"An Establishment of Religion"

A July 4th reflection

I doubt that there is any document that has been more argued over than the U.S. Constitution. So I hesitate to say anything more about it. But the prohibition therein of "An Establishment of Religion" has in my view been so wilfully misinterpreted by SCOTUS that I feel I have to say something.

And what I want to do is simply to put the provision into the context of the time in which it was written. Below is a very brief excerpt that does that. It was written about a time just before the Declaration of Independence:

"While Virginia debated whether Anglicanism should be recognized as the only established state religion (Witherspoon was vociferously against it), Presbyterians and Congregationalists argued for religious freedom".

Source

In other words, the provision was designed only to avoid the situation in England, where the government made one Christian denomination the only "correct" one. To say that the provision demands a separation of church and State is stretching it beyond all recognition.




No "Dumb Polacks"!

I personally tend to think highly of Poles. I even attended a Polish church recently. And all the Poles I know are pretty smart. But that does not mean that there are NO "dumb Polacks". There are dummies in any nationality. But apparently the New York branch of the Polish American Congress thinks that NOBODY with a Polish name may be portrayed as dumb -- as Lefty cartoonist Garry Trudeau found out recently. Details here.




No Nigerian Crookedness may be Mentioned (Except by Nigerians)

CNN recently aired a documentary called "How To Rob A Bank" which mentioned a Nigerian immigrant to the United States who had been convicted of identity theft and bank robbery. One of the people interviewed for the doco said that there are many Nigerians involved in shady dealings. Anybody who has received one of the vast number of "Nigerian scam" emails that arrive in our mailboxes almost every day would understand that comment.

But, according to various Nigerian organizations, you are not allowed to mention that. To portray SOME Nigerians as crooked is racist. Apparently, NO Nigerian may be portrayed as crooked. CNN has of course now apologized etc.

But the funniest of the objections comes from Nigeria itself. We read on a news site from Nigeria a condemnation of the CNN doco which is immediately followed by a sweeping condemnation of the crookedness and corruption in Nigerian politics! It says in effect that the corrupt activities of a few individual Nigerians are small potatoes compared to the corruption of the Nigerian government! Am I allowed to laugh?