Curtis Dahlgren
Hey, Your Honor: "Since when" does Darwin trump Moses and Madison?
By Curtis Dahlgren
"The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience, be in any manner, nor on any pretext, infringed." — James Madison's first draft of the First Amendment
FOUR CHEERS FOR CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST FOR STAYING ON THE JOB! The city of Milwaukee has had more than its share of infamous residents. Jeffery Dahmer passed through. The guy who shot President McKinley. I could name others, but on the other side of the ledger there is Golda Meir, General Douglas MacArthur, his father, and his grandfather. In that spirit there is William Rehnquist, and may God bless him for staying on watch, for throwing a body block into the onrushing tide of social "evolution."
FIRST, TWO DUMB QUESTIONS: Can we know the Original Intent of the framers of the Constitution, and, did they actually expect us to use that Intent as our guiding principles unto this Republic's ultimate posterity?
The Left says, "NOT!" Survey sez, "Whatever." The Founding Fathers said, "Absolutely YES!"
THIS "family feud" is setting us up for the nastiest battle since that little tiff between King George and Patrick Henry and friends. Judging by the rhetoric of the Left way out there, we might just as well return to dueling. Can't you just envision Harry Ried, who represents Reno and Las Vegas, turning and firing a dueling pistol at Bill Frist, a surgeon who happens to represent a lot of wooded hills and parched farm land?
But back to the basics: Thomas Jefferson said, "The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States, at the time of its adoption."
Our 21st century Justices, however, say (in effect): "The PEOPLE of the United States don't matter anymore. And least of all those 'people' who wrote the Bill of Rights!" Men such as Madison, Wisconsin's namesake. Meanwhile, the citizens of Madison, Wisconsin continue to support Federal Judges who openly DON'T CARE what the rest of us think, nor what George Washington's recorded comments were:
"If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be at any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; though this may in one instance be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."
As for the First Amendment, I actually prefer Madison's original draft. It's too bad that the "committee process" thought it was improving the First Amendment by removing the word "conscience." Committee-think has often muddled things up — such as the committee that changed the crystal clear "Warrior" nickname at Marquette to the more ambiguous "Golden Eagles" to the meaningless "Gold" to — "What EVER"!
Even so, our First Amendment as adopted was crystal clear on the point of no "national religion," no restrictions on freedom of speech, and no restrictions of the "free exercise" of religion, which includes religious speech. DUH!
For many, many decades "the People" didn't need a Philadelphia lawyer to reinterpret the Bill of Rights, or to tell the people what the Founding Fathers should have written there! The ACLU now says, in effect, that there should have been a fourth clause in the First Amendment reading "There is a 'Right-not-to-be-offended' by public mention of God's name — or even discussion of the Founders religious beliefs." In their view, that clause would trump the other three. Then they proceed to pretend that that clause is in there, and "the People" let them get away with such horse rubbish!
In 1833, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote:
"Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution . . . the general, if not the universal sentiment was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation . . . A constitution of government is addressed to the common sense of the people, and never was designed for trials of logical skills, or visionary speculation." — Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Boston, 1833
In order to limit the number of footnotes, most of the other quotations here are from "Christianity and the Constitution; the Faith of Our Founding Fathers" by John Eidsmoe, including this related one by John Adams: "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."
Eidsmoe explains how the Old Testament Hebrews (i.e., the roots of our Judeo-Christian culture) had a kind of separation of church and state without driving religion underground. This is a great paradox (inconceivable to those who always accuse the Right of being "simplistic")! The Philadelphia lawyers on the Left are the ones who are the most simplistic since they can't handle a "paradox" (something that at first glance seems contradictory, but actually isn't).
THE "FREE EXERCISE" OF RELIGION AND NO "NATIONAL RELIGION" ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE CLAUSES IN THE FIRST AMENDMENT.
With the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin" in 1859, the concept of "societal evolution" was born, along with socially revolutionary movements — including the school of thought called "Legal positivism" which was promoted by Harvard Dean Langdell in the 1870s (among others). The teaching of the "Law" in America, therefore, isn't what it used to be.
Those who had written the Constitution believed, with Blackstone, in a natural law that is greater than any "law" that mere men can "make," so the function of the Judicial branch of government is to "apply" the laws as written — which "moral and religious" legislators would supposedly write — to specific cases brought before them, and NOT TO REWRITE LAWS OR SEND THEM BACK TO THE LEGISLATURE AND TELL THEM HOW TO WRITE THEM.
As I mentioned in my June 15th column, though, President Woodrow Wilson the academic said that "since the Darwinian Theory has reigned amongst us, everybody is likely to express whatever he wishes to expound in terms of development and accommodation . . . [and] that the Constitution of the United States had been made under the dominion of the Newtonian theory [but] government is a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton."
Since Supreme Court Justices and other Federal judges are appointed — for life — by our President, America's Constitution (and our very lives) could be in great danger. Since most modern law professors and their byproducts, our judges, believe that Blackstone was all wet about a universal natural law, and Jefferson was all wet about Freedom coming from God, Darwin now trumps the Constitution itself.
Which, in the final analysis, means that too many Justices believe that the Supreme Court now TRUMPS GOD. Therefore, they don't even bother throwing a bone once in awhile to the Constitution, but "whatever they wish to expound" — personally — they expound it "in terms of evolutionary development."
In one of his decisions (Trop v. Dulles, 1972), Chief Justice Earl Warren said that the Eighth Amendment must be "interpreted" according to an "evolving standard of decency." In another capital punishment case four years later (Gregg v. Georgia), Justice Thurgood Marshall and the minority said society had evolved to the point where capital punishment is cruel and unusual. Justice Stewart and the majority argued that society had not evolved to that point YET.
NEITHER SIDE, Eidsmoe says, "deny the basic evolutionary interpretation. They merely question at which stage of the evolutionary scale we are!"
As law professor Alexander Bickel put it: "The function of Justices . . is to immerse themselves in the tradition of our society and of kindred societies that have gone before, in history and in the sediment of history which is law, and . . in the thought and vision of the philosophers and poets. The Justices will then be fit to extract 'fundamental presuppositions' from their deepest selves, but in fact from the evolving morality of our tradition."
NOW YOU KNOW WHERE ANTI-CONSTITUTIONAL DECISIONS OF THE COURTS COME FROM: FROM FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS IN THEIR "DEEPEST SELVES."
AND NOW YOU KNOW WHY WE NEED TO PRAY FOR OUR CHIEF JUSTICE — AND FOR MORE JUSTICES LIKE HIM!
© Curtis Dahlgren
"The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience, be in any manner, nor on any pretext, infringed." — James Madison's first draft of the First Amendment
FOUR CHEERS FOR CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST FOR STAYING ON THE JOB! The city of Milwaukee has had more than its share of infamous residents. Jeffery Dahmer passed through. The guy who shot President McKinley. I could name others, but on the other side of the ledger there is Golda Meir, General Douglas MacArthur, his father, and his grandfather. In that spirit there is William Rehnquist, and may God bless him for staying on watch, for throwing a body block into the onrushing tide of social "evolution."
FIRST, TWO DUMB QUESTIONS: Can we know the Original Intent of the framers of the Constitution, and, did they actually expect us to use that Intent as our guiding principles unto this Republic's ultimate posterity?
The Left says, "NOT!" Survey sez, "Whatever." The Founding Fathers said, "Absolutely YES!"
THIS "family feud" is setting us up for the nastiest battle since that little tiff between King George and Patrick Henry and friends. Judging by the rhetoric of the Left way out there, we might just as well return to dueling. Can't you just envision Harry Ried, who represents Reno and Las Vegas, turning and firing a dueling pistol at Bill Frist, a surgeon who happens to represent a lot of wooded hills and parched farm land?
But back to the basics: Thomas Jefferson said, "The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States, at the time of its adoption."
Our 21st century Justices, however, say (in effect): "The PEOPLE of the United States don't matter anymore. And least of all those 'people' who wrote the Bill of Rights!" Men such as Madison, Wisconsin's namesake. Meanwhile, the citizens of Madison, Wisconsin continue to support Federal Judges who openly DON'T CARE what the rest of us think, nor what George Washington's recorded comments were:
"If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be at any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; though this may in one instance be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."
As for the First Amendment, I actually prefer Madison's original draft. It's too bad that the "committee process" thought it was improving the First Amendment by removing the word "conscience." Committee-think has often muddled things up — such as the committee that changed the crystal clear "Warrior" nickname at Marquette to the more ambiguous "Golden Eagles" to the meaningless "Gold" to — "What EVER"!
Even so, our First Amendment as adopted was crystal clear on the point of no "national religion," no restrictions on freedom of speech, and no restrictions of the "free exercise" of religion, which includes religious speech. DUH!
For many, many decades "the People" didn't need a Philadelphia lawyer to reinterpret the Bill of Rights, or to tell the people what the Founding Fathers should have written there! The ACLU now says, in effect, that there should have been a fourth clause in the First Amendment reading "There is a 'Right-not-to-be-offended' by public mention of God's name — or even discussion of the Founders religious beliefs." In their view, that clause would trump the other three. Then they proceed to pretend that that clause is in there, and "the People" let them get away with such horse rubbish!
In 1833, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote:
"Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution . . . the general, if not the universal sentiment was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation . . . A constitution of government is addressed to the common sense of the people, and never was designed for trials of logical skills, or visionary speculation." — Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Boston, 1833
In order to limit the number of footnotes, most of the other quotations here are from "Christianity and the Constitution; the Faith of Our Founding Fathers" by John Eidsmoe, including this related one by John Adams: "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."
Eidsmoe explains how the Old Testament Hebrews (i.e., the roots of our Judeo-Christian culture) had a kind of separation of church and state without driving religion underground. This is a great paradox (inconceivable to those who always accuse the Right of being "simplistic")! The Philadelphia lawyers on the Left are the ones who are the most simplistic since they can't handle a "paradox" (something that at first glance seems contradictory, but actually isn't).
THE "FREE EXERCISE" OF RELIGION AND NO "NATIONAL RELIGION" ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE CLAUSES IN THE FIRST AMENDMENT.
With the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin" in 1859, the concept of "societal evolution" was born, along with socially revolutionary movements — including the school of thought called "Legal positivism" which was promoted by Harvard Dean Langdell in the 1870s (among others). The teaching of the "Law" in America, therefore, isn't what it used to be.
Those who had written the Constitution believed, with Blackstone, in a natural law that is greater than any "law" that mere men can "make," so the function of the Judicial branch of government is to "apply" the laws as written — which "moral and religious" legislators would supposedly write — to specific cases brought before them, and NOT TO REWRITE LAWS OR SEND THEM BACK TO THE LEGISLATURE AND TELL THEM HOW TO WRITE THEM.
As I mentioned in my June 15th column, though, President Woodrow Wilson the academic said that "since the Darwinian Theory has reigned amongst us, everybody is likely to express whatever he wishes to expound in terms of development and accommodation . . . [and] that the Constitution of the United States had been made under the dominion of the Newtonian theory [but] government is a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton."
Since Supreme Court Justices and other Federal judges are appointed — for life — by our President, America's Constitution (and our very lives) could be in great danger. Since most modern law professors and their byproducts, our judges, believe that Blackstone was all wet about a universal natural law, and Jefferson was all wet about Freedom coming from God, Darwin now trumps the Constitution itself.
Which, in the final analysis, means that too many Justices believe that the Supreme Court now TRUMPS GOD. Therefore, they don't even bother throwing a bone once in awhile to the Constitution, but "whatever they wish to expound" — personally — they expound it "in terms of evolutionary development."
In one of his decisions (Trop v. Dulles, 1972), Chief Justice Earl Warren said that the Eighth Amendment must be "interpreted" according to an "evolving standard of decency." In another capital punishment case four years later (Gregg v. Georgia), Justice Thurgood Marshall and the minority said society had evolved to the point where capital punishment is cruel and unusual. Justice Stewart and the majority argued that society had not evolved to that point YET.
NEITHER SIDE, Eidsmoe says, "deny the basic evolutionary interpretation. They merely question at which stage of the evolutionary scale we are!"
As law professor Alexander Bickel put it: "The function of Justices . . is to immerse themselves in the tradition of our society and of kindred societies that have gone before, in history and in the sediment of history which is law, and . . in the thought and vision of the philosophers and poets. The Justices will then be fit to extract 'fundamental presuppositions' from their deepest selves, but in fact from the evolving morality of our tradition."
NOW YOU KNOW WHERE ANTI-CONSTITUTIONAL DECISIONS OF THE COURTS COME FROM: FROM FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS IN THEIR "DEEPEST SELVES."
AND NOW YOU KNOW WHY WE NEED TO PRAY FOR OUR CHIEF JUSTICE — AND FOR MORE JUSTICES LIKE HIM!
© Curtis Dahlgren
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