The Courts Who Stole Christmas
Merry Christmas!
But can you say it on public property? Perhaps, perhaps not.
Take the Holiday Tree of Rhode Island. Notice, it is not a Christmas tree. The governor, in his politically correct acting way, says it must be a Holiday Tree. Let us insult no one but the Christians he says. He ignores the amendment which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. The governor decides for himself that “the free exercise thereof” is not going to happen on his watch.
It is a sad place we have come to when a person is chastised for saying Merry Christmas.
The courts, where judges rule, have become a bastion of usurpers, ignoring legislative law. Indeed they even ignore the Constitution, instead writing into their rulings any whim, and so it is often they who have prohibited the free exercise thereof. Why do we allow this? In part because our legislators are not willing to confront the courts. But in our tricameral government, each body is supposedly equal to the other two and each has some power over the others. In fact, our NC Constitution says in Article 4 Section 12 : Superior Court. “Except as otherwise provided by the General Assembly, the Superior Court shall have original general jurisdiction throughout the State.”
What can this language mean except that the legislature has the right to limit jurisdiction if it so chooses. So in allowing courts, judges, individuals, to make decisions which the legislature has not approved, the legislature abdicates its responsibility to the people who elected them to serve. Why even have a legislature? If they allow a judge to do as he pleases then the sole responsibility of the legislature becomes only the function of taxing the people to pay for his whim.
The best local example, although not about religion, is the case of Judge Howard Manning of the Leandro case fame. Brought in 1994, Judge Manning took the case as announcement of his title of prince of the NC Public School System, which he has never given up. He dictates. To the legislature: they must spend this amount, the money must go here. To the administration he says: the state must do must this system and do this.
It has been almost 20 years since the Judge became Prince of Schools and there is no sign he is giving up. The same attitude of ‘I know better than others’ is too common in the courts, where the secular humanists among the justices decide what the public display of religion of the people should be or not be.
The amendment says: “Congress shall make no law”. Yet in the very writing of the amendment the framers fall into the trap for the people foretold in The Federalist Papers #84.
“I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights.
On the subject of the liberty of the press, as much as has been said, I cannot forbear adding a remark or two: in the first place, I observe, that there is not a syllable concerning it in the constitution of this State; in the next, I contend, that whatever has been said about it in that of any other State, amounts to nothing. What signifies a declaration, that “the liberty of the press shall be inviolably preserved”? What is the liberty of the press? Who can give it any definition which would not leave the utmost latitude for evasion? “
IT is thus the amendment itself, as the writer says, which has conferred power on the judiciary to claim more than was meant by the US Constitution itself. The enumerated powers do not give the US Government the authority to make rules concerning religion. By distorting the 1st amendment’s restriction against same, the courts continually make rules. And, the reader will have noticed, the courts and the legislature distorts many parts of the Constitution for their own ends.
I say – Have a Merry Christmas and pray before every meeting or class. This country of ours could stand a bit more of the humble attitude which a strong belief in God leads to.
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