Source; Sent from a friend.... SNGLR
"[W]here is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths...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." --George Washington
“When studied with any degree of thoroughness, the economic problem will be found to run into the political problem, the political problem in turn into the philosophical problem, and the philosophical problem itself to be almost indissolubly bound up at last with the religious problem…Religion and politics are inseparable, the decay of one most produce the decay of the other.”
Dan Bell said: “Changes in moral temper and culture are not amendable to social engineering or political control. The ultimate sources are the religious conceptions which undergird a society.” So, should our government be devoid of its traditional and historical religious influences. To do so would ignore that government consisting only of secular influences (or conversely also only religious ones) is not what the Establishment Clause in our founding documents wisely intended. Those documents recognized and understood that such an unequal mix is an aberration that leads to catastrophic results. The Clause intended only to “…make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” meaning only to prevent a particular denomination from achieving official sanction. It didn't preclude specific, proven and sound, religious principles, influences “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” in government.
Religion has been central to people’s lives for all of recorded history. This tangential relationship occasionally makes it appear that religion is the source of bad acts or results. It must be remembered that religion’s correlation to society is not proof of causations that occur in it. Rather, that correlation should point to the idea that the secular faith in democracy and material wealth is too weak, too vague, too societally enervating, to provide the post-Christian West with the spiritual steel it requires for survival. Democracy’s failures tend to prove that Enlightment ideals are not sufficient for the task.
Sound religion’s influence provides a primary safeguard for the commitment to the principles of freedom reached by reason. Without such a safeguard government too easily can alter, abrogate or destroy. Only such transcendent can insure our inalienable rights against the ever-changing tempest of human political will and fortune. Remove those religious influences and human nature fills the vacuum with a replacement religion of secularism, dangerous because it ultimate has no limits on the boundaries of its actions, other than the will and whim of those in power. Atheism’s unprecedented wars, both within and between nations, against religion during the 20th century alone stand as proof. Its predominant secular-based ideology resulted in 150 million killed, primarily by their own governments; billions enslaved, ecosystems polluted and whole nations plundered. Some alternative!
"Again and again, Americans find themselves at war with each other over public schooling. Yet furious conflict over religion in this country is almost unheard-of. ... So why does the endless variety of religious life in the United States lead to so little strife, while the strife over public schooling never seems to end? The answer is no mystery. America is a land of religious freedom, in which people decide for themselves what to believe and how to worship. No religion is funded by government. No church or synagogue has a state-supported monopoly. Elected officials have no say in the doctrines of any faith or the content of any religious service. Religion flourishes in America because church and state are separate. And it flourishes so peacefully because no one is forced to support anyone else's faith, or to attend a church he isn't happy with, or to bring up children according to the religious views of whichever faction has the most votes. Religion is peaceful because it is government-free. Liberate the schools, and they too would be at peace. Taxpayer-funded, one-curriculum-fits-all schooling makes conflict inevitable. There would be far less animosity if parents were as free to choose how and where their children learn as they are to choose how and where they worship. Separation of church and state has made America an exemplar of religious pluralism and tolerance. Imagine what separation of school and state could do for education." -- Jeff Jacoby
“Remember that the struggle against religion is a struggle for socialism”—Emilian Yaroslavsky (Pravada)
"Socialism, which cannot be established without a political police force, and not without stopping any form of dissent, is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the state…Socialism is, in its essence, and attack upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy, tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths, nostrils, and throats."--Winston Churchill
Comments