On Mar 18, 2010, at 11:08 AM, farmelantj at juno.com wrote:
>
>
> It should be kept in mind that the
> anti-establishment clause only applied
> to the Federal government...it was
> only in the twentieth century, that
> the SCOTUS began to apply the anti-establishment
> clause to the states...
The SCOTUS has a long and generally consistent record of constitutional malinterpretation. The constitution forbids religious tests for public office, already preventing a federal established religion. In fact the Bill of Rights as written is supposed to guarantee the *individual* rights of the people, and as such it is meaningless unless it applies to the states. The *text* of the constitution guarantees the people of every state "a republican form of government." Since there is no explicit definition of the term "republican form of government" the definition has to be ostensive. The ordainers ("framers" is a reactionary invention) in setting out the constitution as a whole--and insisting that it be amended to guarantee their individual rights--established it as the ostensive definition of a "republican form of government." The whole Bill of Rights applies to the states and always has, despite the refusal of the most reactionary branch of government to enforce it.
>
> On Mar 18, 2010, at 9:16 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>> So does anyone know the history of the anti-establishment clause?
>> Was this an elitist imposition on a religious mass or a widely held
>> opinion?
>
> Actually, neither. Every Christian sect, knowing in its bones what
> Christianity was all about, needed protection from all the others,
> each of whom would gladly establish itself as the state's religion if
> it had the chance.
>
>
>
>
> Shane Mage
>
>> Porphyry in his Abstinance from Animal Flesh suggests that there are
>> appropriate offerings to all the Gods, and to the highest the only
>> offering acceptable is silence.
>
>
>
>
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Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos
>