Information is power and patriot author William J. (“Bill”) Federer provides powerful information in his www.AmericanMinute.com (1/1/17) for Americans to use to fight lawyer tyranny to conserve and preserve the Constitution of the Founding Fathers.
Federer, whose book “America’s God And Country; Encyclopedia of Quotations” is the best single volume evidencing what the Founding Fathers believed about religion and Constitutional governance, demonstrates in his AmericanMinute.com column what Thomas Jefferson “really meant” by his famous “Wall of Separation” metaphor regarding separation of church and state: It and Jefferson didn’t mean that government had to be protected from religion. On the contrary, it meant that religion had to be protected from government.
The information Federer provides is generally not available to non-lawyers. It can empower ordinary non-lawyer Americans to fightback against elitist liberal lawyers epitomized by those of the secular extremist ACLU, which has become the Taliban of American liberal secularism. Those lawyers, in league with other liberal lawyers sitting as judges, dictate to Americans that Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers intended the Establishment of Religion Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution to be used as a club to drive all religious thought, expression, and symbols out of the public square as a violation of the concept of “separation of church and state.”
There is no more exploited misinterpretation of the Constitution than that based on Thomas Jefferson’s reference to a “Wall of Separation” between church and state in Jefferson’s private reply letter in 1802 to Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, who had congratulated Jefferson on his election as the third President of the United States.
Baptists had been violently persecuted in Connecticut, in which the established religion of the State was Congregationalism. Jefferson used the “Wall of Separation” metaphor to assure the Danbury Baptists that as president Jefferson would protect their exercise of freedom of religion from oppression by government.However, Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” metaphor has been used by modern liberal secularist lawyers sitting as judges to interpret the Establishment of Religion Clause of the First Amendment to mean that the government must be protected from religion rather than that religion must be protected from government.
This misinterpretation has been used by liberal secularist elitist lawyers to convince Americans, wrongly, that the doctrine of “separation of church and state” is in the Constitution. It isn’t; never was. Neither was Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” metaphor in the Constitution; nor in the Declaration of Independence that Jefferson authored; nor in any “public” or “official” writing of Thomas Jefferson, including all his writings as the Third President of the United States.
Indeed, as President, Thomas Jefferson regularly attended Christian Church on Sundays. Not only that, but Jefferson, as president, actually authorized use of the Federal Government buildings in Washington, D.C., for the holding of religious services, and attended services in those government buildings. How does that conduct of President Jefferson, one of America’s Founding Fathers, square with an interpretation of his metaphor of a “Wall of Separation” to mean religion had to be separated from all things related to government under the First Amendment Establishment of Religion Clause?
Notwithstanding, the ACLU and other liberal secularist attorney organizations of its ilk, liberal judges, academics, and media, have read Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” into interpretation of the First Amendment’s Establishment of Religion Clause to mean that religion has to be separated from government to protect government from religion; rather than that government has to be separated from religion to protect religion from the government.
Here’s a common example of the wrongheaded interpretation:
In short, what has happened is that the Founding Fathers manifestly desired to protect freedom of religion — freedom of conscience — from government interference through the Establishment of Religion Clause. But modern liberal lawyers, as advocates and as judges, have instead effectively reversed the intent of the Founding Fathers by using Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” metaphor to interpret the Establishment of Religion Clause to mean the government must be protected from from religious thought, and religion must be driven from the public square and political discourse.
Why is it important for Americans of this era to know what Jefferson really meant in his use of the “Wall of Separation” metaphor? It is important because liberal secularists have used Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” metaphor to justify an interpretation of the Establishment of Religion Clause as requiring banning prayer from public (government) schools; banning the Ten Commandments from libraries, schools, and other government-related public areas; and attempting to ban religious symbols and expressions, almost always targeting the Cross, from veterans memorials and other public (government) places and spaces.
Here’s what the First Amendment of the Constitution really says:
By decisions of five the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court, religiously followed by lawyers sitting as federal judges, elitist liberal secularist lawyers have effectively driven religion out of the public square and political discourse on how “We, the People,” should be governed, creating what the late Richard John Neuhaus called the “Naked Public Square” in his landmark book of that name– a public square “naked” of religious thought.
These decisions driving religion into the closet and out of the public square have not been made by reaching a political consensus of “We, the People.” Instead, they have been made exclusively by lawyers — liberal lawyers of intolerant secular extremist organizations like the ACLU, and like-minded liberal lawyers sitting as judges, including in particular five of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court in 5-to-4 decisions.
The interpretations of the Establishment of Religion Clause driving religious thought out of the public square have been reached by elitist liberal lawyers appearing before the courts convincing other liberal lawyers sitting as judges to interpret the Establishment of Religion Clause in their own modern liberal secularist image, effectively amending the Constitution by judicial/lawyer decisions, no matter the original intent of the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson, to protect religion from government, not to protect government from religion.
Notwithstanding Supreme Court decisions, the banishment of religious expression in the public square is persistently pushed by ignorant lawyers and government officials and must be fought for again and again in the courts.
Where, in this process, are “We, the People” and not just lawyers, who have usurped the judicial branch onto themselves, since only one class of Americans can serve in the judicial branch — the lawyer class?
Why do we Americans continue to allow the lawyer class to be the only Americans capable of being judges, since there is nothing in the Constitution requiring even Supreme Court Justices to be lawyers?
But from the first Chief Justice John Marshall to today, the nation’s lawyers have conned Americans into believing that only lawyers are smart enough and fair enough and ever-so honorable enough to serve as judges in the Judicial Branch, a kind of new High Priesthood of the Law; a Secular Sanhedrin; or new new Feudal Lords in robes controlling the thought and beliefs and acts of ignorant peasants clinging to their religion (but not their “guns” because the Feudal Lords wouldn’t allow them to have guns–just as modern lawyer-judges are trying to do by interpretation the Second Amendment to mean something other than what the Founding Fathers intended.)
Think of it: The fact that most of the Establishment of Religion Clause Supreme Court decisions are 5-to-4 means, effectively, that one (1) lawyer on the Supreme Court is determining what the Founding Fathers’ Constitution means and determining the nature of the social, religious, and political culture of America. One (1) lawyer’s vote ultimately determines the meaning of the fundamental source of American law, the Constitution, which trumps all other federal, state, and local laws in all fifty states.
Think of that in a country of over 300-million citizens who are compelled to abide by these Supreme Court decisions in which four lawyers agree, and four lawyers disagree, and one (1) lawyer then casts a vote for one side or the other and 300-million Americans must kowtow to that decision. “We, the People” cannot participate at all in the making of such culture changing decisions since only lawyers can serve in the judiciary, including on the Supreme Court, by custom and not by Constitutional command. It is “The Great Con” of the lawyer-class to usurp one-third of our federal government “for lawyers only,” and amend the Founding Fathers’ Constitution by the 5-4 decisions of these lawyers-only judges.
When allowed to vote, or express themselves in polls, “We, the People” overwhelmingly vote against such secular extremist lawyer-judge interpretations of the Establishment of Religion Clause of the Constitution that result in banning prayer from schools, banning the Ten Commandments from all government related spaces, banning even crosses honoring the service and sacrifice of veterans at war memorials.
But what “We, the People” believe doesn’t matter. Lawyers decide otherwise, and impose those decisions on “We, the People” as if we are sheep, dictating what they say the Establishment of Religion Clause of the First Amendment means no matter how contrary their interpretation is to what the Founding Fathers intended or what “We, the People” have expressed contrary to the views of the elitist, liberal lawyers and lawyer-judges.
Does any non-lawyer American really think that Gen. George Washington, President of the Constitutional Convention, the First President of the United States, the “Father Of Our Country,” and the other Founding Fathers, including Jefferson, really believed that the Establishment of Religion Clause they wrote into the First Amendment of the Constitution was intended to create a “wall of separation” of church and state that would ban prayer from schools, ban the Ten Commandments from government spaces, or ban Crosses honoring veterans at veterans war memorials? Only modern lawyers like those of the ACLU and other liberal law centers, and like-minded lawyers sitting as judges, could do that in their elitist arrogance.
This is judicial tyranny by lawyers. Period.
Americans need to know what Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers meant and intended in establishing the Constitution, in order for “We, the People” to preserve the Constitution the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. We need to fight back against these elitist, arrogant, lawyers epitomized by the secular extremist ACLU. They can and should be beaten. Consider that veterans fought for ten years to save the Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial Cross in 2012, and for 27-years to save the Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial Cross in 2016, refusing to surrender to the fanatical cross-destroying litigation of the secular extremists of the ACLU.
That struggle of the veterans against the ACLU to save the Crosses honoring veterans at the Mojave Desert and Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorials is discussed in what I consider the best single book on the Establishment of Religion Clause — a book intended to be read and understood by “We, the People” and not just lawyers: It is author Steven Mansfield’s “Ten Tortured Words: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America and What’s Happened Since.”It should be in every veteran’s, every American’s, home in order to make the fight to conserve and preserve the Constitution of the Founding Fathers, not the modern liberal Constitution by which elitist lawyers have amended the Founding Fathers’ Constitution by judicial decisions, not vote of the people as provided for by the Constitution itself.
The idea that lawyers have conned Americans into accepting the premise that “Only Lawyers Must Decide What The Constitution Means; And All Others Must Obey,” must end. There is no reason other Americans should be barred from serving in the judicial branch, just as all Americans who meet age and citizenship requirements can serve in Congress or in the Presidency.
Indeed, there is no reason to believe that lawyers are more honorable, more fair, more just, more intelligent than other Americans. Indeed, there are many reasons to believe to the contrary based on experience of lawyer abuses of power, a class of Americans to which the word “shyster” has attached. How many non-lawyers do not shudder at the prospect of having to deal with “lawyers”? There is a reason that Shakespeare’s King Lear opined more than 500 years ago that in forming good government: “First, we kill the lawyers.”
It is only “We, the People,” who can stop them, the lawyers of the contemporary judicial tyranny. To do that, we have to know what Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers really meant by the “Wall of Separation” metaphor, “separation of church and state,” and the Establishment of Religion Clause.
“We, the People” should not continue to allow the lawyers who have usurped the judicial branch, one third of our Tri-partite federal government, to dictate to us what the Founding Fathers meant. A good place to start is author William J. Federer’s www.AmericanMinute.com (1/1/17).
FOR GOD AND COUNTRY FOREVER; SURRENDER TO TYRANNY– INCLUDING JUDICIAL TYRANNY BY LAWYERS — NEVER!
(Rees Lloyd, longtime California civil rights attorney and veterans activist, is a member of the Victoria Taft Blogforce.)
