Thoughts on the Miers nomination and the death of secularism

Parent Cafe
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<p>At the time of the Constitutional ratification, fewer than 15% of Americans were members of any established church, and membership was dropping (until the religious revival of 1802.) And many of the rest reflected the views of Madison (against Henry) in the Virginia Remonstrance of 1785, and which was supported by nearly universal acclaim:</p>

<p>“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy.”</p>

<p>John Adams wrote a magnficent “Defense of the U.S. Constitution” (1787-1788):</p>

<p>“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.”</p>

<p>“Originalist” views of the Constitution should reflect that reality.</p>

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<p>The Library of Congress disagrees with your perspective:</p>

<p>

<a href=“http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/religion.html[/url]”>http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/religion.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>kluge, I’m certain you are better at logic than that. Hint: “winning” is present tense; “won” is past tense. To quote a bunch of freedoms not yet taken away is not a proof of anything other than the assault has not been completed.</p>

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<p>No disagreement at all - as I continue to stress, the feeling of the times in 1776 were VERY different from those of 1787-1791, and would change substantially again in 1802-1803. De Tocqueville wasn’t even born until 1805, and his first volume wasn’t published until 1835.</p>

<p>But if you want to know what the authors of the Constitution had in mind when they made a concerted decision to leave God out of it, it is not very difficult to find out.</p>

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<p>1787? You mean this prevailing mood that Congress set apart 10,000 acres in 1787 to “be set apart and the property thereof be vested in the Moravian Brethren . . . or a society of the said Brethren for civilizing the Indians and promoting Christianity.”</p>

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<p>I think John Adams (himself a believer, and a church member) answers you well enough; anything I would add to him regarding the banishment of God from the Constitution would be superfluous.</p>

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<p>So, fundingfather, it appears that your idea of a “freedom” is a privilege that others don’t get to enjoy, and “losing” to the “secular assault” means that some of those privileges are no longer enjoyed by religion. Just what “freedoms” has religion lost? A little specificity would go a long way here. And I’ll ask again: what would the world look like if the secular “assault” were losing instead of winning as you say? (And I’m sure you’re adept enough at logic to address those simple questions, instead of tapdancing around them. :wink: )</p>

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<p>mini:
if you take what Adams wrote as a “banishment of God from the Constitution”, then I think you have created a new discipline called “creative reading”.</p>

<p>kluge:
What has been lost? Oh, I don’t know, perhaps tens of millions of unborn babies for starters. But next to tax breaks for churches, that’s small potatoes I guess.</p>

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<p>Okay - now we have something real to talk about. So “religious freedom” means the government should prosecute women who have abortions, and doctors who perform them? And your idea of an “assault on religion” is failing to allow religion to dictate how the law should respond to pregnant women who don’t want to have a baby. And apparently if religion were winning instead of losing, the world we’d be looking at would basically be a theocracy, run by people who agree with you? (I’m guessing here, because you were … tippity tappety… tada - zing! - uh, kind of avoiding the specific question. Actually not “kind of”. Just avoiding.)</p>

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<p>No, we would have a democracy where the people are allowed to express their opinions about such things rather than have 5 or 6 people on a court who DICTATE it. Democracy is a pretty cool thing - you know - let the people decide how they want to be governed. You guys should consider it sometime.</p>

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<p>

…and the rest is silence.</p>

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<p>(funding father:
We have elections…No? We elect presidents who then appoint judges, with congressional oversight (supposedly). So, what’s the problem?</p>

<p>And, by the way, the majority of people believe that Roe v. Wade was a correct decision by the court. Even many Republicans hedge on overtly saying abortion should be illegal. Why? Because they know what their electorate thinks.)</p>

<p>While we are on the topic…how do conservatives reconcile the ban on the morning after pill? It could reduce abortions substantially. But that isn’t what it’s about I suspect. Is it about keeping women in their “proper” place?</p>

<p>Clearly, the non-approval of this drug for over the counter distribution is a direct result of zealous meddling in the name of religion/politics. Evidently respected FDA scientists Dr. Susan Wood, the FDA’s top women’s health official, and Dr. Frank Davidoff, an internal medicine specialist and member of the FDA’s Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee, thought that enough to resign from the FDA.</p>

<p>Even on a foreign policy front - remember when one of W’s first actions in office was to institute a global gag rule on family planning organizations overseas, telling them that if they perform abortions with their own funds or even talk about abortion with their patients or their own governments, they may not receive family planning assistance from the United States. The result: “In September 2005, The Bush Administration announced that, for the fourth consecutive year, it will withhold the United States’s $34 million contribution to the United Nations Population Fund. To date, the Administration has withheld $127 million in funds already appropriated by Congress. One year’s withheld funding of $34 million could prevent as many as 2 million unwanted pregnancies and 4,700 maternal deaths in developing countries…we estimate that the loss of U.S. funding will undermine our capacity to prevent 800,000 abortions and the deaths of 4,700 mothers and 77,000 children under the age of 5, said Stirling D. Scruggs, an agency spokesman. He said the cash shortfall would take a “huge bite” out of the agency’s international AIDS prevention programs as well.” (Sept. 25, 2005, UNFPA notes.)</p>

<p>So, to suggest that the Christian fundamentalist agenda is merely a response to them feeling uncomfortable about expressing their religion - I don’t think so. And if that’s their intent, the results have certainly been much different.</p>

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<p>Great posts Weenie and Kluge.</p>

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<p>

So, why all the fuss about maintaining control of the Supreme Court? Why not just let the issue come up for a vote the democratic way and be done with it?</p>

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<p>Though the general public may be okay with the outcome of Roe v. Wade they are not comfortable with a few other things associated with the decision:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Medical technology changes the perception of where the 3-month, 6-month state intervention lines should come into play. As medical technology advances the time at which a fetus becomes viable changes. This is why Sandra Day O’Connor said that the decision was on a collision course with itself.</p></li>
<li><p>The application and extension of the Roe principal beyond the 3-month, 6-month lines defined in the decision. Instead of working the details out in the legislature every case must go to the supreme court in order to see if it passes muster. The court itself can not “legislate” they can only decide based upon the case presented to them . . . so they must wait for another case to refine the law, sorry I meant their opinion.</p></li>
<li><p>How broad a right to privacy exists? Does it extend to keeping the conversation between a psychologist and thier patient where the patient states their desire to commit violence or perhaps kill his neighbor? Does the psychologist have an affirmative duty to act and warn the potential victim? Before NMD accuses me of a rhetorical flourish see the case of Tarasoff v. Regents of CA.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Sorry but I come down on the side that Roe v. Wade and its companion case Doe v. Bolton was wrongly decided. It is an issue where the two rights in play, privacy and life, should be left to the legislature and the deliberative democratic process. An undefined “penumbra” emanating from the constitution is too undefined for me. I am sure that my penumbra does not match your penumbra.</p>

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<p>Back to the original topic . . . I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Harriet Miers. It appears that she may have made statements to Arlen Spector that are inappropriate . . . at least from my perspective.</p>

<p>I await more explanation and its associated spin control.</p>

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<p>Spector has retracted what he said about Miers. He said it was a misunderstanding.</p>

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<p>

That was quick!</p>

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<p>Kluge and FF,</p>

<p>I understand that there is a lot of legal parsing going on around this issue. Note that Spector has NOT retracted what he heard. What he is saying is that there may have been a misunderstanding about what she meant.</p>

<p>Note that the Whitehouse reported that she did not say what she said . . .</p>

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<p>“So, why all the fuss about maintaining control of the Supreme Court? Why not just let the issue come up for a vote the democratic way and be done with it?”</p>

<p>No subject comes up more often in the Federalist Papers or in the Constitutional debates themselves than the framers’ distrust of direct democracy. In hundreds of pages, they virtually unanimously tried to distance themselves from the democratic model of Athens, in favor of the Roman Republican models. </p>

<p>They used five different methods to try to clamp down on the excesses that direct democracy might result in:
– A bicameral legislature, with a Senate apportioned according to the number of states rather than to population;
– Three branches of government, with enough power vested in each to “balance” the powers of the other two, and the creation of a Supreme Court;
– Indirect election of the President;
– Virtually no mechanisms for recall, and a very high bar for impeachment of elected officials;
– A Bill of Rights to protect the people (especially those with minority views) against the tyranny of the majority.</p>

<p>They posed against the democratic view the idea that the nation would be a nation of laws rather than opinion. </p>

<p>Federalist #10 is a good read. It begins:</p>

<p>"AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. "</p>