Separation of church and state is a cornerstone of the American experiment.
Hmm……. Not sure that’s correct as stated.
The cornerstone of the American experiment, as stated in the Bill of Rights, is that the government doesn’t pick one religion over another. That’s a very different formula from “separation.”
The Framers were mixed on the subject. You know Jefferson’s view, because the concept of separation came from his letter to the Danbury Baptists. Other framers had different ideas, but the bottom line is that what they agreed to when they signed the Constitution is that the federal government would not establish any state religion. Some were OK with a STATE establishing a religion, and the idea of separation was therefore not part of Constitutional thinking.
The “separation” idea didn’t appear in legal jurisprudence until 1878, and even since, it’s legally viewed as kind of a porous wall; the Zorach decision in 1953 held that the nation’s “institutions presuppose a Supreme Being” and that government recognition of God does not constitute the establishment of a state church.
Much as it did in the Old Country, a marriage of the two harms the minorities in a society.
Not…necessarily. Probably worth mentioning here that many (if not most) European nations have a State Church, and nobody who has been to Sweden for any length of time would argue that the fact that Lutheranism is the state religion harms anyone. Nor does the fact that it’s common in most other nations (Canada, France, etc.) to see religious schools funded, to some extent, by state resources, imply any sort of religious bigotry.
or thanks to her emails — whatever your rationale
Well, mine is that she showed herself to be totally incompetent in reading, comprehending, and managing the events of Libya (a comment that has nothing to do with Benghazi) and the entire “Arab Spring”, and in large part created the disaster in Syria (where my relatives live), but let’s not digress. :-)
Now, I fully know and embrace my Muslim brothers and sisters as such
Yea…. I doubt that. :-) There’s nothing “progressive” about shariah, by the western definition of the term.
I’m saying that if you’re content to have the majority religion all wrapped up with your government, what happens when the majority religion doesn’t happen to be yours? That, my friends, was the Framers’ point.
Kind of blatantly obvious, that. But more relevant is the fact that everyone knows that majorities can change. That doesn’t keep them from exploiting a majority when they have one. Just look at our politics. :-)
And that makes me INCREDIBLY ANGRY.
Angry over politics? It’s not worth it.
