Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous, Part 4: You Haven’t a Prayer!

Here in the fourth entry of my Supreme Court series, after making several seemingly minor points, we begin to come to the major point of it all.

I must confess that I struggle with this kind of thing on a day to day basis. It is a very difficult endeavor to undertake in explaining to someone who is obsessed with the battle of day to day political current events, that something which happened in 1868, more than a hundred fifty years ago, is the reason for his political struggles today. The answer to this lies in basic human nature. We tend to look at something. We evaluate it in that moment and set it up as a fixed idea, or premise.

Once adopted this fixed idea is not looked at again but we still evaluate current events from it. It doesn’t matter if the fixed idea is right or wrong. What matters is that we’ve ceased to question it. More than that what matters is that we pass it along to the next generation who adopts it and passes it to the next. A firmly entrenched fixed idea is a very difficult thing to overcome, as anybody who has ever had a conversation with someone on the other side of the political isle could attest. Only when someone looks at the original premise and understands why it is right or wrong, moving forward through every conclusion made as a result of it, is a person able to overcome this fixed idea.

So to this end the timeline is as follows:

1) Texas v. White (1868). The Supreme Court, faced with the possibility of the destruction of the entire country, not to mention the possibility of their own safety being compromised and the conflicts of interest, made a ruling based not on the text of the Constitution, but based on two words of the document—The Articles of Confederation—which preceded it. The ruling itself is a different subject. What’s important to this timeline is the understanding that they went outside of the Constitution to justify a ruling that the Constitution didn’t support, and then called it constitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes this, even if it is The Articles of Confederation. It establishes a precedent, a fixed idea, that the Supreme Court can take quotes of people outside the Constitution and use it to justify their rulings.

2) Reynolds v. United States (1878). The Supreme Court continued the practice above in invoking a personal letter from Thomas Jefferson in their ruling, rather than sticking to citing the First Amendment, as is their duty. While they did not go as far as to use it in favor of their decision this is where they first brought it up. This is where the “wall of separation between church and state” first became precedent. Now, for or against, it is part of a Supreme Court decision. More than that though in ruling against Reynolds, they tossed aside entirely the idea of the Constitution and what it actually says and made their ruling based on the opinions of popular society with which they happened to agree. They just made up their ruling based entirely on what they thought the law should be. And we, as a country and people, have followed along right behind them ever since. According to the Tenth Amendment Congress had no authority to make the law that was being challenged.

3) Everson v. Board of Education (1947). Again the Supreme Court goes outside of the Constitution to invoke Jefferson’s quote regarding the “wall of separation between church and state.” Again they didn’t use it to support their ruling but they did mention it as if it were a legal precedent of some kind. And again they violated the Tenth Amendment by interfering with a matter at the State level which has nothing to do with their power as expressed by the Constitution.

I can just hear my readers out there saying, “Jesus Brett! Come to the freaking point would you!?”

Your wish is my command!

Why can’t you prey in schools? Is it because a bunch of intolerant leftists are attacking your religion? Is it because those intolerant jerks got the Supreme Court to rule against your point of view? Is it because the wrongly elected president nominated a bunch of communists to undermine your religion so that they could overthrow the country and turn it into some kind of atheist socialist utopia? Is it because in 1868 the Supreme Court created a ruling that allowed them to establish a precedent to go outside of the Constitution to create out of thin air whatever ruling they want?

The answer is, in order, no, no, no and no. Let me tell you this, my constitutional friends, that this has almost everything to do with you—as the American People—and very little to do with anybody that you might call “them.”

It is because in 1868 the Supreme Court created a ruling that allowed them to establish a precedent to go outside of the Constitution to create out of thin air whatever ruling they wanted, on that premise they adopted the “wall of separation” as precedent, on that they did it again and on that the American People agreed that they have the authority to do so even when they used it to rule against them.

They accepted the Texas ruling, whether you like it or not, because they believed the Court had the authority to make such decisions and they didn’t want the country to fall apart again. They accepted the Reynolds ruling, whether you like it or not, because they believed the Court had the authority to make such decisions and they didn’t like bigamy. They accepted the Everson ruling, whether you like it or not, because they believed the Court had the authority to make such decisions and they didn’t want the federal government to step on the funding for their busing systems in their own States.

Now what choice do they have in accepting the Court’s past rulings, in their apparent favor, in those kinds of issues, do they have when Engel v. Vitale (1962) comes along and the Supreme Court says that because of Everson, Reynolds and White they decide that it is no longer legal for you to pray in school?

Then, because We the People have previously accepted the rulings of White, Reynolds, Everson and Engel, what choice do we have but to accept the ruling regarding Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) when they decided against Bibles in school?

But in the Abington v. Shempp (really, wasn’t he one of the Three Stooges?) it gets worse than all of that. They did not refer to Thomas Jefferson’s wall of separation as a basis for the ruling. They instead referred to a book by some unheard of chuckle-head’s—Conrad Henry Moehlman—opinion of Thomas Jefferson opinion of the wall of separation which in itself was an opinion of the First Amendment….

(…Wait a moment here… …Let me get this straight in my head… …First Amendment… …Jefferson’s opinion of First Amendment… …Moehlman’s opinion of Jefferson’s opinion of the First Amendment… …That’s right.)

So in 1963 the Supreme Court’s ruling was not based on the actual text of the Constitution. It was based on the opinion of some idiot who had an opinion of a Founding Father, out of context, who was not in the country when the Constitution or First Amendment was debated, written or ratified.

And that’s what the American People accepted as law. Well…because the Supreme Court said so. And they did so in such voluminous, authoritarian and eloquent (LOL!) tomes that it must be true! Everybody knows…!

Sigh.

Now we come up to present time. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District is an interesting case. Of course it is, again, a lot more words than really anybody but the most lifeless, soulless, boring, dry, dull, tedious, uninteresting, monotonous, dreary… wait… what was I saying? Oh yeah! Too many pages, too many words, almost all gibberish, extremely soporific. Right. The worst of it is the dissenting opinion which astonishingly enough invokes the ruling of Abington and Engle, which invokes the ruling of Reynolds and a bajillion other rulings that the Court should have never been allowed to make.

On the more eloquent, pithy and constitutionally accurate side of life is the holding of the Court.

“Held: The Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal; the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.”

So, in fifty words or less, this high school coach, named Kennedy, prayed on school grounds. He didn’t force others to pray with him. The school didn’t like it and told him to stop. He refused to stop. They fired him. He sued.

The First Amendment does not say “nobody in government, anywhere, at anytime, for any reason, shall ever be allowed to pray.” It does not say that there is a wall of separation between church and state. It says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”

Is Coach Kennedy praying at a high school football game the same thing as Congress making a law establishing a religion? Nope. Then neither the Supreme Court nor anybody in the federal government has any say in it whatsoever. Is Coach Kennedy praying at a high school football game the same thing as Congress making a law that prohibits the free exercise of religion? Nope. Then neither the Supreme Court nor anybody in the federal government has any say in it whatsoever. Done.

I really like the second half of that ruling though. “…the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.”

It says that as the federal government whether someone prays or not, or where and when they pray or not, is none of their damn business.

And on that point I whole-heartedly agree.

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part One

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Two

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Three

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Four

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Five