Opinion Journal details a series of events in San Diego that demonstrates what has long been painfully obvious to Christians: atheists want to eliminate Christianity entirely, not just protect the "separation of church and state".
The cross was erected on city property in the 1950s as a tribute to veterans from both world wars and the Korean War. It was uncontroversial until 1989, when Mr. Paulson and his supporters sued to have it removed from public land. In 1991, U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson ruled in their favor. So the city decided to sell the land to a private organization. In 1992 more than two-thirds of voters approved of the sale, and in 1998 it went to the highest bidder--a group that planned to keep the memorial intact.Mr. Paulson, indicating that his beef is with the cross and not just its presence on public property, went back to court to block the sale. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals obligingly ruled that selling the memorial violated the state constitutional prohibition on state-sponsored religion because it unfairly discriminated against any potential buyers who would have had to bear the burden of pulling the cross down.
Frustrated local voters fought back, and last year 76% of them approved Proposition A, authorizing the city to donate the memorial to the federal government. They were shot down again, this time by Superior Court Judge Patricia Yim Crowley, who invalidated the vote on the ground that it violated state law by showing preference for a particular religion. ...
The one judicial reprieve in this case came from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who last month stayed a U.S. district court order fining San Diego $5,000 for each day that the cross remained standing--giving Congress time to pass the eminent-domain transfer.
So Congress is buying the cross to protect it from idiotic judges who despise democracy and view themselves as aristocrats rather than servants of the people. Christians should remember this battle when the ACLU and others plaintively whine that they're trying to prevent oppression while underhandedly eviscerating the rights of the majority.
Nonsense, Michael. I'm sure you can find the occasional atheist who really does want to eliminate Christianity, but most would limit themselves to persuasion, as unlikely as they are to find success with that.
Most of the activity that Christians like to construe as anti-Christian is resistance to the active desire of many Christians to use government power to privilige their views, such as the theist motto "In God We Trust," which did not deface our money until the Civil War, and was not required by law until the 1950's, or the ongoing desire to reinstate prayer in the government schools.
My understanding of the "free exercise of religion" does not include forcing passers-by and fellow taxpayers to participate in the rituals of my faith or subsidizing its dissemination.
Many believers assert that this should be a matter of majority rule, which betrays a misunderstanding of the real basis of our polity: individual freedom. Democracy ain't in it, and most Christians know it. How can I say that with such confidence? Easy. If, in the fullness of time, the population of the U.S. became 51% Muslim and voted to place "In Allah We Trust" on the currency, and to have schoolchildren in the government schools face Mecca five times a day for prayers, suddenly the 49% of the population remaining mostly Christian would discover the virtues of individual freedom and limited government. They wouldn't sit still for it one second, and you cannot expect contemporary non-believers to do so. Give up: the government's imprimature on the majority religion is only majoritarian bigotry.
Which of these applies to you, Brett?
"He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him."
George Orwell
"To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
Woody Allen
Brett, what you're saying has no basis in history. The people who wrote and voted for the First Amendment did not intend it to mean what you say it means.
Unresponsive, the both of you.
Unresponsive? OK that answer puts you in the Orwellian mold.
That was unresponsive, too, Vanka. When you cease talking to yourself, look it up.
Brett, maybe we were being unreponsive to be polite. It wouldn't take much creativity or intelligence to lash back at your rude comment.
Here's a word: Troll. When you cease talking to yourself, look it up.
OK Brett, that Vanka thing was cute, but I prefer Vanechka.
Ivan Ivanovich--
Do we know each other well enough?
Unless you're freighting the term 'eliminate' with additional meaning, the notion that atheists want to eliminate Christianity shouldn't be surprising in the least. I'm an atheist. I think Christianity is a false belief system. People who accept it are making a mistake. I want people to stop believing in Christianity for the same reason I want people to stop believing in Marxism -- because I want people to believe true things, not false things. So in a way I am trying to eliminate Christianity -- by trying to persuade people that it isn't true.
The relevant distinction that must be maintained here is one of method. People are and should be politically free to believe false things, and to act on those beliefs as long as they don't infringe the political rights of other people. The government should not be the arbiter of which ideas are true and which false; it should maintain a neutral posture on such issues to the greatest extent possible. Using the law as a club to purge Christian iconography from privately-owned yet publically-visible land (which seems to be the net effect of the fight in San Diego) is utterly inappropriate.
It also strikes me as ludicrously inappropriate prioritization; we're headed towards a large-scale war with a bunch of theocratic fascists in the middle east who want to utterly destroy the foundations of our free society. In the face of that, any 'threat' posed by a cross in San Diego pales in comparison.
It seems to me that a basic problem with human nature is the desire to control other people and their stuff. Looking at the article from that perspective, it is obvious that the Atheist wanted to control somebody else's stuff. Whether it was on public property or in private hands, he simply could not accept that it was outside of his circle of power.
Yet, somehow he reframed the debate as if the government was imposing on him. The reality is that some taxpayers in the 1950's had their chance to complain about government spending on a religious monument. But, the man in this case was not being asked to pay for a religious monument. The courts should have recognized that the case was not between the Atheist and the government. It was between the Atheist and the survivors of war veterans, and their heirs, who installed the monument.
Once the case is framed as a dispute between two private entities, then the religious arguments can be thrown out, because our government makes no laws respecting religion. Right. Finally, the case boils down to a matter of fair allocation of public display space over time.
Apparently, some people did not learn everything they needed to know in Kindergarten, or they might have known how to share.
Yes Brett, I guess we do now.
Well, then, I'm happy to meet you Vanechka. It's a pleasure to pull up our pulpits and have at it.
I am neither an Atheist nor a Christian. But I'd still rather ram a Christian's Bible down their throat rather than listen to them thump what they have never even read.
I'm a member of that vast liberal conspiracy, and I gotta tell ya, ya'll ain't seen nothin yet! You think we want to get rid of Christianity? You bet we do, and here's how we are going to do it - we've started by picking all sorts of little fights here, there, and everywhere around the country. A small cross here, a small display of the 10 commandments there - and voila, we have oodles and oodles of legal precedent to start going after the BIG FISH.
You guessed it - the next big step is to attack that annoying holiday that we have successfully commecialized into meaninglessness. I refer of course to Christmas. The advance work has already been accomplished. You poor Christians can't even say "Merry Christmas" half the time, and are forced to fall back to "Happy Holidays" (Please note we started THAT one more than 60 years ago, before we even knew we were going to attack Christmas. Amazing how we were busy attacking you guys before we ourselves even knew it). The next step is to coerce the courts (I just love those liberal loonies who legislate from the bench by performing their defined job exactly as they are expected to do) into putting a halt to any and all federal, state, or local recognition of Christmas as a holiday. No more paid holidays for you boo boo. If you want to celebrate Christmas, you gotta take a day of vacation, the same as Jews do when they celebrate Hanukkah, and Muslims do when they celebrate Ramadan or any other of their respective holy days.
When we get done with that, we'll go after our currency and get that silly little "In God We Trust" phrase taken off. Hell, its not like anyone in this country actually believes it anyways. If we trusted in God so much, what the hell are we doing trying to build a missile defense system? Why do we spend trillions every year on defense? Why do insurance companies have a strangle hold on our political system? I thought you fools TRUST GOD?? Make up your pea sized minds already.
Haha you have just seen the future folks. Now I have to get back to writing my amicus brief opposing school vouchers. We already kicked your arses out of schools, now its time to really rub your noses in that one.
Ciao baby.
Merry Christmas, Stacy!