Judge Roy Moore Vs. Karl Marx
By Michael Nevin (08/29/03)
America’s culture war continues with the Decalogue monument in Alabama taking center stage. Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore continued to fight a federal court order to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the courthouse rotunda, but the monument has since been removed. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson has sided with the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State who brought suit against Judge Moore’s display of the monument.
Moore has cited both the First and Tenth Amendments in his defense and in filing an appeal. While the ACLU would argue we have a ''wall'' of separation between church and state, any thoughtful research on the subject would conclude that our founders clearly promoted freedom of religion, not from religion. Judge Moore argues, ''Government may never dictate one’s form of worship or articles of faith. Not all public worship of God must be halted; on the contrary, freedom to engage in such worship was the very reason for creating a doctrine of separation between church and state.''
Moore and his supporters have also made a strong case regarding the Tenth Amendment, which restricts the federal government’s power over the states. The federal court order usurps the right of the people in Alabama to decide. That’s good news for the anti-God crowd because a poll by the Mobile Register and the University of South Alabama found that 77% of the public (in Alabama) either approved or strongly approved of the monument.
Judicial activism and a loose constructionist view of the Constitution have distanced our current form of government from the constitutional republic our founders envisioned. The courts act as a super legislature and rule on matters that should be left to the people and their elected officials to decide. The infamous ''wall of separation between church and state'' can be found nowhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, but it’s a common argument made by those who are unfamiliar with American history. The display of the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, whether it’s in Alabama or Washington D.C., is hardly an attempt to establish a national religion. In a Supreme Court decision in 1963, the court asserted a ''position of neutrality.'' However, siding with atheists and agnostics, while removing the Ten Commandments or forbidding God in the Pledge of Allegiance, is in fact taking sides.
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, who served on the court from 1811-1845, was a child of the American Revolution. Story is considered by many to be the foremost interpreter of the Constitution. While discussing the first amendment, Story writes, ''Probably, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State, so far as such encouragement was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship.''
As the United States was still in its infancy, Karl Marx (1818-1883) had other ideas about government and the role of religion. In the Communist Manifesto (1848) Marx wrote, "There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.'' The plan of communism is to stress the supremacy of the state over religion.
Sadly, moral relativism and attacks on religion, especially Christianity, have taken a toll on our society. The Taliban blew the heads off Buddha statues that stood for over 2,000 years in Afghanistan. Now the ACLU and their ilk are attempting to rid American society of any public mention of God. It’s called freedom of speech when the Virgin Mary has pieces of elephant dung smeared on her image in a so-called museum of art. But the Ten Commandments, which are the roots in our Judeo-Christian tradition and fundamental principles of the American justice system, somehow have no place in a courthouse rotunda.
Morality, character, and integrity are all indispensable traits for both a religious role model and a good citizen. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote, ''Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.''
Karl Marx stated, ''My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.'' This sounds much more alarming than anything God ever said to Moses.
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