Bryan Fischer
ACLU should be leading the charge against the Ground Zero mosque
By Bryan Fischer
For years and years, we've been told by the ACLU that all you need to silence, censor and punish religious expression is just one offended individual.
If one, single solitary individual is offended by a Ten Commandments monument, or a national Day of Prayer, or a prayer offered in Jesus' name, or the use of the Bible in a public school, why, we must immediately stamp it out. We must apply a hefty dose of legal Round-Up to kill off religious expression and sterilize the ground all around the site.
No quarter must be given. The offenders, the perpetrators, must be driven by judicial jihad from the public square in abject humiliation for daring to provoke delicate sensibilities through their lack of sensitivity to the easily offended.
Well, where is the ACLU when you really need them? The Ground Zero mosque offends 70% of the American public and 63% of New Yorkers. Now according to the ACLU, the First Amendment is irrelevant when someone's feelings have been bruised. If at least one person is upset by some religious display, that's all the ACLU needs to drive the offending party into oblivion.
Bottom line: the ACLU should be leading the parade to stop this mosque from being built at Ground Zero. The fact that they aren't is another proof that the real name of this benighted organization is the Anti-Christian Liberty Union.
In fact, the ACLU has suddenly discovered emanations and penumbras radiating out from the First Amendment. But they emanate and penumbrate in one direction and one direction only: they shed their sacred light on 51 Park Place and on America's 3000 mosques and no place else.
All of a sudden the ACLU has magically realized that "[t]he free exercise of religion is one of America's most fundamental freedoms...We see the center as a monument to pluralism, symbolic of America's commitment to religious freedom."
You want Christian liberty, the liberty actually guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution? Fuhgedaboutit. We will crucify you, we will harass you, we will intimidate you, we will drain your coffers dry enriching ourselves through court-ordered attorney's fees.
You want Muslim liberty, which wasn't contemplated by the Founders at all? Well that's a First Amendment of a different color. The ACLU will be the best friend you will ever have in the world.
As eminent Supreme Court justice Joseph Story said in his discussion of the history of the First Amendment, "The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, must less to advance Mohametanism, or Judaism, or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment..." (emphasis mine).
In other words, the Founders adopted the First Amendment to protect freedom of religious expression for all Christian denominations and weren't even thinking about ["countenanc(ing)"] Islam.
And so under the ACLU's junta, First Amendment protections are stripped from those for whom the First Amendment was written, and awarded to those for whom it was not.
It's not an America the Founders would recognize.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
August 26, 2010
For years and years, we've been told by the ACLU that all you need to silence, censor and punish religious expression is just one offended individual.
If one, single solitary individual is offended by a Ten Commandments monument, or a national Day of Prayer, or a prayer offered in Jesus' name, or the use of the Bible in a public school, why, we must immediately stamp it out. We must apply a hefty dose of legal Round-Up to kill off religious expression and sterilize the ground all around the site.
No quarter must be given. The offenders, the perpetrators, must be driven by judicial jihad from the public square in abject humiliation for daring to provoke delicate sensibilities through their lack of sensitivity to the easily offended.
Well, where is the ACLU when you really need them? The Ground Zero mosque offends 70% of the American public and 63% of New Yorkers. Now according to the ACLU, the First Amendment is irrelevant when someone's feelings have been bruised. If at least one person is upset by some religious display, that's all the ACLU needs to drive the offending party into oblivion.
Bottom line: the ACLU should be leading the parade to stop this mosque from being built at Ground Zero. The fact that they aren't is another proof that the real name of this benighted organization is the Anti-Christian Liberty Union.
In fact, the ACLU has suddenly discovered emanations and penumbras radiating out from the First Amendment. But they emanate and penumbrate in one direction and one direction only: they shed their sacred light on 51 Park Place and on America's 3000 mosques and no place else.
All of a sudden the ACLU has magically realized that "[t]he free exercise of religion is one of America's most fundamental freedoms...We see the center as a monument to pluralism, symbolic of America's commitment to religious freedom."
You want Christian liberty, the liberty actually guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution? Fuhgedaboutit. We will crucify you, we will harass you, we will intimidate you, we will drain your coffers dry enriching ourselves through court-ordered attorney's fees.
You want Muslim liberty, which wasn't contemplated by the Founders at all? Well that's a First Amendment of a different color. The ACLU will be the best friend you will ever have in the world.
As eminent Supreme Court justice Joseph Story said in his discussion of the history of the First Amendment, "The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, must less to advance Mohametanism, or Judaism, or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment..." (emphasis mine).
In other words, the Founders adopted the First Amendment to protect freedom of religious expression for all Christian denominations and weren't even thinking about ["countenanc(ing)"] Islam.
And so under the ACLU's junta, First Amendment protections are stripped from those for whom the First Amendment was written, and awarded to those for whom it was not.
It's not an America the Founders would recognize.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
