Thursday, August 20, 2009

Tyranny of One

Our Founding Fathers and those who followed were determined to prevent the tyranny of the majority and carefully crafted a republic to prevent the suppression of minority rights often visited in democracy. Both forms of governance, reverence one man-one vote, but our executives, courts, and legislatures have protected small or even fringe groups that might have been crushed under the majority had our early leaders not been so farsighted. No state religion, as had been common in the colonial era (with Maryland Catholic, the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritan, etc.), could be propagated. But make no mistake, ours was a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles, as a Christian nation. Washington himself saw the country as a consecrated enterprise. Washington's letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia demonstrated that he saw an America where man could worship God " according to the dictates of his own conscience". Washington sent a missive conveying a similar message of tolerance to the Jews with his letter to a temple in Newport, Rhode Island. Ours was a Godly nation, giving thanks and seeking supplication until the appearance of a brand of anti-God fanatic led by the embittered Madalyn Murray O'Hair who wanted God expelled from schools and banished from the public square. After O'Hair met her appointed fate, her spit in the eye of the Divine banner was lifted out of the sewer by Michael Newdow who has tried to chase away the Lord from his lair in beset California. I have recently read with dismay of a coach and an athletic director at a public school facing fines and up to six months in jail for an invocation, not uttering a prayer to students but to athletic club boosters, adults who obviously wanted to be there and who presumably could leave, not "captive" children in a classroom but adults at a voluntary event. This is straight out of the Soviet constitution, not an event reasonable Americans ever thought they would witness in the heartland. Never did our forefathers envisage a day where people could go to jail for praying. This is not protecting the rights of a minority but imposing their proclivities on the rest of us. This is the tyranny of the minority-be they this booster case or a case in my hometown Nashville where the Metro Council is about to confer special rights on homosexuals with an "anti-discrimination" bill that is said to apply to public workers but will actually effect anyone doing business with the city including Head Start programs in church classrooms who will now be compelled to hire gay, lesbian, bi, and transgendered workers. So while cities construct public troughs for devout Muslims to wash their feet in prior to prayer (as in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport), perverts are foisted on churches in the Bible Belt and God is ousted from public view. Now, Americans have plenty to fear from a leader (Obama has revelled as an abortion pusher and is power mad) who thinks he is big enough to supplant Him.

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