rfenst wrote:Ray, you conveniently forgot to talk about the 14th Amendment and it's application over the last 150 years and reapplication over the last 75 years. I know you'll only criticize it and that's fine, but you missed it or chose to ignore it because it doesn't fit within the exact thoughts of the founding fathers and your narrow view of how the U.S. should be.
This makes the freedom of religion clause (and other civil rights binding on the state's too.
And then there is the issue of the state's with freedom of religion /separation of church and state constitutions.
If I assume for the sake of argument that taxes are theft, do you still want that tax money going to teach children Christianity, Islam/Arabic or Judaism/Hebrew/Yiddish? Isn't that what Sunday school is for? Isn't that a parents choice and responsibility?
I never said I was for tax money going to teach children anything, whether religious, private or secular progressive schools.
I am as much for the original intent of the Separation of Church and State as I am for the Separation of Education and State. Whether religion or education, state control of either is a form of socialism, one being religious socialism and the other education socialism. Both are top-down, command-and-control systems riddled with the same problems that all socialism causes.
Now back to the 1st Amendment Wall of Separation and the 14th Amendment
First consider this for background...
The First Amendment’s Wall of SeparationBy: Mike Maharrey|Published on: Dec 19, 2020|Categories: 1st Amendment
Quote:In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
Jefferson was, of course, referring to the First Amendment. He perhaps overstated his case.
The amendment was intended to prohibit the federal government from establishing a national church and to prevent Congress from legislating on religious matters. Of course, Congress had no such authority to begin with. The Constitution didn’t delegate any authority to Congress to establish a church or to regulate religious matters at all. The First Amendment simply made explicit an implicit truth built into the Constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…
The establishment clause of the First Amendment is probably the provision in the Bill of Rights most twisted from its original purpose. People have taken Jefferson’s words and used them as a basis to exile any religious expression from the public sphere at the federal, state and local levels. Whether not you think the absolutism of Jefferson’s wall is positive or negative, it was never the intention of the First Amendment. Jefferson’s wall was only meant to wrap around the federal government.
More...
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2020/12/19/the-first-amendments-wall-of-separation/
Now the 14th Amendment...
Understanding the Constitution: the 14th Amendment: Part Ihttps://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2021/11/17/understanding-the-constitution-the-14th-amendment-part-i/
Understanding the Constitution: The 14th Amendment Part IIhttps://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2021/12/08/understanding-the-constitution-the-14th-amendment-part-ii/
The 14th Amendment and the Bill of RightsPublished on: Mar 12, 2012| Categories: Featured, Founding Principles
by Laurence Vance
Quote:Did the Congress that passed the Fourteenth Amendment (June 13, 1866) or the states that ratified it (July 9, 1868) intend that the Amendment incorporate, in whole or in part, the Bill of Rights? It is a telling indictment of the incorporation doctrine that nowhere in the Fourteenth Amendment does it say anything about incorporating any part of the Bill of Rights. The wisdom exercised by Chief Justice Marshall in Barron v. The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore (1833) should be followed here. In writing about the applicability of the Bill of Rights to the states, Marshall clearly explains why such was not the case:
"Had the framers of these amendments intended them to be limitations on the powers of the state governments, they would have imitated the framers of the original constitution, and have expressed that intention. Had congress engaged in the extraordinary occupation of improving the constitutions of the several states, by affording the people additional protection from the exercise of power by their own governments, in matters which concerned themselves alone, they would have declared this purpose in plain and intelligible language."
It is inconceivable that if such a thing took place that such a significant doctrine as incorporation would be so veiled that it would take years before some Supreme Court judge discovered that there was such a thing.
More...
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2012/03/12/the-14th-amendment-and-the-bill-of-rights/