Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Somehow you are confused as to the law in the USA.
"The separation of church and state is a legal and political principle derived from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads, "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, where Jefferson spoke of the combined effect of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. It has since been quoted in several opinions handed down by the United States Supreme Court.[1]" Wikipedia is a good start!! So you need to catch up before you can even start to understand the anachronism of the "In Good We Trust" and worse the assumptions of divine providence and favor for the USA!
Do the reading first!
News Media is a major investment in our tools for protecting our freedoms and is protected so as to constitute an independent structure of our society. However, from this weeks activities we see the press and State marching in lockstep. In the Papal visit and the horrible raid on the Mormon adherents of an older form of that faith, this is what was identical: the language, reverence and deference for one religion while humiliating the adherents of another! This disregard for our stated valued of both "Separation of Church and State and Freedom of Religion has been violated on so many fronts. Further the raid was on the basis of a false story made up by an older wonam who previously had been convicted of falsely pretending something like she is a 16 year old girl being sexually abused. The police could have easily checked out the story before initiating the raid. Instead on the basis, or really the excuse of that easily exposed lie, they raided the religious compound and dragged away over 400 women and children. They even snached infants from the arms of young mothers!
So where are the checks and balances promised in the constitution? Where is the independent judiciary who should have already stopped this idiotic way of handling a 100 year old clearly religious group who have values different from our own.
While I happen to consider coerced/ forced or community-decided marriages primitive and perhaps even akin to a kind of rape, there is no evidence that our form of family making is any more successful or cruelty-free. If we could wave a magic wand, then for sure, I'd want the boys and girls to have opportunity in our society. However this is not the way to bring that about!
The States behavior in the past week is, I would argue, against the US Constitution and the press's adulation and selective blind eyes are wrong. The latter is so destructive to the integrity of the checks and balances which should be exposing and challenging the Royal treatment of one powerful religion while humiliating another.
They both should be equally respected and held accountable for any abuses if they happen to trespass on peoples human and or legal rights not to be abused, warehoused or exploited.
So what started for me as a simple question of "Why we were feting a man who is the head of one religion?" (and ignoring the fact that the night before the real news was the linking of the price of Rice via corn to the price of oil because of "Green" production of ethanol with devastating consequences for 100s of millions of poor people), ended as a stunning contrast between our treatment of the powerful and the weak.
That is the current thrust and engine of my "rant". I accept that we have trespassed on the US Constitution to separate Church and State. That itself is bad. The money put to hosting a visitor as Royalty can be argued, since the Vartican's small compound in Rome is indeed recognized as a "State".
However, this week the cruel and inhuman treatment of the 400 adherents to an unpopular faith is shameful. Worse, the press is silent and who is then there to stand up for mercy and compassion.
That's the engine of my rant.
The measure of this democracy, after all, is how we treat the weak and the World over which we have power. If you fail to find that coherent, cogent or important, then so be it. We are just on an entirely different wavelength and you have not reached out sufficiently to put yourself in the USA as a citizen who takes "Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness" as values to fight for.
Asher
The Currency connections: The "In God we Trust" we thought was bad, but it was an excess that we tolerated. However, the [/depth of the belief that God favors the USA for a special purpose was a total surprise to me several days ago! That was only discovered by incidentally when I tried to find information on the "In God We Trust" Phrase on the front of the currency bills and checked the US Bureau of Treasury Website. On the reverse the incomplete pyramid, the eye and the phrases, all point to a claim of the USA having a God-given selection and favor for its importance. That left me surprised and I must admit flummoxed!
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