Hey Supreme Court Justice Alito, the Declaration of Independence and Amendment 1 prove America was not founded as a Christian nation

 

    Last night, a friend emailed me this Alternet article:

'Unethical' and 'corrupt': Secret Alito audio revealing 'Christian nationalist' stuns experts

Opinion by David Badash

Secret audio recording of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito casually and unreservedly telling a woman posing as a right-wing Catholic conservative that there are “fundamental” differences between the left and the right that “can’t be compromised,”and agreeing the nation needs to return to “godliness,” has sparked strong criticism by legal and political experts.

Justice Alito agreed with the woman, documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who told him, “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end.”

“I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning,” she added before Alito replied, “I think you’re probably right.”

Alito continued, saying, “there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

Many expect judges, and especially Supreme Court justices, to maintain an impartiality, including when weighing in on issues of faith and morality. The U.S. Constitution itself states justices serve for life if they remain on “good behavior.”

“The key part of the Alito tape is his concession that compromise on fundamental issues is probably impossible. A horrific quality for a judge or human being,” declared constitutional law scholar and professor of law Eric Segall.

“Sam Alito is a Christian Nationalist,” said attorney and author Andrew L. Seidel, a vice president at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Anyone familiar with his opinions on religious freedom and church-state separation (or who has read American Crusade) has known this for some time. Then there’s his admission with the flags. Now this confession.”

Professor of law, MSNBC legal analyst, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance shared several concerns.

“If Justice Alito is making comments like this to a random person at a get-together, what is he saying to his close confidants? How is this impartial justice, especially when his votes/rationale on cases are considered?” she asked.

“This is a Justice who believes the correct way to determine the law is via a strict appeal to ‘history & tradition’ even though both of those things assume a legal system where Black people & women have no rights,” Vance added.

Vance also remarked, “A statistic that stuck with me about Alito’s jurisprudence is that ‘An empirical analysis of the Court’s ‘standing’ decisions…found that Alito rules in favor of conservative litigants 100% of the time & against liberal litigants in every single case.’ ”

The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and emeritus scholar responded to remarks Justice Alito made, writing: “Utterly unethical, corrupt, a serial liar, and a radical lacking every element of judicial temperament. This monster does not belong in civil society, much less on any court, much much less on the Supreme Court.”

Some, including attorney George Conway, pointed out the difference between Justice Alito’s response to Windsor and Chief Justice John Roberts, who was asked similar questions.

“Pressed on whether the court has an obligation to put the country on a more ‘moral path,'” Rolling Stone reported, “Roberts turns the tables on his questioner: ‘Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?’ He argues instead: ‘That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.’ Presented with the claim that America is a ‘Christian nation’ and that the Supreme Court should be ‘guiding us in that path,’ Roberts again disagrees, citing the perspectives of ‘Jewish and Muslim friends,’ before asserting: ‘It’s not our job to do that. It’s our job to decide the cases the best we can.’ ”

“The contrast between Alito’s responses and Roberts’s speaks volumes,” Conway said. “Oh my.

    When this old lawyer, who clerked for a United States District Judge, hears someone say America was founded as a Christian nation, or was founded on Christian principles, I want give Justice Alito and the other 5 Christian right judges on the U.S. Supreme Court the text of the American Declaration of Independence to read, because there is nothing in it about Christianity. 

    Many signers of the Declaration, including its principal author Thomas Jefferson, were Free Masons and Deists, and their sacred symbols, the pyramid with the single eye at the top, are on America’s paper money today. 

    The Declaration of Independence makes four non-Christian lingo references to Deity from which it draws its authority.

  I put the 4 references to Deity in bold.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

    Then follows a long list of grievances against England's king, in which there is no reference to Deity.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

    After defeating King Georges’s army, a good bit of which consisted of German mercenaries, the Colonists created the new nations' second legal document, the United States Constitution, which divided the national government into three branches, Congress, Executive, and Supreme Court, and provided how those branches would operate.

    The Constitution begins:

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to our- selves and our Posterity, do ordain and estab- lish this Constitution for the United States of America.

    There is nothing in the Constitution about Christianity.

    After enacting the Constitution, Congress enacted Ten Amendments, which became known as “The Bill of Rights”, in which there is nothing about Christianity. 

    However, there is mention of religion in Amendment I:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

      The Founding Fathers were acutely aware of the religious oppression in England and the rest of the British Isles and in Western Europe. They did not want to see that happen in America, thus the bar against a religion of the State and the prohibition against restricting free exercise of religion.

    After America became a nation, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, “Give me liberty, or give me death” Patrick Henry, the Governor of the State of Virginia, introduced a bill into the Virginia Legislature that effectively would have made Christianity the state religion of Virginia.

    Thomas Jefferson, and another signer of the Declaration, James Madison, lived in Virginia, and they led the charge to defeat Governor Henry’s bill being passed by the Virginia Legislature. 

    I was not taught any of the above in American history courses in elementary school, high school and college. I was not taught any of the above at the University of Alabama School of Law. I never read, saw or heard any of the above discussed  publicly or privately, even though Jesus in the Gospels said to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God’s.

   When I was in elementary school, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which is stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," was changed to “one nation, under God, indivisible", to elevate America above godless communist Soviet Union and China. 

    In 2016, I watched the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton. I watched Trump promise the American Christian right that he would put their people on the United States Supreme Court. I watched Trump get elected and put three right wing Christians on the United States Supreme Court, for all of which the Democrats can stand up take a bow, because Vice President Joe Biden would have beaten Donald Trump in 2016, but Hillary had dirt on the Bidens, so the Democrats nominated Hillary, without vetting her, and, oh, my, her dirt got Donald Trump elected.

    The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et. all, and Amendment 1 are rolling over in their graves.

  

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com