One nation under God?
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Posted: September 1, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Patrick J. Buchanan
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© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
The granite monument of the Ten Commandments has been rolled out of the Alabama Supreme Court building in Montgomery. Chief Justice Roy Moore has been suspended. Yet, in his defeat there is victory.
For Judge Moore's defiance exposed to all Americans the naked hostility of the court to any official expression of belief that we are a nation under God. His defiance revealed how far America has traveled from the Constitution of our Founding Fathers.
We no longer see through a glass darkly. We can see clearly now.
Under the Ninth and 10th Amendments, our Constitution reserved to the states and the people all powers not specifically ceded to the national government. Can anyone believe the Constitution gave to federal judges, who did not even exist in 1789, power to order sovereign states to tear down monuments that had God's law, the Ten Commandments, engraved upon them? Does anyone believe the Constitution would have been ratified, had the free and independent states understood they were ceding such powers?
In the last 50 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has erected a judicial dictatorship over a nation of 280 million, usurping powers never granted to it by the Constitution. Possessed of a deeply anti-Christian bias, that court has progressively de-Christianized America and established state atheism as our national religion.
In every election, every poll, every survey, Americans decry it. Now Judge Moore has forced us to face up to it. Only by repeated acts of courageous defiance like his will we force President Bush and Congress to restore the republic that has been stolen from us.
Judge Moore's stand has separated the sheep from the goats among our brethren. Some Christians cast their lot with Caesar, as others scattered like the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane when the Roman soldiers came for Christ, sword in hand.
Is it really right, our milquetoast brethren bleat, for us to defy lawful authority? Ought we not obey, as the Bible commands? But the question is: Whose law are we being ordered to obey?
Are the federal courts acting constitutionally? Are they acting in a way that commands obedience when they declare that no state may in any way acknowledge God, when our own coins say "In God We Trust"?
Just who and what is Judge Moore defying?
The First Amendment, declares U.S. Judge Myron Thomson. But that amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibit the free exercise thereof."
Was Chief Justice Moore really trying to establish a Church of Alabama when he had placed in the rotunda of the courthouse that monument of the Decalogue? What church? The Ten Commandments are taken from the Old Testament sacred to Christians and the Torah sacred to Jews. Catholics number the commandments in a different order than does the monument.
Chief Justice Moore was only acknowledging that God Himself is the supreme lawgiver and we are subject to his law. This may be offensive to Judge Thompson and Justices Souter, Stevens, Breyer and Ginsberg, but it was not offensive to the Founding Fathers. Finally, Judge Moore is saying, enough is enough. It is time to defy tyranny because all other recourse has been exhausted.
A half-century ago, the Supreme Court purged prayer from the public schools, an exercise of raw judicial power uncountenanced by the Constitution. Congress did nothing. The court then declared abortion a constitutional right. Forty-two million babies have since passed under the knife. Now, the court has declared sodomy to be a constitutional right.
This renegade court is not following the Constitution; it is distorting the Constitution, perverting the Constitution to impose its ideology upon an unwilling nation, and relying upon the spirit of obedience of a law-abiding people to get away with it. What are we supposed to do?
If you don't like the decisions, they say, go pass a constitutional amendment. But that requires the approval of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-fourths of the states in seven years. And who decides what the amendment means when it is ratified? The same justices of the Supreme Court.
By usurping powers never granted to it, the Supreme Court has imposed a revolution upon our nation. Congress has refused to resist it. Presidents have refused. It is time for a counter-revolution to overthrow this rule of judges and restore our Constitution.
The Founding Fathers who overthrew a king, less odious and tyrannical, would have understood.
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