in establishing it was the abolition of private property----socialism. An intrinsic component of socialism is the supremacy of the state over the natural family, and the rights of the child to be born. Abortion is a socialist tenet. A co-founder, John Holmes, confessed that the ACLU was using the pretext of protecting civil liberties as a means of manipulating cases towards social change. Even Mark Campisano, law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brennan said: "An accounting of the ACLU caseload suggests that the organization is an ideological chameleon, that beneath the protective coloration of civil liberties, the ACLU is promoting a very different agenda, one contrary to basic principles of American constitutional democracy." [See George Grant, TRIAL AND ERROR, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1989.]
Should we not believe those in on the insidious deception, rather than those who benefit from an organized attempt to cover it up?
But there is little point of writing law into language, if those strictures are not going to have some sort of ongoing meaning, or why else code them in the first place? We are now advised [pardon the pun] that we can not be ruled by the past. This serves to beg the question, for our legal experts never tell us where the line of the past ends and the past of the future to come begins. For even yesterday is a kind of past. So we have endless change, under the pretense of stare decisis, change, but without common law content, for the pragmatism of the moment reigns. This is the new stare decisis, not tradition under the rule of common wisdom and reason, the natural law. Indeed, the natural law itself is discarded, relegated to a quaint back room curiosity only for the esoteric eccentric. Where is the law school based on the natural law foundation of all man made law? Even in all my undergraduate law classes, it is barely a footnote.
In reality, we have lost our precious legacy, our warranty of unassailable rights, barely a modest semblance of checks and balances. Our present system is all checks [on religion and the right to be secure in our homes and bear arms, while expanding the other Amendments beyond reason] and no balance as the Supreme Court feels little if any restraint against declaring any legislation enacted by Congress or one of the states as unconstitutional. Instead of weighing in on disputes between the states, it has arrogated power unto itself to make war on the states. Federal power has grown disproportionately to that of the states, and the rights supposed to be retained by the people under the Constitution. The ninth and tenth Amendments have fared as badly as the natural law. And everything has "to be cleared" to pass Court muster. Each piece of legislation is examined under a microscope for denouncement by the Court. Normalcy itself is now a suspect class. In other words we no longer have representative government but an oligarchy of nine essentially making law, and unaccountable to the people, a consequence the Founders feared most, even more than mob rule, since the majority of citizens tend to be law-abiding except under extreme hardship exacerbated by harsh government. It is no use objecting that we can impeach judges. The process is so onerous---by design---that no Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached, which is not to say that the people found no cause until now. But if they did, who honestly and competently thinks it would be accomplished?
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution readily admitted that the nation was utterly dependent upon a Christian social order---and its incumbent Christian influences. America was founded as a Christian nation, a Protestant one, like it or not, but it was founded on something other than mere human will and power because it may be possible. I may not like it that the Founders were Protestant and Masonically, Deist-inspired, but this is not the issue at hand. It was that they held that God is the source of inalienable rights and not the state and that there is an interdependence between Church and state. Which is what the Catholic Church has always taught through the pronouncements of its Pontiffs.
Joseph Story, the foremost historian of the founding era, underscored this truth in Commentaries on the Constitution published in 1833:
The First Amendment was not intended to withdraw the Christian religion as a whole from the protection of Congress. At the time, the general, if not universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state so far as compatible with the rights of conscience and the freedom of worship. Any attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference would have created universal indignation. [1]
Justice William O. Douglas reaffirmed that historical veracity:
We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. We guarantee the freedom to worship as one chooses. We make room for as wide a variety of beliefs and creeds as the spiritual needs of man deemed necessary. We sponsor an attitude that shows no partiality to anyone group and that lets each flourish according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma. When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs. To hold that it may not, would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe. We find no such Constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence. [2]
Justice Douglas asserted further that "The First Amendment does not say in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and state." [3]
It is true that the Founding Fathers designed the Constitution to clearly differentiate between Church and state. There was to be no intermingling. They were to be separate institutions---with separate jurisdictions, separate authorities, and separate functions. [4]
Thus the Framers ensured that the state could not interfere with the proper and necessary affairs of the Church. The Church was outside the jurisdiction of the state and the court. This is the central thrust and tenet of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
The state has no authority over religion, no Constitutional call to impinge upon it, or to regulate it. Certainly there was never any intent to place a "gag rule" upon religious exercise as is now the trend in judicial philosophy in re religious freedoms. But the Founders were just as careful and deliberate to ascertain that the affairs of religion did not also interfere with the rightful duties and responsibilities of the state. The state was to be outside the jurisdiction of the Church. This however did not mean that they intended that Church and state should have no interaction. On the contrary the Framers expected cooperation with each other in building a Christian culture: Church and state were the balance to one another, serving one another. Just as the separation of powers were to act as a check on the misuse of power by one branch of government in relation to the others, so Church and state were to be checks on each other, not to cancel out each other or neutralize their critical roles in society, but rather to encourage and ensure their free interaction. If the three branches were to assume the role imposed by the current Court onto religious activities in re the state's power to inhibit them, our government would be a "confederate democracy", not a Constitutional Republic, where the rule of law, based on moral precepts is the guiding ethos, not the prejudices of men.
In other words, the Founders never envisioned a "wall of separation." Instead they held that the state and Church were interdependent: The state was to protect the Church with just laws and a righteous restraint upon the body politic so that the Christian creed could do its work in harmony with the precepts of the law. Law without moral import, that morality that abides in the human conscience freely and actively encouraged, is raw power legalized, and is tyranny by any other name.
Liberty can only survive where the people are free by their own self-imposed restraint, that discipline that flows from adherence to "Nature's God" or the the natural law. In fact the Church was to promote the Bible, the common standard upon which the laws of the state enjoyed their authority. The Church was to succor the practice of mercy, truth, and justice, to root out sin, and to prepare the people for self-rule.
Our Constitutional fathers thus established a decentralized, self-consciously Christian society as the very foundation of government to preserve it from corruption. The facts are self-evident to those who choose to set aside their own ill-conceived prejudices and examine the historical record as to the mind [and intent] of our first leaders:
George Washington, hero of the Revolution and the first President under the Constitution, added the pledge, "So help me God," to his inaugural oath, then bent to kiss the Bible as an affirmation of his submission to the King of nations, and the Lord of history. He later asserted: It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and Bible. [5]
John Adams, the second President, made no secret of the fact that he studied the Bible often and with diligence in order to discern the proper administration of a Christian society. He said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. So great is my veneration of the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectful members of society." [6]
Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President, was explicit in his recognition that Christianity was the underpinning of the Republic. He professed: "The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty. A student's perusal of the sacred volume will make him a better citizen." [7] He said this notwithstanding that he was known to have excised certain passages of the New Testament. This is irrelevant to the discussion here, for no one of the Founders had the same Bible or subscribed to the same religious tenets. What is relevant is that they recognized one Eternal God Who has sovereign rights and is the source of all ours because human nature requires a set of restraints for ordered liberty to be possible. Liberty is not license.
Benjamin Franklin, grandfather of the Constitutional Convention stated:
"A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know the price of the rights which God has given them, cannot be enslaved." [8]
Andrew Jackson, the seventh President read the Bible daily, and was heard to refer to it habitually as "the Rock on which our Republic stands." [9]
Then there is the great author and lexicographer, Noah Webster who posited, "The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures form the basis of all our civil Constitution and laws. All the miseries and evils which other nations suffer from vice, crime, and ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible." [l0]
During the cataclysmic days of the American Civil War, President Lincoln called the Bible "the best gift that God has ever given to men. But for it we could not know right from wrong." [ll] He further elaborated on this absolute of public life: "It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord." [12]
This is by way of background. We continue with the First and Second Amendments.
It is most curious indeed, that it is held a dogma of modernism that there are no hierarchy of rights, yet the first part of the 1st Amendment [speech] is said to be "sacred", but its twin, expression of religion, is thought to be inimical to public discourse. Neutrality of sect is now hostility to all but paganism and the civil religion of humanism, this last was held to be a religion by the Court. The rights of the 5th and 6th amendments are safeguarded at every turn, but the 2nd amendment is held to be of minor importance. See table appended below.
Without continuity with the past, there is no perspective for the present, human nature does not change, and the relation of law to human enterprise requires the same today as it did yesterday. It is only in the application of these unchanging principles that the Framers wove a flexible framework, to accommodate those legitimate purposes of government. But we have done the opposite. Rather than apply the principles sensibly, coherently, and legitimately, we have altered the principles themselves, and applied them as if they had not changed. The one constant is inconstancy, as fixed as any original intent, said to be beyond our reach. By clever mastery of euphemism we are now under the tyranny of a Court that has virtually made political policy, but without political responsibility to the body politic. As the Court has so "interpreted" the Constitution to grant ever more expansive, intrusive power to the Congress, by virtue of the fact they are the gatekeepers of what that power is, they have proportionately increased their own, by definition. Ironically it is far too independent [Sobran] to be equal, so much so that it is so supreme, it is in effect supreme over the very Constitution the Court is to safeguard.
The foundation of the argument for judicial review, as Chief Justice John Marshall set forth in Marbury v. Madison, is that whenever a state law conflicts with the Constitution, the Constitution must have priority.
But the Congress and Chief executive also owe their loyalty to the Constitution, and when an act of the Judiciary is in conflict with the Constitution, it is their foremost obligation to restore the right order of things [Sobran], without which the exercise of this duty, there is no ordered liberty, only chaos, and a fragmented society of competing special interests pulling the Constitution this way first and that way next. We are at the mercy of the winds of change, with some small respite by an occasional breeze of nuance and not outright distortion.
And the winds of change have wrought havoc, leaving the common good vulnerable to the rage and demands of interest groups who have nothing in common with the common good, but who want to discover "new rights" in the Constitution, breaking with stare decisis, to establish a new basis just long enough to qualify as another stare decisis, to be used as a rationale for imposing badly decided cases without reverting to the former guidelines. The "new tradition" is imposed over the old so as to not violate stare decisis, but to do so it had to violate the common law or common understanding [the natural stare decisis of the inalienable right to life for the innocent] in the first place. (Regarding the right to kill by the state, even criminals can not forfeit their life without due process, a trial, by Constitutional guarantee). The irony stings with hypocrisy, mocks our credulity, insults the average intelligence.
In Roe we have sacrificed the normal to the abnormal because we have to deny even common sense to prevent any crack in the facade that we do not know when life begins. Thus in the cases stemming from Edelin, where a baby is born after intent to abort, doctors have been allowed to strangle the newborn or merely leave it to starve. Because perversity has its own irrefutable logic, some medical journals talk openly now of permissible infanticide for at least until three days after birth. To suggest that this is immoral or evil is to risk censure, for to permit real exposure of the reality of this barbarity is to risk someone thinking that if it is wrong to murder a three-day old baby, maybe it is wrong to murder a baby just before it is born, etc. Logic is always pure and in one direction. Truth is a whole, and if one aspect can be denied, it can all be rationalized away. This is the same with its opposite.
Consequently, in deference to a falsely established stare decisis, we are told it would be disastrous, unwise to go back, even if the decision violated the canons of human nature and the natural law, in fact, precisely because it did, the ACLU and its cohorts demand we must not go back. Perversity at its best or should I say worst. For the sake of a hitherto unacknowledged right we are to pretend that means and ends have no relation to one another, and that socially desired outcomes [from a militant minority who deliberately used bold lies] are independent of the means, and thus we warp the arguments to fit the case, and shape the case to fit the desired end. Anyone who dares to dissent is now said to be without compassion for rights, but only cares about safeguarding principle. But it is principle that protects us from our own worst instincts, our willful tendency to self-destruct, if left to our own devices. Right ends can not be derived from improper means, and proper means, ordered to proper ends, are the essence of liberty. For without right order in human existence there is no justice. Where there is no justice, there is no moral authority to bind the civil, and where this is absent, there exists no peace, and where peace is lacking, there can be no liberty.
| THE ACLU SUPPORTS |
THE ACLU OPPOSES |
| Legalization of child pornography |
Voluntary
school prayer |
| Legalization of [recreational] drugs |
Sobriety
checks |
| Tax exemptions for Satanists |
Tax
exemptions for non-Satanic religions |
| Legalization of prostitution |
Religious
displays in public |
| Abortion on demand |
Medical
safety reporting laws in abortion |
| Mandatory
sex education |
Parental
consent laws |
| Forced
busing |
Home
schooling |
| Ideological
tests for Court appointees |
Governmental
ethics committees |
| Automatic
entitled probation |
Prison
terms for criminals |
| Public
demonstrations for Nazis and Communists who favor direct action or
violence |
Pro-life
public demonstrations for direct action |
| Legalization of polygamy [and now, I
presume "gay marriage and adoption"]. |
The
teaching of monogamous heterosexual intercourse within marriage in the
public schools |
NOTE. Michael Carpenter, who was the former Attorney General of the State of Maine, was my law professor for one of two undergraduate Constitutional law courses I took at the University of Maine. He is an unabashed liberal of the cafeteria Catholic/semi-lapsed Catholic persuasion. He did not uphold the supremacy of the natural law over positive human law and believed in a changing Constitution in re interpretation, that original intent was not binding. He began the first day of class with the statement that "there are no moral absolutes." Unlike many liberal professors he was an honest one and did not penalize students who disagreed with him, in fact welcomed a robust debate. He had a sense of humor, too. When he assigned our final paper he gave us time to think of a topic, as usual. As I was preparing to exit the classroom, he turned to me and said, "I already know what your subject will be, Roe v. Wade." He was correct, but then anyone in that class should have been able to guess that much. We both chuckled. He then warned me that I had better have all my ducks lined up as he would be scrupulous in grading my paper. While it is Catholic decorum in the order of grace and modesty that one should not boast or even announce one's achievements as in grades, I do so here, only to show that sometimes a liberal professor, no matter how politically correct, can be fair or non-punitive, unlike another professor [administrative law] I had that same year, who downgraded my final paper purposefully---he admitted it as he knew he would not be taken to task by administrative officials---because he was in the mood to punish me for some of the commentary [on affirmative action---unintended consequences] I presented. I went to the Dean to no avail. Mike Carpenter gave me an A on the Roe v. Wade paper, and he was for abortion and thought the decision was right. Even knowing I would have been penalized I could not have selected another topic. This essay is in response to much of the discussion in Carpenter's class.
For instance, he taught that original intent and use of the text alone was not feasible, as we had need to interpret according to the times. He did not make distinctions between that which can change logically and justly and that which can not, the text within context [and the other writings of same authors], and text alone. When I posited the availability of the above, he shrugged and seemed to be uncomfortable. He further posited that the ACLU is fair, takes all sorts of cases, and existed for civil liberties, despite the above quote from an insider. He stated that there is no hierarchy as such, although we "kind of have one", since the first amendment is "sacred". He did admit that some rights are subordinate to others in extreme situations, and some conflicts may not be easily resolved where the rights of the press and the right to a fair trial intersect. When I again probed him to admit the supremacy of life and a hierarchy therefore, he demurred by talking around it. He insisted that those who want to overturn Roe v Wade are not compassionate, that "means can be overlooked if the ends are important, and that the anti-Roe group care only for principle and not goals or rights." He implied that Roe was now part of stare decisis, and should not be overturned, although he thinks it will be. The stare decisis aspect is oxymoronic for Roe was decided by overturning stare decisis based on the natural and common law, and thus it is hypocritically and intellectually dishonest to insist that stare decisis is now untouchable. Once the principle is surrendered, it is surrendered. He is against original intent but wants an original intent in re Roe. This is changing the rules mid-game, then returning them back again to affect the outcome. Unbelievable in audacity! But then, he admitted that ends justify the means, the very mark of tyranny.
1. Joseph Story, Commentaries of the Constitution, (New York: John Tallirude and Sons, 1833, 1967), 161-162.
2. Zorac v. Clausen, (343 U.S. 306), 1952.
3. Ibid.
4. George Grant, Trial and Error, (Tennessee: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1989), 73.
5. Walker Whitman, A Christian History of the American Republic: A Textbook for Secondary Schools, (Boston: Greenleaf Press, 1939, 1948), 42.
Added Note, 2013: Since this piece was first published we learned that George Washington was a 32 degree Mason and took his oath upon the Masonic Bible. This does not change the principle here because he fervently, if misguidedly' held to the sacredness of that text and his oath was meant to affirm his belief in God, which he recognized as above men. The Masonic beliefs of our Founders were covered in a series we had online years ago, MASONRY, which we did after this essay had been written.
6. Robert Ferrell, The Adams Family: Four Generations of Patriots, (New York: Publius Press, 1969), 12.
7. Whitman, 91.
8. Ibid, 97.
9. Alfred G. Knopler, The Lessons of Southern Culture, (Atlanta: Jefferson Davis Publishers, 1977), 33.
10. Harold K. Lane, Liberty! Cry Liberty! (Boston: Lamb and Lamb, 1939), 31.
11. Whitman, 109.
12. Lane, 32.
Bibliograghy:
Archer, Geoff. The War Between the States and Its Aftermath, Everson College Press, Philadelphia, 1959.
Black, Hugo Jr. My Father: A Remembrance, Random House, New York, 1975.
Douglas, William O. The Bible and the Schools, Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, 1966.
Evans, Edward J. Freedom of Religion, Lerner Publications Co., Minneapolis, 1990.
Ferrell, Robert. The Adams Family: Four Generations of Patriots, publius Press, New York, 1969.
Fisher, Paul A. Behind the Lodge Door, Shield Publishing, Inc. Bowie, MD, 1989.
Grant, George. Trial and Error, Wogelmuth & Hyatt Publishers, Inc. Brentwood, TN, 1989.
Jurjevich, Ratibor-Ray M. The War On Christ in America, Ichthys Books, Denver, Co., 1985.
Knophler, Alfred G. The Lessons of Southern Culture, Jefferson Davis publishers, Atlanta, 1977.
Lamson, Peggy. Roger Baldwin: Founder of the ACLU, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston 1976.
Lane, Harold K. Liberty! Cry Liberty!, Lamb and Lamb, Boston, 1939.
Miller, William L. The First Liberty: Religion and the American Republic, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1986.
Murphy, Bruce A. The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, Oxford University Press, New York, 1982.
Phillips. Harlan B. Felix Frankfurter Reminisces, Reynal & Co., New York, .1960.
Roosevelt, Thoedore. The Foes Of Our Own Household, George H. Doan Co., New York, 1917.
Sobran, Op. Cit. in the essay.
Story, Joseph. Commentaries of the Constitution, Tallirude and Sons, New York, 1833, 1967.
Whitman, Walker. A Christian History of the American Public: A Textbook for Secondary Schools, Greenleaf Press, Boston, 1939, 1948.
Zorac and Clausen, 344 U.S. 306.
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