Here's a new opinion piece from the former newspaper known as the Grey Lady:
You already know where this is going.
Do all religiously observant people naturally believe that religion merits more protections than other values? There's scant evidence for that; in any event, that has not been our law, at least not until recently.
Yes, those are actual words written by Linda Greenhouse, former SCOTUS reporter for The Times.
If you read her entire article, it becomes very clear that she believes that everyone should adhere to her beliefs, her worldview, and her definition of constitutional law. Anything outside of this zealous call to conformity with her religious presuppositions is a "crusade."
Even aside from [Alito's] swipe at his fellow justices who haven't signed up for his crusade, to call this kind of talk simplistic is far too generous.
In this article, Linda is writing about Alito's recent speech in Rome where he talked about the importance of religious liberty. We covered it here if you want to hear him speak about his critics.
But Linda, as a good 20th-century philosophical humanist (she is president of the American Philosophical Society), sees her beliefs as more enlightened as the common masses that have been deluded by religion.
She's written a book called Justice on the Brink that details how our Supreme Court has become extreme – not because of liberal justices who imposed their will on the Constitution, but because of originalists who put the Constitution within its proper exegetical context and interpret it according to the will and principles of the founders who wrote it and the democratic laws passed over the last two centuries that represent the will of the people who came after.
Justices and legal scholars alike have struggled for decades to identify the right balance for religion within a pluralistic society, an effort Justice Alito reduced to a cartoonish either/or.
Newsflash: Only the secular humanists think a pluralistic society is defined as a society where all religions bow to the whims of secular humanism.
Mankind is religious by nature. You can believe there is no God; you cannot be areligious. You have a set of beliefs and purpose that defines your identity and how you order and live your life.
After all, it takes real faith – the kind of faith only the most devout religious disciples have – to believe that men and women are merely animals and that our laughter, love, and desire to order and cultivate the universe is merely an atomic phenomenon driven by completely random forces that came about by chance.
But Linda, in all her wisdom, is completely objective in all her assessments of religion and the law!
In speeches as well as opinions, Justice Alito has warned of growing hostility to religion, and he did the same in Rome, denouncing what he called hostility to "at least the traditional religious beliefs that are contrary to the new moral code that is ascendant in some sectors." This was the Alito of his opinion dissenting from the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. He predicted then that "those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such."
So... she's arguing that Alito is crazy and extreme because he thought back in 2012 that people who disagree with the LGBT agenda would be vilified and their rights would be trampled on by neighbors, employers, and the government?
You got him, lady!
In Rome, more clearly than in the past, Justice Alito provided his own definition of religious liberty, an expansive definition that mirrored the court's holding in this summer's praying coach case. In that case, the school district in Bremerton, Wash., had offered the coach an alternate place where he could pray after the games. But the coach insisted that he felt religiously compelled to pray in public in full view of the spectator stands. The court, which in the past was notably stingy when it came to the free speech rights of public employees, endorsed this expression of militant Christianity.
She thinks that praying on a football field is "militant Christianity"!
LOL!
Linda, I know you grew up Jewish, but have you ACTUALLY read the Bible?
From the Old Testament:
"It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall come, and say:
'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.'" – Micah 4:1-2
Over and over, the God of the Bible names Himself as "Lord" and "King" and describes his absolute sovereignty over civilizations and political events.
Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire.
'Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!'"
God says He will be exalted??
Someone tell Linda to write an article about this militancy!
The entire Old Testament is the story of how God raised up a tiny nation through which to fulfill His promises and show His love to the entire world, shattering multiple empires and all their laws if they stood in His way. The Jewish people's survival after thousands of years of brutal oppression is a testimony that their God is real.
Then there's the New Testament, where Jesus – who said that he and God are one, and claimed to be the fulfillment of God's plan to save the nations – told his followers to disciple the nations.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
THERE'S some militant Christianity for ya, Linda!!
Jesus told his followers that He has ALL authority on heaven and earth, meaning His followers must refuse any government or NYT op-ed writer who disagrees with Him. He then tells them to go and tell people that His is the way, the truth, and the life, and that they must be baptized in His name and follow His commands.
Such a thing might lead to a nation founded on Christians values by the people for the people, with a set of biblically-based laws that enshrine people's God-given rights as image-bearers of God.
And don't even get me started on Jesus' teachings about hell!
In his Rome speech, Justice Alito did not refer explicitly to that case, but his definition of religious liberty underscored and explained the court's remarkable departure. Religious liberty must mean more than simply "freedom of worship," he said. "Freedom of worship means freedom to do these things that you like to do in the privacy of your home, or in your church or your synagogue or your mosque or your temple. But when you step outside into the public square, in the light of day, you had better behave yourself like a good secular citizen." And he added, "That's the problem that we face."
If that is a problem, it's one that Justice Alito has solved for himself. His religion does not reside in the quiet recesses of his home or chambers. His is religion on the march. And that's the problem the rest of us face now.
This woman would have the rest of us quietly pray in our homes without any visibility of our faith in public.
Sorry, lady, but that's not what any religion teaches.
It might be what the commies and the humanists (often one in the same) teach, but it isn't how any history past, present, or future is going to play out.
Every nation will be led by a set of laws based entirely on a bedrock of religious principles. It may be Islamic, it may be communist, or it may be Hindu, but it isn't going to be objectively neutral.
The question remains, which system of laws based upon religious teachings has led to the most freedom and the most prosperity? We have thousands of years of data to answer this question.
If you're anyone except a woke American, the answer is obvious. It's the reason so many people risk death to get to America's shores.
And what set of principles is America built on?
I'll let a few militant Christians help Linda out:
- "The propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained" - President George Washington
- "The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which the Constitution is founded" – President James Madison
- "We recognize no Sovereign but God and no King but Jesus." – President John Adams
- "Before any man can be considered as a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe. And to the same Divine Author of every good and perfect gift we are indebted for all those privileges and advantages, religious as well as civil, which are so richly enjoyed in this favored land." – President James Monroe
- "Finally, it is my most fervent prayer to that Almighty Being before whom I now stand, and who has kept us in His hands from the infancy of our Republic unto the present day, that He will so overrule all my intentions and actions and inspire the hearts of my fellow-citizens that we may be preserved from dangers of all kinds and continue forever a united and happy people." – President Andrew Jackson
- "Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness." – President Abraham Lincoln
- "Hold fast to the bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts and practice them in your lives." – President Ulysses S. Grant
- "All must admit that the reception of the teachings of Christ results in the purest patriotism, in the most scrupulous fidelity to public trust, and in the best type of citizenship." – President Grover Cleveland
- "America was born a Christian nation" – President Woodrow Wilson
- "The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country." – President Calvin Coolidge
- "This is a Christian nation." – President Harry Truman
And one more long quote for ya:
"These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: '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.' This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows.
They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.
Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began -- so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built."
– President Abraham Lincoln
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