The Separation Of God And State

By Author: Ed Howes
Total Articles: 39
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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.

About the Author Freelance writer published on many websites and in newspapers.
edhowes@hotmail.com
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