As a libertarian, I have a commitment to free speech, something seen in the past few days on this site. However, is everything an issue of free speech? Here we have the same old religious dispute again:
The attitude of the U.S.A. to the separation of state and religion is:
The state makes no law but does not exclude a national religion, which is, historically, Christianity. That is the nominal religion of the vast majority. Hence the necessity for Jefferson to write that letter to compensate for the "deficiency" of the constitutional amendment, in his eyes..
So, if a group puts up a Christian icon of the majority religion in the country, can the Supreme Court then refuse another group's demand for a monument? Alternatively, should city fathers [and mothers] be forced to blight a park with monument after monument to satisfy every religious and pseudo religious body, on the grounds of "free speech"?
Where is common sense in this? Perhaps sense is not so common. In a similar situation in Alabama, only 20% of people approved the removal of a Christian monument, to satisfy the PC demand for enforced equality. In fact, it could be argued that the right to build a monument and the court order to remove an established one are two completely different things, with the latter being not only unconstitutional but hardly in the spirit of "free speech".
Check out the Moore plaque as well.
A religious group's fight to place a monument in a public park is at the center of a Supreme Court dispute over governments' power to limit speech. Pleasant Grove City, Utah, is asking the justices, in arguments Wednesday, to allow it to reject the donation of a display from the religious group known as Summum.
The Salt Lake City-based group wants to erect its "Seven Aphorisms of Summum" monument in the city's Pioneer Park, which is home to a Ten Commandments monument that was donated in 1971 by another private group.
The attitude of the U.S.A. to the separation of state and religion is:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ." The phrase "separation of church and state", which does not appear in the Constitution itself, is generally traced to an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists ...
The state makes no law but does not exclude a national religion, which is, historically, Christianity. That is the nominal religion of the vast majority. Hence the necessity for Jefferson to write that letter to compensate for the "deficiency" of the constitutional amendment, in his eyes..
So, if a group puts up a Christian icon of the majority religion in the country, can the Supreme Court then refuse another group's demand for a monument? Alternatively, should city fathers [and mothers] be forced to blight a park with monument after monument to satisfy every religious and pseudo religious body, on the grounds of "free speech"?
Where is common sense in this? Perhaps sense is not so common. In a similar situation in Alabama, only 20% of people approved the removal of a Christian monument, to satisfy the PC demand for enforced equality. In fact, it could be argued that the right to build a monument and the court order to remove an established one are two completely different things, with the latter being not only unconstitutional but hardly in the spirit of "free speech".
Check out the Moore plaque as well.
As an apathetic agnostic (don't know, don't care), I can understand the inclusion of the Ten Commandments but not the other laws. The Ten Commandments goes beyond being just religious; it is also one of the foundations of law in the English speaking countries. It may have started as part of a religion, but was given legitimacy by being used as a base for many of the ethics used by government and law. Not all of them were used, but some were. It would be like putting up a marker to the Laws of Hammurabi; though many of them are not applicable today, the principle behind them (the idea of a codified law available to the public view) is legitimate.
ReplyDeleteJust my opinion.
Yes, it is much more into the mainstream social fabric, isn't it?
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