“PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT GOD BEHIND THE CONSTITUTION!” [Part Two Of Two]

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Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?
~ Thomas Jefferson

>> . . . [This was] extremely well-written and very informative, densely packed with reference materials and is a bit like: ‘Your Constitution and You: 101.’ I was flattered and honored that you went to so much trouble for me and I think you really should share this with others.

I thank you, Pal. And after three years (can you believe it?) that’s what I’m finally doing.

STMcC [From my earlier response]: The first and foremost important thing to remember about the First Amendment (and the rest of the Bill of Rights) is that it was undeniably intended as a restriction against the national (i.e., Federal) government, and was never meant to impact the states’ rights in self-determination when it came to the issues it addressed.

>> . . . Although I am not nearly as knowledgeable on this subject as you are, I seem to recall from my school days and watching a very interesting program on James Madison (one of the other "Fathers of the Constitution") on the History Channel recently, that the Constitution per se was designed with just that in mind.

Well, I’m happy to learn that the History Channel concurred in this instance, but I would caution you against being inclined to accept ANY idea as a result of seeing it promoted on the History Channel. In my opinion, the History Channel is merely one more facet of the mainstream media, and it does not exist to inform the American public but, more often, to condition the American public to accept certain ideas that the Elite (Illuminati, Shadow Government, whatever appellation one chooses to apply to it) wishes us to believe.

>> . . . As I understand it, the 13 states acknowledged that uniting together seemed to be the best way to go in that it afforded everyone the best defense from other countries and the best resolution of possible interstate conflicts (taxation of interstate goods, legal currency and mail delivery, etc.). Back when there were only 13 states and travel was limited to horses, wagons and the occasional stage coach, those 13 states had very individual identities (far more so than today) and were more like separate countries, with their own ideas on how they wished to be governed, taxed and how their taxes should be spent. Having a Constitution whose framework had very limited and specific powers was the only way to get all 13 states on board with the idea of a federal government (although I seem to recall that not every state ratified the Constitution).

Most of the 13 states ratified the Constitution fairly quickly, and all of them, of course, ratified it eventually, the last of them being Rhode Island in 1790. Rhode Island held out the longest, being the largest and most populated state and thus having the most to lose. (Definitely a joke there!)

>> . . . While I understand what you are saying and agree with you in principal, I also believe there is real merit to the other side of the argument. The Founding Fathers could never have imagined how culturally and ethnically diverse our country would eventually become. I realize the Founding Fathers were Christians, but does that mean that Christianity should be the law of the land? Should Jews, Muslims, Taoists, Hindus, Buddhists be considered 2nd class citizens and be made to read the Bible in school (as anything other than an interesting historical text)? If so, shouldn’t Christians then, in turn, read the Koran and Torah, etc., as well? Do you see what a can of worms this is?

Well, first, Pal, I believe that many of the Founding Fathers did indeed foresee our country being very ethnically diverse and thus they prepared for such an occurrence by the very limited government they devised.

As far as Christianity being the “law of the land” is concerned, it’s clear that the vast majority of our Founders (and citizens) were orthodox Christians and thus they established a government that was highly influenced by those principles; but proclaiming Christianity as “the law of the land” would indicate a ‘legal’ requisite that they never established, and with good reason. They had just divorced themselves from overbearing state-approved religious interference (‘The Church Of England’) and had no desire to reinstitute the same sort of tyrannical behaviors they had just rebelled against.

No American citizen was REQUIRED to adhere to Christian beliefs, regardless of the fact that Biblical concepts had clearly informed the type of Republic that the Founders established. The U.S. Constitution did not permit the Federal government to curtail the rights of any citizens as a result of holding beliefs outside of mainstream American thought. Therefore, according to Federal law, no one - be they Jews, Muslims, Taoists, Hindus, or Buddhists – could be treated as 2nd class citizens. The National government could make no distinctions when it came to protecting their individual rights.

Now, if Jews, Muslims, Taoists, Hindus, or Buddhists considered themselves 2nd class citizens based solely on the fact that they stood outside of American mainstream beliefs, and felt themselves slighted because the American outlook which was clearly based upon Biblical beliefs did not conform to all of their positions, well, I guess they were FREE or at “liberty” to feel that way. (What a great country they were living in! :o) But as long as the national government was not, by law (i.e., the U.S. Constitution) permitted to discriminate against them and restrict their ability to enjoy the same rights that their Christian countrymen enjoyed – the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - I don’t see how they could legitimately think of themselves as 2nd class citizens.

I mean, if one was allowed to entertain any beliefs they chose to, and was not required to publicly proclaim those beliefs, and was treated in the same manner as their Christian counterparts by the Federal government – that is to say, if they enjoyed the same rights - how can one realistically call that person a 2nd class citizen? I would argue that if merely holding views that the majority of citizens do not hold makes one automatically a 2nd class citizen, then I myself - for a great variety of reasons - have been a 2nd class citizen most of my life. And yet I have never felt like I was 2nd class solely because I disagree with the mainstream Christian view in a great number of significant ways.

I would argue that the person who feels 2nd class simply because the masses do not accept his or her belief, and because the government does not bend and go out of its way to accommodate their every demand, but merely guarantees to protect their rights to the same degree that it protects the rights of Christians – the 2nd class status that person perceives has more to do with an inferiority complex within their own mind, and he or she ought to either grow a thicker skin or join the belief system of the masses in order to alleviate some of their own emotional discomfort.

I can put it more simply like this: The United States of America was founded upon Biblical principles and founded by Christians for all people, despite the fact that the vast majority of its citizens were also Christians. Why should any person of a non-Christian belief system expect this country to not only protect their rights to the same extent it protects the rights of Christians, but to also reformat, reframe, or reconstruct its foundational precepts to accommodate their minority beliefs? Would you or I move to India and expect India to deemphasize its ancient, historical Hindu influences simply because we did not individually share those cultural influences? I think not. We would move there with the idea that we would either come to accept “the culture of the land” or we would move elsewhere.

So why then should Jews, Muslims, Taoists, Hindus, Buddhists, Communists or atheists expect the United States of America to disavow its cultural heritage in order to kowtow to their minority viewpoints? My response is: Either come to accept “the culture of this land”, the United States of America, or feel FREE to move to Israel, Saudi Arabia, India, Russia, China, or San Francisco. (As my buddy DiscConnected would say: “I’ll help ‘em load the truck!”)

>> . . . I also don’t think that secular thinking is necessarily amoral.

Since “secular thinking” has shown itself throughout history to promote moral and, at other times, immoral behavior, it necessarily MUST be categorized as “amoral”. Secular thinking has no intrinsic quality beyond the manner in which it happens to be applied by any dictator or legislative/governing body at any given time. By definition then, it cannot be anything but fundamentally “amoral”. Secular thinking is pliable and changeable and possesses no permanent characteristics and is thus essentially neutral (i.e., “amoral”).

>> . . . I know it [secular thinking] has an appalling track record in Russia, North Korea and China, but I tend to believe that human beings, religious or not, are pretty dark creatures. In this country, I think a secular approach tries to level the playing field and not oppress any one religious group. (Maybe I'm just a Pollyanna for believing this.) I think you just have to make sure that your secular thinking is grounded in morality, compassion and respect. I realize that you may disagree with me radically on this point and certainly history is on your side.

Indeed, history IS on my side . . . and in a dramatic way.

However, knowing what you do about me, and knowing how disgusted I am with my fellow Americans (and yes, people in general), this may come as quite a surprise to you, but I DO NOT think of human beings as “pretty dark creatures”. In fact, I believe we are beings of light, possessing the innate quality of infinite goodness, and we are souls that are nothing less than Divine. In short, I believe what The Bible tells me: we were created by God and in His image. How can anything created by God and in God’s own image be a “pretty dark creature”?

The real problem is that we have “fallen” in consciousness, and too few of us have retained in mind the fact that we were created In, Of, and By God! We are Divine beings imprisoned by nothing more than a false belief that we are merely flesh, and flawed, and forced to fight for limited goods and resources. As Joel Goldsmith wrote: “We are not human beings as we seem to be; we are pure spiritual being. It is not that there are two separate beings, the human being and the spiritual being; it is only that a human being is entertaining a sense of separation from God.”

Or as my own maxim goes: “We have fallen asleep in God’s embrace, having a nightmare that we are elsewhere”.

But, I need to further address the core of your statement:
>> . . . “I also don’t think that secular thinking is necessarily amoral.”

This is a very important idea that needs to be challenged. Secular thinking can actually be very good, as long as it is very good. But it cannot be considered moral because in order to be moral, it must be founded upon something that is transcendent – that is to say, some foundational premise for human conduct that transcends man’s everchanging standards.

Anything less than that and the secular thinking du jour remains “good” only so long as it remains good or advantageous for all people, not just the majority in a democracy. (Incidentally, our Founding Fathers rightly despised the idea of a pure Democracy, which is why they established a Constitutional Republic. Note that we have never pledged allegiance to a Democracy, but to our “Republic”. The best pithy definition of a Democracy that I have ever encountered is, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.")

Given man’s track record (as you yourself noted above), there is no reason to believe that secular thinking will remain a positive influence any longer than it takes for the next dictator or tyrant or corrupt president, corrupt congress, corrupt bureaucrat, or a majority of corrupt people to rise up and alter the presently accepted secular belief. That is to say, secular thinking remains good only so long as it remains good, and there is no guarantee that it will remain good for long.

‘If God is dead, all things are permitted.’ That is a philosophical proposition associated with Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Secular thinkers have tried to deny this by skirting the essential truth of it, by dancing around the heart of it, by tip-toeing over the essence of it, but when push comes to shove, Dostoevksy nailed it dead center.

If there is no God - an authority superior to man individually and collectively - then indeed all things that coincide with whatever a given society has agreed upon are permitted. The person or the agency that has the power to punish is that which decides what is right or wrong, and what is right or wrong then becomes merely a transient code that might well reverse itself tomorrow, or next month, next year, or the next decade. If there is no permanent code of conduct that man is required to obey, then whatever code of conduct exists is merely a collective agreement (or a dictator’s militarily-enforced decree), a societal arrangement that has no guaranteed permanence and might improve or degrade depending upon future conditions acting upon the people.

DearAard, there are many examples I could choose from, but I’ll go with one that’s always available off the top of my head. ABORTION. There was a time in this country when the killing of the unborn was considered murder most foul, and that was the general belief on the matter for generation after generation. It should be noted, also, that it was the generations preceding ours that did not hold the belief that there was and ought to be an absolute “separation of church and state” and who also (mere coincidence?) looked upon abortion as murder. In other words, it was our more Godly ancestors who did not subscribe to the idea of a completely secular society that were also able to call abortion “murder”.

Is it any coincidence that as Americans were being conditioned to believe in an entirely secular government and to accept the idea of a complete removal of God from the public arena that the moral outlook of the masses became more and more relaxed to the point that a majority of Americans could eventually embrace the idea that the right of a would-be mother to murder her unborn child was a legal, CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT that she enjoyed?

Pal, I know your views on abortion and that they basically coincide with my own. I would propose to you that it is “secular thinking” and not “sacred thinking” that has brought the United States of America to the point that murdering the most defenseless among us is a legal act.

Now you or someone else might argue that THIS particular act is not moral and is an example of “secular thinking” falling down on the job. But I would argue my original premise that “secular thinking” is always open to interpretation and amenable to whatever direction the prevailing winds blow. If God declares killing an innocent life to be murder, then it is always and forever murder. But should secular thinkers declare it to be murder, it is murder only so long as the masses accept that definition, but it will become a legal right again just as soon as the people can be brainwashed or conditioned into changing their collective opinion about it.

If God is dead, then right and wrong are nothing more than temporary agreements entered into by the masses or declared by a militarily-enforced dictatorship.

The very idea that the U.S.A., from its founding, was meant to be an entirely secular government is preposterous. There is such a large body of evidence that disputes this position – far too much evidence for me to present here. But the vestiges of our Christian influences can still be found everywhere, from the mention of God at the opening of a Supreme Court session, to the status of Federally paid chaplains in Congress and the military, to the fact that our presidents are still sworn into office while placing a hand on the same Bible that George Washington was sworn in with, to this:

Just last year, our own State Department issued a U.S. government report titled ‘Quadrennial Diplomacy And Development Review’ which claimed that foreign aid is designed “to harness our civilian power to advance America’s interests and help make a world in which more people in more places can live in freedom, enjoy economic opportunity, and have a chance to live up to their God-given potential.”

Never mind that foreign aid is un-Constitutional stealing from the American taxpayers, what’s interesting is that evidently our own State Department never got the memo that there is an absolute “wall of separation between church and state” and thus kids are not allowed to read The Bible in school, and God cannot be mentioned by any taxpayer-funded group, and the people can’t even breathe of a Divine Being in a group prayer before a public high school football game. And yet, as late as 2010, the American State Department was claiming that foreign aid was intended to help people in other nations to achieve “their God-given potential”. (Boy, they pull God out of the grocery sack when they want to use Him, don’t they? But the rest of us are transgressing some mythical law when we mention God or Christ during some national, state or city-sanctioned activity.)

What’s also interesting is how this supposed COMPLETE, ABSOLUTE “separation of church and state” seems to be primarily a recent discovery or a modern dogma. For example, when I was in first grade at Iva Meairs Elementary School in Orange County, California, in the 1960s, I participated in a Christmas school presentation (and still have the program to prove it) in which I portrayed one of the “Spanish Children”.

Here’s a listing of the sacred songs that were publicly performed by us public school children during that Christmas program:

“O Come, All Ye Faithful”; “Gloria In Excelsis”; “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing”; “Joy To The world”; “Noel, Sing We Now Of Christmas”.

Then there was a “Nativity Scene” play, followed by the singing of “No Room In The Inn”; “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”; and “Silent Night”.

Some years later - in 1972 - I was part of the John Adams Junior High School Boys Chorus (no one had yet figured out that I simply can’t sing), when the Santa Monica Unified School District, in Southern California, put on a public performance called "Stairway Of The Stars '72".

I sang my part in this school board-approved concert which took place at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (site of Hollywood’s previous Academy Award presentations, and where I witnessed my first Rock concert three years later – Styx opening for Journey).

I am still in possession of the LP that was made from that live, public school-approved and taxpayer-funded performance. I can still remember the performance (is that the one where I dropped the massive acoustic bass on the riser in the middle of a song?) The major attraction of that show, a junior high school kid with an operatic voice named Jubilant Sykes, later went on to fame and fortune, winning several awards and becoming a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony and singing with the Metropolitan Opera. (I dunno, but that sounds like a punishment to me.)

At any rate, consider some of the selections that we publicly performed that night in 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic:

* ‘A New Created World’ (Haydn) – Franklin School Elementary Chorus
* ‘Alleluia’ (Bach) – Combined Junior High School Chorus
* ‘In The Beginning Of Creation’ (Pinkham; “This electronic-choral setting is a composer’s imaginative portrayal of the Lord’s creation of order out of chaos”) – Combined Junior High School Chorus
* ‘When I Was Sinkin’ Down’; ‘Great God A’Mighty’; ‘Sit Down, Servant’ (Johnson; Hairston; Bonds) – Combined Groups

Of course, there were some secular songs mixed in, like: ‘The Year’s At The Spring’; ‘Lucky Little Cricket’; and ‘I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing’.

But isn’t it odd that as late as 1972, the general public had not yet realized that a good portion of the program was un-Constitutional? Or is it that the program WASN’T un-Constitutional until years later when all of these atheistic groups – with the assistance of atheistic judges in the American court system – suddenly discovered that they could convince the sleeping and/or apathetic populace that public school shows like “THE IVA MEAIRS’ CHRISTMAS PROGRAM” and “STAIRWAY OF THE STARS '72” were somehow un-Constitutional?

The idea of “Separation Of Church And State” as it has been sold to us in these modern times is utter balderdash. In his essential, classic book ‘None Dare Call It Treason: 25 Years Later’, John Stormer speaks of “a conspiracy of shared values”.

Stormer goes into some detail illustrating how various groups or factions share some of “the same foundational philosophy and beliefs”. Some non-Christian religious groups and some atheists seek to undermine America’s Christian heritage and to eliminate all vestiges of it as a way of imposing their minority views on the rest of us. Certain powerful and influential persons within our government and court systems seek to enable these atheists and non-Christians in their efforts because they secretly wish to tear down our foundation in order to rebuild society according to their own vision. Yes, here comes that term again: a “New World Order”.

Make no mistake about it, the person who denies our Christian heritage is either ignorant of our history or is lying. And in the latter case, it is likely because he or she is one of those involved in “a conspiracy of shared values”, and in some cases, is an actual believer in the “New World Order” conspiracy - which as you know is the concept of a global government based on Socialistic ideas and ruled by a governing body of self-appointed Elites.

But in order to build something new on the site of something old, the ancient structure must first be razed. And THAT, my friend, is what this is really all about. God and Christ must be removed from the public square in America in order for “the state” to replace them and be installed as the new “god”. The Elite behind the curtain seek to eradicate the remembrance of our national Christian heritage in order to replace it with a Godless secular society that will more closely resemble Marx’s dialectical materialism (and which will someday be ruled by the coming Anti-Christ, but that’s a story for another time). The Wizard is really a body of Elites deceiving We The People, and we pay no attention to the machinations of that Elite behind the curtain at our own peril!

Our individual liberties and our very survival as a Constitutional Republic based upon the moral dictates of God is what is at stake in this battle to save our country from the total elimination of “sacred thinking” in government and the installing of wholly “secular thinking” in its place. And that is why I have spent so much time on this response and put such effort into it. This is not about a minor difference of viewpoints on appropriate government, but about saving and restoring a way of life that was at one time the envy of the world.

Flying Aardvark, my dear friend, I now want to share with you a passage from Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s 2009 book ‘Signature In The Cell’. The following comes from his chapter entitled “Why It Matters”:

According to scientific materialism, reality is ultimately impersonal: matter and energy determne all things and, in the end, only matter matters.

“In the beginning were the particles. And the particles became complex stuff. And the complex stuff reacted with other stuff and became alive. As the living stuff evolved, it eventually became conscious and self-aware . . . but only for a time.”

According to the materialist credo, matter and energy are the fundamental realities from which all else comes, but also the entities into which all that exists, including our minds and conscious awareness, ultimately dissolves. Mind and personhood are merely temporary “epiphenomena”, a restless foam effervescing for a time atop a deep ocean of impersonality.

Though this view of existence proved initially liberating in that it released humans from any sense of obligation to an externally imposed system of morality, it has also proven profoundly and literally dispiriting. If the conscious realities that comprise our personhood have no lasting existence, if life and mind are nothing more than unintended ephemera of the material cosmos, then, as the existential philosophers have recognized, our lives can have no lasting meaning or ultimate purpose.

There is no way around Doctor Meyer’s assessment, any more than there is a way around Dostoevsky’s proposition that ‘If God is dead, all things are permitted’.

What I would find ironically humorous if I didn’t find it so sad is the intellectually dishonest way that so many atheistic bleeding-heart liberals fail to correlate their underdog advocacy with their belief in scientific materialism.

That is to say, if scientific materialism is indeed reality, and we are nothing more than astronomical chance mutations existing in a “survival of the fittest” environment, then why should anyone give a damn whether or not any particular species survives?! Why should we fight to “save the whales” or donate money to “find a cure for breast cancer” or even worry about whether or not all of humankind gets wiped out in a nuclear bomb-trading World War III?

Heck, the dinosaurs died out long ago, and who should give a damn? If they couldn’t adapt to an impersonal, changing world, then good riddance to them, right? Either adapt or die, that’s truly the scientific materialist motto. And, hell, if human beings are just parasites living on the surface of an impersonal globe, why should anyone say a word or raise a finger to save them? If they die, if they kill each other, if a virus eliminates them, then it only means that they were unwilling or unable to adapt to their circumstances and it’s nonsensical for anyone to feel the slightest bit of emotion about that. If our temporarily individual and ultimately meaningless personhood eventually returns to the nonconscious nothingness from whence it came, why concern ourselves about any injustice that might occur in that brief 70-year interval between nonconsciousness and nonconsciousness?

But let’s be intellectually honest enough then to also apply that same sort of scientific materialistic thought to other species as well, and say that if whales can’t save themselves, then screw ‘em! And if the buffalo falls to the hunter’s gun, then it means only that they should have adapted better. And if the seals can’t avoid a human being’s club, then too bad for them. “Adios, seals. You should have been more flexible. You should have developed wings so you could fly out of range of the killer’s club.”

But see, atheistic liberals never think in such consistently logical ways. The bleeding-heart liberal will go out of her way to provide food for a stray cat and think nothing of murdering her unborn child. The liberal (and even some dimwit, self-described “conservatives”) will say there is no God and we just happen to experience nondesigned lives in a nondesigned world, and yet they will get emotional about meaningless human beings cheating, robbing, and killing other meaningless human beings. Drown a flea-infested dog and the bleeding-heart “Go Green” Leftist will want to see you imprisoned. But that’s a totally illogical response (according to the scientific materialism they pretend to embrace), because if the dog was unable to defend itself in an impersonal, “dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest” environment, then it was just using up limited resources in an uncaring world, and its removal was, at best, good for the rest of us survivors, and at worst, nothing to shed a tear over. “Natural Selection” says “Keep up or die”.

If scientific materialism is a fact, why should any of us care about the recent earthquake in Japan and the destruction left in its wake? All of us, the Japanese included, are merely Godless Science’s “meaningless, temporary creations in transition” and we are ultimately going back to the nothingness from which we came. So, what’s with this near universal sympathy we feel for one another when we are all very temporary points of consciousness in an ultimately meaningless universe? Eat, drink, cheat, steal, lie, rape, rob, and kill, for soon we cease to be!

AardPal, I now want to clarify a statement I made in my first response to your questions. I wrote:

Theocracy itself can be a bad thing, but it must be asked “Whose religion?”

By that remark, I was not implying that I think our Constitutional Republic ought to be transformed into a theocracy, but merely pointing out that not all theocracies would necessarily be equal, or equally bad.

For instance, I would much prefer to live in a theocracy founded upon the genuine precepts of Christ and authentically maintained according to His standard than to live in a Muslim theocracy with their Sharia laws, or, say, a Hindu theocracy with its caste system, etc. So while we rightfully steer clear of a theocracy (because absolute power corrupts absolutely) and favor the governmental form established by our Founding Fathers, I think it’s important to remember that not all religious ideas are the same, and some would benefit people in general more than some others would.

And interestingly, while one could make an argument that with our now mostly secularized American lifestyle being maintained by atheistic and agnostic gatekeepers, in a sense we do currently live in a kind of theocracy – a Marxist theocracy, with the state more and more playing the role of the divine authority.

For those of us who believe that The Holy Bible really does represent a message from God to us and a prophecy to the world of things to come, it’s clear that at some future point we WILL live under a religious dictatorship, for the Bible tells us that at His ‘second coming’ Jesus will return as this world’s religious leader (“the High Priest”) as well as its civil leader (“the King of kings”). So, for those who currently fear a Christian theocracy, they had better mentally prepare themselves for something along those lines: a global religious dictatorship ruled by Jesus Christ who will be placed on the throne by God Himself. (As Todd Snider sings: "Somebody's coming who don't need your vote".)

>> . . . I appreciate your providing me with such a wide-ranging [book] list, Kip. However, do you think there is one comprehensive book that you might recommend over the others? Your Old Pal might be able to manage one book, but I don't think I could wade my way through this list until my retirement.

Well, Flyin’ AardPal, I guess it really all depends upon what facet of this discussion you’re most interested in following up with further study. If it’s strictly a question of The Constitution and the (bogus) “Separation Of Church And State” concept, I would say get a copy of David Barton’s ‘ORIGINAL INTENT: The Courts, The Constitution, & Religion’ (or just explore his website).

If, however, you wanted to dig into the Constitution in general, the aforementioned tome ‘The HERITAGE GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION’ will keep you in reading material for a long time.

But, in the three years between our first discussion (April 2008) and now (April 2011) I have read another book that might be of interest to you. It was my friend Mr. Sheboyganboy Six (the artist formerly known as Mr. Paulboy Prodigalman) who after seeing my public praise of W. Cleon Skousen’s book ‘The Naked Capitalist’ recommended that I read W. Cleon Skousen’s tome ‘THE MAKING OF AMERICA: The Substance And Meaning Of The Constitution’.

I did read it, and other than an issue or two I had with the segment on slavery in America, I thought the book was excellent. It is a very thorough examination of the principles behind the creation of, and the application of, the U.S. Constitution. I do not agree with every single idea found in the book, yet I think it should be found in the home library of every single American.

Then again, if a (textbook-like) publication of that size and scope you find too intimidating (and indeed, it’s a large book that will require a considerable time-investment to complete – approx. 800 pages), I think I have the best recommendation for you and your time-limited situation:

Not one book, but two – both of them quick and easy reads, but also containing valid and valuable information presented in overview fasion. With “minimal reading time available” being the first consideration in my recommendation (due to the current overwhelming demands on your time by “the office”), I am going to suggest that you read . . .

‘The Politically Incorrect Guide To THE BIBLE’ by Robert J. Hutchinson (it’ll learn ya more about Judeo-Christian Natural Law Theory; Social Contract Theory; Legal Positivism & Legal Realism, and lots of other “stuffs” we need to be familiar with) - and - ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide To THE CONSTITUTION’ by Kevin R. C. Gutzman (which will learn ya about many of the essentials we Americans must understand about the Constitution that forms the basis of our Constitutional Republic).

These two fairly short overviews will provide you with great insight into what I have been yakking about here and will probably fill in some gaps that I either left unaddressed or was not adequately able to articulate.

OK, here comes the finale my flying Aardvarkian pal (can I get a “Hallelujah!”?) At the conclusion of Part 1, written three years ago this month, I closed with my explanation of how the United States of America’s claim of legitimacy and right to separate from England and to create its own form of government was based upon this nation’s collective belief in (the Christian) God and in rights that are bestowed upon We The People not by a monarchy nor by any governing body whatsoever, but rights that are bestowed upon us by God alone and which no ruler can morally suppress or rescind.

The Founders of our country signed their names to the principle that it is “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” that entitled them to separate from England in order to reinstate the liberties that the English Crown had denied them. They boldy told the world in their Declaration of Independence that they possessed unalienable rights bestowed upon them by “their Creator” and they furthermore appealed to “the Supreme Judge of the world” and declared their “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” in their efforts to free themselves from tyranny and to create a new nation of limited government, which only eleven years later took the final form of our Republic under the ratification of the United States Constitution.

Well, only about 6 months after I wrote that to you, I received the November 2008 edition of The New American magazine, and within its pages I found a great article on that very subject, penned by Edwin Vieira, Jr.

Mr. Vieira is an attorney and an author who concentrates on issues of Constitutional law and who has won three cases in the Supreme Court of the United States. His article is titled ‘Bedrock Of The Constitution’, and obviously he was able to express this idea about the relationship between our Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution far more eloquently (and with attention to the legalities of it) better than I ever could.

And so, my dear friend, I actually want to close this study of the supposed “Separation of Church and State” by giving the final word to Mr. Edwin Vieira, Jr. Someday you will have the time to read and consider his superb analysis of this topic. I have posted below the article in its entirety. I trust it will do a better job of enlightening you on some of these same concepts that I have been attempting to articulate with my limited and questionable capacity for teaching.

Thanks for your patience, DearAard. I know this was not worth a three-year wait, but hopefully it does explain why I take the position that I do on this controversial issue.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

Link:
‘BEDROCK OF THE CONSTITUTION’ by Edwin Vieira, Jr.

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