I'd direct you to an article in this months Rolling Stone magazine. There's a great article about the election results being tampered with by the Diebold corporations counters as well as the election boards in many different states.
__________________ "If I were you"
"If you were me, you'd know the safest place to hide...is in sanity!
Separation of Church and state was put fourth because at that time period the Baptists were very strong and wanted it to be a national religion..............Congress said NO, there should be no union between religion and State.
Fact: This country was established upon the assumption that religion was essential to good government. On July 13, 1787, the Continental Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance, which stated: "Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged." (1) The First Amendment prohibited the federal government from establishing a religion to which the several states must pay homage. The First Amendment provided assurance that the federal government would not meddle in the affairs of religion within the sovereign states.
Fact: In modern times groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have attempted to create an environment wherein government and religion are adversaries. Their favorite phrase has been "separation of church and state." These groups have intoned the mantra of "separation of church and state" so long that many people believe the phrase is in the Constitution. In Proverbs Chapter 18, verse 16, the Bible says, "He who states his case first seems right until another comes to challenge him." I'm sure you have seen legal arguments on television where the prosecution argues to the jury that the defendant is guilty. Once the prosecution finishes the opening presentation, you believe that the defendant is guilty. However, after the defense attorney completes the rebuttal presentation of the evidence, you may be confused, or at least you acknowledge that the case is not clear cut.
Fact: The same is true with the phrase "separation of church and state." The ACLU and the liberal media have touted the phrase so many times that most people believe the phrase is in the Constitution. Nowhere is "separation of church and state" referenced in the Constitution. This phrase was in the former Soviet Union's Constitution, but it has never been part of the United States Constitution.
Fact: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "It is one of the misfortunes of the law that ideas become encysted in phrases, and thereafter for a long time cease to provoke further analysis." (2) The phrase, "separation of church and state," has become one of these misfortunes of law.
Fact: In 1947 the Supreme Court popularized Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state." (3) Taking the Jefferson metaphor out of context, strict separationists have often used the phrase to silence Christians and to limit any Christian influence from affecting the political system. To understand Jefferson's "wall of separation," we should return to the original context in which it was written.
Jefferson himself once wrote:
On every question of construction, [we must] carry ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the test, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was a part. (4)
Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated as the third President on March 4, 1801. On October 7, 1801, a committee of the Danbury Baptist Association wrote a congratulatory letter to Jefferson on his election as President. Organized in 1790, the Danbury Baptist Association was an alliance of churches in Western Connecticut. The Baptists were a religious minority in the state of Connecticut where Congregationalism was the established church. (5)
Fact: The concern of the Danbury Baptist Association is understandable once we understand the background of church-state relations in Great Britain. The Association eschewed the kind of state sponsored enforcement of religion that had been the norm in Great Britain.
The Danbury Baptist Association committee wrote to the President stating that, "Religion is at all times and places a Matter between God and Individuals -- that no man ought to suffer in Name, person or affects on account of his religious Opinions." (6) The Danbury Baptists believed that religion was an unalienable right and they hoped that Jefferson would raise the consciousness of the people to recognize religious freedom as unalienable. However, the Danbury Baptists acknowledged that the President of the United States was not a "national Legislator" and they also understood that the "national government cannot destroy the Laws of each State." (7) In other words, they recognized Jefferson's limited influence as the federal executive on the individual states.
Fact: Jefferson did not necessarily like receiving mail as President, but he generally endeavored to turn his responses into an opportunity to sow what he called "useful truths" and principles among the people so that the ideas might take political root. He therefore took this opportunity to explain why he as President, contrary to his predecessors, did not proclaim national days of fasting and prayer.
Jefferson's letter went through at least two drafts. Part of the first draft reads as follows:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; thus building a wall of separation between church and state. Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorized only to execute their acts, I have refrained from prescribing even occasional performances of devotion... (8)
Jefferson asked Levi Lincoln, the Attorney General, and Gideon Granger, the Postmaster General, to comment on his draft. In a letter to Mr. Lincoln, Jefferson stated he wanted to take the occasion to explain why he did not "proclaim national fastings & thanksgivings, as my predecessors did." (9) He knew that the response would "give great offense to the New England clergy" and he advised Lincoln that he should suggest necessary changes. (10)
Mr. Lincoln responded that the five New England states have always been in the habit of "observing fasts and thanksgivings in performance of proclamations from the respective Executives" and that this "custom is venerable being handed down from our ancestors." (11) Lincoln therefore struck through the last sentence of the above quoted letter about Jefferson refraining from prescribing even occasional performances of devotion. Jefferson penned a note in the margin that this paragraph was omitted because "it might give uneasiness to some of our republican friends in the eastern states where the proclamation of thanksgivings" by their state executives is respected. (12)
To understand Jefferson's use of the wall metaphor in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, we must compare his other writings. On March 4, 1805, in Jefferson's Second Inaugural Address, he stated as follows:
In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General [i.e., federal] Government. I have therefore undertaken, on no occasion, to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them, as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of State or Church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies. (13)
Fact: Then on January 23, 1808, Jefferson wrote in response to a letter received by Reverend Samuel Miller, who requested him to declare a national day of thanksgiving and prayer:
All facts. But the notion of separation of church and state still remains fiction .
State your evidence that separation of church and state is fact and means exactly what it implies. I have labored to show you that the phrase is nowhere near the U.S. Constitution.
Where is Imperial Samura when you need someone to give logical, well-thought out support for what they believe?
The for fathers came here to get away from England and ran to northern countries like the Dutch to get away from the father church............Roman Catholic church........now Mother church...........In America they came...the Puritans wanted to do away with the pagan doctrine of the Catholics..............though they didn't realize that what they were following was similar but with a twist...........They came here along with others like criminals and such to start up this new Haven...........Heaven??......not heaven, but secure place and a far from the church of England..........
Thing is England didn't want to relinquish control of this new land.............and so taxes were impose..............blah....enough of that.............but At this time the Puritan were quite strong...........study then!!!............And because of this were the witch trials and such..............England was still in there booed here! STAMP OUT SATAN, STAMP OUT SATAN................WHEN INFACT............there is no satan............sad sate for our new country...................They don't their roots and their roots are still based on the pagan religion.............................
Last edited by debbiejo on Oct 8th, 2006 at 11:35 PM
JIA................I do look forward to talking to you, but I WILL NOT READ THESE LONG POSTs.............I have now glassed over them...........If you want to talk...........then speak in your own works .......short questions or at least pms me.............I never and I just mean you, look and take the time over and over again to read long posts.....................you want to quote a scripture.........then do so,,,,,,only one and I will respond,............good night there bud,.
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Oct 8th, 2006 08:05 PM
