This post was originally written on 3/16/2012
Does anyone actually believe that the writer's of the Constitution
wrote the first amendment with the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church in
mind? Is anyone that delusional?
Let us take a
brief moment for a little lesson on history and world religions, shall
we? Good. I thought you would be game for that.
The men who wrote our Constitution were primarily of English descent.
They were, most of them, either born and raised in England, or their
ancestors of a generation or two (maybe three) before them were.
Certainly some of these men were scholars who had studied vast amounts
of literary works that were written by men (and a few women) from around
the globe, but most of these guys were farmers or business owners who
had little contact with anyone who wasn't of European descent.
With this in mind, just what examples would have come to mind for these
men when considering the question of whether to form their fledgling
government as a theocracy, in whole or in part? Why, the history of
England and those countries which England had interacted with, of
course! England by itself has a long history of "squabbles" amongst
it's citizens, it's leaders, and different religious leaders, beginning
in Roman times and continuing into modern day (If you consider the fact
that England as we Americans view it also incorporates such countries
as Ireland, Scotland, Australia, and Canada.into their area of
influence). Plenty of information there from which to draw, without
even having to get into the religions of those countries whose citizens
didn't speak a lick of English back in the late 1700's.
Keeping in mind that, prior to the time that the Constitution was
drafted, the history available to our founders is the same history we
have (slightly better) access to; let's begin with the Romans. I begin
here, because the language of the Romans was Latin, which just happens
to be something that every well educated young man in the 1700's was
likely to have had to learn. It stands to reason that they would have
picked up some history of government as the Roman's saw it, and it does
seem that some of that seeped through into our own government.
As you probably know, the Roman Empire over a period of time took over a
hell of a lot of territory through conquest. Now, this happened over a
very long period of time, through the reign of several leaders and the
rule of several governing bodies. As a general rule, the Roman stance
on religion was fairly relaxed, with some glaring exceptions. The
popular beliefs of the time were mostly polytheistic, which allows for a
slightly more lenient system of belief. Christianity did rise during
the heyday of the Roman Empire, and was at different times embraced and
demonized. Usually, the motivation behind the prevailing attitude
towards religion was political. Either the religious beliefs of a group
were helping those in power, or they were undermining them. Part of
the reason that the Roman Empire was able to expand and hold as much
territory as it did while it was a going concern, was that Roman leaders
didn't put too many onerous restrictions on the peoples that they
conquered. It was easier for people to accept a change from being the
subjects of one group to being the subjects of the Romans if their daily
life didn't have to change much. Eventually Christianity (more
specifically early Catholicism) became more widespread, and the leaders
of the Roman Empire began to negotiate with the leaders of the church
that sprang up to organize followers of and convert people to
Christianity. The predecessor of the Roman Catholic Church grew in
power, and the Roman Empire died.
Moving on to the
history of the British Empire, or what we would consider to be England,
Scotland, Wales, and part of Ireland. We'll ignore the territories that
England has taken over outside of Europe, just for the sake of
simplicity.. These three countries were the ones from which our
founding fathers mainly traced their lineage anyways. The British
Empire actually sprang from the ashes of the Roman Empire, since it
wasn't until after the Roman's moved out that the native peoples of
these countries started to get their shit together and get organized.
It was the Romans who brought Christianity to the British Isles, and
different variations of it have flourished in this area of the world
ever since. The problem has been that the followers of these different
versions quite often question the validity of anyone else's version.
Eventually most of the countries that we are discussing settled on a
monarchy version of government, headed by a leader who was seen as
having the God given right to rule over it's people. Transition in this
type of government from one leader to the next is usually determined by
some rather fluid rules of hereditary succession. The sticky part in
this type of government comes from different interpretations of which
version of God really intended to rule, and over what territory he
intended them to rule. There have also been some big problems with the
practice of religion under this form of government, as many monarchs
have chosen to extend their God given right to rule to include their God
given right to make all of their subjects worship their God the way
they prefer to worship him.
Because the founders
of the Roman Catholic Church were also the ones who did the most to
spread the belief and practice of Christianity through the Roman Empire,
and thus through the territory that later became the British Empire,
many of the people in these countries followed the teachings of the
Catholic Church even after the Romans gave up the ghost. Much like now,
the Catholic Church of old was all up in everybody's business, laying
down some pretty strict rules for their followers. Since the British
Empire was right smack dab in the middle of the European continent, and
was surrounded by a whole lot of countries that were a lot closer to
them than Rome, some different versions of Christianity made their way
into this area as well. Plus you had people living there who had never
really bought into the Christianity thing to begin with.
The most important thing to remember about monarchs is that they are
people too. They have their servants put their pants on for them one
leg at a time just like the rest of us, and they learn their religious
beliefs from the leaders of the churches and the people around them just
like us too. Apparently that God given right to rule doesn't come with
a direct line to the Big Guy. Some of these monarchs were Catholic,
some were followers of other religions, and some of them were like David
Koresh with some batshit ideas of their own.
The
unfortunate thing is, the subjects (or plain old people) of these
monarchs were subject not only to the taxes and laws and wars that these
monarchs got all excited about, they were also sometimes subject to
following the rules these Anointed Ones prescribed for following and
supporting different religions. That really sucked sometimes because
with all the turmoil surrounding who had the God given right to rule how
much at any given time, those poor folks could never really be sure
what rules they were going to have to follow tomorrow, since whoever was
in charge today might be dead and replaced with someone who had
completely different ideas tomorrow. Sometimes, you even had to worry
about the monarch that you were used to pulling a complete 180 on you
halfway through their reign!
The most memorable
example of this in England's history is the complete fuckarow that
surrounded the reigns of Henry VIII and his two daughters. Good old
Hank was a Catholic when he gained the throne, and the Catholic Church
was pretty influential at the time. He started out being a very popular
king, and the story of his first marriage was a love story for the
ages. He married his older brother's widow, whom he had fallen in love
with at first sight. She was also Catholic, and a pretty observant one
too. Problem was that she was a bit older than him, and she only
managed to give birth to one daughter, which was bad wifely form when
you're talking about a queen whose job it is to pop out indisputable
heirs to the throne.
Hank the Horny Goat started
making goo goo eyes at a much younger woman named Anne Boleyn, who
wouldn't agree to fuck him unless he divorced his wife and made her
queen. Uh oh. The Catholic Church was even less in favor of divorce
back then than it is now. Unsurprisingly, Henry, upon being denied not
only the poontang that he wanted but also being told that no on the
divorce question by the Catholic Grand Poo Bah, threw a hissy fit and
decided that the ENTIRE COUNTRY of England wasn't going to be Catholic
anymore. He instead created his own church that was pretty much the
same as the Catholic Church, but that allowed him to dump his wife.
Just for good measure, he made himself the head of this church. Later
on, he decided that he didn't like his second queen much either (who,
BTW, had given him another girl) and he had her beheaded. Before he
died, he went through a total of six wives, (he killed number 5 too) and
left one legitmate son and two daughter that he had declared
illegitimate while acting in the capacity of the head of his new church.
Henry's oldest daughter ended up getting the crown anyways after her
younger brother died and fighting a little war with some family members
and their armies. When she got on the throne, one of the first things
she did was make England Catholic again, and started working with the
Catholic Church to clean out 274 people who hadn't been good Catholics
during the whole debacle that Henry created, and had openly acted
against Catholicism. She earned herself the moniker Bloody Mary, and
she was one crazy Pope lovin bitch.
Henry's
younger daughter succeeded her sister to the throne, and she brought
back the idea of England having it's own church with her at the head.
She didn't go around killing folks for being Catholic, but she pretty
much pissed in the cheerios of anyone who thought that the old ways of
having the Pope as the one with final authority over all things
religious was the way to go.
In the wake of this
clusterfuck, the next King of England is the one that you can thank for
the King James Bible. He thought that it would be a good idea to bring
everyone together by directing some people to get up one version of What
Religion is About in a handy little novel that incorporated several of
the texts that the conflicting religions were based on. Gee, thanks for
that, it's been SO helpful. Right off the bat people and their
spiritual leaders started fighting wars over whose interpretation of
that book was right. Now we have even more groups arguing over which
passages and interpretations of those passages are the most important
for people to follow. Finally, not too long after people started
fleeing from England and landing over here, a new king decided that
perhaps the best idea was for the government of England to dictate a
live and let live approach. They kept their own little church, but not
everyone had to join the damn thing. People could set up their own
churches, as long as they recognized and swore fealty to England
regardless of their religious beliefs.
Well, by
the time that founding fathers sat down to consider just how the brand
new American citizens should be handling their shit from that day
forward, the pattern of religious "leaders" working their flock into a
frenzy to go out and teach the followers of other religions just how
"wrong" they were was pretty well established. Those of our founding
fathers who devoted much time to study and personal enlightenment seem
to have figured out that whenever you mix religion with power you end up
with some bad shit going down for somebody. So those dudes made it a
point to specify that those running the show (the gubbermint) weren't
going to be allowed to make everyone switch religions every time that a
new person got elected to run the show. They also made it a big no no
for the folks that got elected to make the laws that people had to
follow to make it against the law to believe or practice any religion.
In addition to Da Rules, the Constitution sets up a form of government
that is supposed to get all the people's needs and wants represented by
the people that they elect, and tries to balance things out so that no
one person or small group of people can run roughshod over everybody
else.
Being human, we have of course managed to
fuck things up pretty damn bad since the time in which the Constitution
was written. For one thing, we've bred like freaking rabbits and
ballooned our population to numbers that would have been staggering when
considered by the founding fathers. Keeping in mind that in 1776,
people still had to worry about getting eaten by wild animals and dying
of a cold. No way they would have believed that this country they were
founding was actually going to take off like gangbusters and grow to
include among it's citizens so many different people who can live so
fucking long! The idea that the same arguments could go on for
generations because people just kept living and living and spouting
nonsense to more and more people who believed it, well, I doubt that was
envisioned.
As far as the right to religious
freedom goes, those men who lead groups of religious minded individuals
have worked very hard to establish that as a right held by those who
lead a church to try and influence as many people as they can to follow
the rules of their faith, by whatever means necessary. They are wrong,
they've always been wrong, and they will always be wrong in this
assertion. The right of religious freedom is a right guaranteed to the
citizens of this country as individuals, and applies to each individual
equally regardless of how big group of fellow believers they belong to.
Every person is free to believe what they want about the origins of the
universe and the way that people are supposed to behave, and every
person is equally free to ignore the religious beliefs of others that
conflict with their own.
Read the Constitution,
the first ten amendments. That Bill of Rights is all about the rights
that we as individuals can expect to enjoy under the system of
government that our founding fathers got together to create. Just like
now, individuals are people. As in one person, by themselves, not made a
whole group of them that magically morph into more of a person than
someone else. Unless you somehow can make yourself believe the delusion
that Bain Capital or the IBEW or The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is a
living breathing individual rather than an institution created by and
made up of living, breathing individuals, then you cannot reasonably
assert that The Catholic Church is an individual either.
Even if you feel that the beliefs you hold that you have learned from
your religion, your study of history or science, or from reading romance
novels and watching Disney films is the absolute truth as everyone
should see it, the only person that those beliefs matters are you and
whichever individuals happen to agree with you. Unless you fancy the
idea of having to live under the laws that are thought up by someone
else based on their view of things as they have come to see them after
watching every Freddy Kruger movie ever made 700 times, you should not
be advocating for a system of government that makes it's laws based on
your personal views.
The citizens of the United
States, and our guests, are afforded the protections set forth in the
Bill of Rights to be individuals who are different from each other. It
is not the purpose of our government to legislate everyone into being
and believing the same things about everything under the sun. When a
law is necessary to protect the rights of one individual from the
actions of another, then that law should be enacted and enforced. When a
law is necessary to protect the rights of an individual from the
actions of a group of people, then that law should be enacted and
enforced. When an individual or group wishes to impose their beliefs
upon another group or individual in order to make them act in accordance
to beliefs that they do not hold and which would require them to make a
change in themselves that has no effect on another individual, then
that law is bullshit and should never be enacted or enforced.
I can agree with those who say that our government has become too
intrusive in our daily lives, up to a point. It was never supposed to
be the role of our government to oversee every thought held and action
taken by the citizens in our daily lives. This was never envisioned by
our founding fathers as the role of either the Federal or any State
government. In our supposedly free society, it was intended to let
people make the decisions that affect their own lives day to day, and
for government to maintain those parts of our society which we all
share, doing so in a manner that didn't let any ruling class of people
call the shots for everyone. The framers of our Constitution were
definitely not perfect, but they had the right idea, which is that
people had the right to decide for themselves that which should be
rendered unto Caesar and that which should be rendered unto God. That
is a right that is protected by our Constitution, and will always remain
the right of each individual to decide for themselves if we are to
carry on as a society that lives freely under the government that was
formed by the body of the Constitution.
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