Re: church/state seperation

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (ambrose searle) wrote:
>> >> Take the words of George Washington, who presided over
>> >> the constitutional convention (and speaks with far greater authority than
>> >> our resident lunatic).
>> >
>> >Yeah, I'm sure you love everything Washington said in the speech you
>> >just cited:
>> 
>> Irrelevant.  Your claim is that the founders intended something.
>> Washington says that you are wrong, and he was a founder. QED.
>
>My point is that Washington's farewell address is not the lens through
>which the meaning of the second amendment is decided any more than it
>is the lens through which the first amendment is decided.

It is a lens through which the attitudes of at least one Founder can
be viewed, thus proving that the Founders did not share your opinion.

>For if it
>was, one would have to concede that the 1st amendment meant that
>religion was an absolutely necessary foundation for good government,
>just as Washington said.

Perhaps it does.  Washington also said that any such religion should
not be part of that government but should be between and individual
and his God.

>The most noteworthy of these defenses is known as the Federalist. In
>the 28th installment, one of the constitution's framers wrote:
>
>"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there
>is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of
>self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government,
>and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be
>exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those
>of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the
>persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different
>parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no
>distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense.
>The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without
>system, without resource; except in their courage and despair. The
>usurpers, clothed with the forms of legal authority, can too often
>crush the opposition in embryo. The smaller the extent of the
>territory, the more difficult will it be for the people to form a
>regular or systematic plan of opposition, and the more easy will it be
>to defeat their early efforts. Intelligence can be more speedily
>obtained of their preparations and movements, and the military force
>in the possession of the usurpers can be more rapidly directed against
>the part where the opposition has begun. In this situation there must
>be a peculiar coincidence of circumstances to insure success to the
>popular resistance."

In other words, if a state becomes tyrannous, resistance is probably
useless because there is no local government.  If the national
government becomes tyrannous, it is easier because the state is
capable of organizing revolt on behalf of the people.

1861-5 showed the fallacy here, a fallacy that is heightened in the
modern era when the national government has access to weapons that the
state does not, and has a large standing army that the Founders would
not have approved of.

Thus if there was a "right", that right is moot today (and probably
into the indefinite future) because no one is capable of exercising
that right.  At which point, those of us who are realists rather than
wedded to philosophy or ideology, simply say that the right no longer
exists.

>This explanation of the Constitution is far more authoritative than
>Washington's 1796 Farewell Address as an explanation of the intent of
>the Constitution's framers.

It doesn't matter.

lojbab
-- 
lojbab                                             [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org