The Separation of God and State
By: Ed Howes
We might imagine the United States Constitution is intended by
its language to prohibit interference in religious matters by
the national government. What we have today is far closer to the
conventioners’ hearts than the language implies. When convention
President, Franklin grew weary of a convention deadlocked for
many days, he proposed that it was not without divine
intervention they had so recently won a difficult and bloody
war. Therefore, it only made sense they should call upon this
power each day to assist in the building of a nation. His
compatriots voted no.
There was no place for divinity in the creation of this nation.
Each member of the convention was free to pray each day as he
saw fit. The deadlock would be broken by compromise. The
Constitution was all about compromise thereafter.
Knowing the state legislatures would never ratify a document
that usurped so much sovereignty from states and their citizens,
the conventioners did an end run around the legislatures to get
the document ratified by sympathetic, hand-picked committees. We
got a secular framework by which the sovereignty of the citizen
and the state would slowly transfer to the national government.
This was a process and it took the War Against the States to
complete the power grab, intended from the beginning.
Though its deficiencies are legion, my attention was recently
called to the supremacy clause. Whenever state law opposes
national law, the national law will be held to be the supreme
law of the land. That is, an arrogant group of nation builders
decided that all wisdom was vested in their work and the wisdom
of any state opposing theirs was null and void. That should tell
us a little about the attitudes of the ambitious, who know what
is best for everyone else, in all cases. The nation these men
created has conformed to this spirit and this is why it is
universally hated and despised around the world.
In 1954, the words, under God, were added to the Pledge of
Allegiance. It only took a week or two to remember them each day
in the classroom. But then, what is a pledge? What is
allegiance? Why pledge it to an object such as a flag? What is a
republic? What is the difference between a nation under God and
one not under God? How does one put a nation under God or remove
it? Twelve years of government approved education never answered
these questions and the pledge seemed a silly thing to me, all
those years. I had to join the military to see how the pledge
prepared my mind for the Oath of Allegiance I was now required
to swear. That oath was more confusing still. It spelled out my
duty to defend the Constitution from all enemies and left me
without a clue as to how that is done.
It was with great confusion that I would next need to learn
that we could no longer recite the Lord’s Prayer in “government”
school, just eight years after adding under God to the pledge.
This was not even a Christian prayer. It made sense for anyone
who believed their relationship to God was father and child. I
did not know about how offensive that was to atheists and
agnostics because I did not know any. Even today, my mind is
troubled that an atheist or agnostic would not want the
blessings that could come from this prayer, whether they believe
in a Father God or not. If they could possibly be wrong, the
rest of us would cover their bases.
The next year, after all America’s public school children
ceased praying for the nation every school day, J.F.K. was
assassinated. J.F.K., I would later learn, was threatening to
issue currency instead of borrowing from banks at interest, as
Lincoln had also proposed. He also wanted to stay out of
Vietnam, so now it’s obvious why he had to die, as did Lincoln;
who had just fought the war the money power wanted. So much for
money power loyalty!
Since I was now free from praying in class every day, it never
occurred to me to pray independently and I imagine most other
students were happy to be done with this daily requirement. It
would be many years before I would see that the daily bread no
longer came so easily and soon required both parents to work for
it. It took a long time to see that while I was delivered from
the evil of direct involvement in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands
of others were not so fortunate. Now I can’t help but wonder how
many national trespasses remain unforgiven and will be punished.
In fact, I often think every American life needlessly lost, is a
payment on an ever burgeoning debt of a people no longer under
God, regardless of daily school pledges.
By the time I had started school, the extended family had been
replaced by the nuclear family we later saw on TV. Divide and
conquer. By the end of the Century, the nuclear family had been
further divided into single and zero parent families, also seen
on TV. Of course, there is no such thing as conspiracy so all
these things are only coincidental. Just ask the conspirators.
Today, an Alabama judge decides he wants a monument to the Ten
Commandments in the state courthouse in which he works; and a
Federal court says that since Congress can make no law
respecting the establishment of a religion or prohibiting the
FREE practice thereof, an Alabama judge cannot pay tribute to a
long established code of law. This would certainly please those
conventioners who would not have dared to write this new court
written law into the original document. The new law is properly
written; “No government employee will honor any law but those
created by governments.” The separation of God and state begun
so long ago by elitists in Philadelphia is quite nearly complete.
The so called barrier between church and state, which has never
existed in Constitutional law, was removed in the nineteen
eighties when the United States Government offered tax exempt
status to any church that would become a 501C3 corporation,
which most did, as far as I know. Every church that signed up
and accepted a privilege in place of a natural right became a
creature of the state by the foolish act of contracting with it
to avoid state harassment. This would be unconstitutional except
the Constitution precludes no one’s right to contract.
If we had studied the writings of John Locke in government
schools, we would know that no one can legally contract for
their children. A contract can only apply to the contracting
parties. The U.S. Constitution is such a contract. It was
binding on the state governments that ratified it and not on any
individual born after its ratification. It only has such power
over you and me to which we consent. Of course we will be
punished if we do not consent; as thirteen Southern states were,
some hundred and forty years ago. After all, political union is
more important than all the individual persons in it and no one
is free to reject it in the land of the free.
Because we are now a nation of government contracted churches,
there is nothing illegal about faith based initiatives. The
government can give or take money from any 501C3 church. We can
be sure it will do both and separation of church and state is
just a joke we use to selectively punish the politically
incorrect.
Few realize it, but the separation of God and state, along with
the destruction of extended family, has made America so totally
vulnerable to calamities not yet experienced, it takes little
effort to sell Homeland Security to the people; whose currency
says “In God We Trust”. We all know in our hearts we no longer
can trust in God any more than God can trust in us. Let us
continue to worship the Federal Government and they will provide
our daily bread and prescription drugs, forgive us, test us,
protect us and deliver us from evil. Just as long as we do as we
are told for we at least, are not above their law. Or maybe we
are - high above it.
Ed Howes sought and found, knocked and entered. Now he sees things differently. To see more of what he sees, please visit http://www.justanotherview.com or do an author search here at Ezine Articles.