Appendix II

A School Prayer Amendment, or a Religious Freedom Amendment?

Beginning in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court began its doctrine of excising religion from public life in America.  A prohibition against the United States Congress making certain kinds of laws became an amendment prohibiting anyone in "government" from "participating in religion".  In the wake of the Court's mission to secularize America, various constitutional amendments have been proposed to restore some small fragment of those rights of Americans that have been slowly stripped away.  These include passage of a "school prayer amendment" and an amendment insuring the words "under God" remain in the Pledge of Allegiance.

While these proposals are admirable, they are seriously flawed.  The seek to take back, one crumb at a time, the bread of liberty that has been stolen from the table of the American citizen.  For example, an amendment insuring the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance would not restore our right to have the Ten Commandments displayed in public schools (Stone v Graham, 449 U.S. 39, (1980)), nor our right for students to voluntarily participate in prayer in public schools (Engel V. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962); Abington v. Schempp 374 U.S. 203 (1963) et al.); nor the to receive religious instruction within the school where their parents pay taxes; nor the right for school vouchers to offer an alternative to public education, nor the right for communities to display nativity scenes on the front lawns of city halls; nor the right for cities to display crosses erected in memorial of fallen war heroes; nor the right of communities to display crosses from atop city halls, many of which have been there for over a hundred years; nor, as discussed throughout this paper, the right to insist on a balanced treatment of creation science and evolutionary science within classrooms, (Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987)), nor any other number of rights of the American people that have been subverted by the liberal courts.

The Court, at the behest of Ku Klux Klansman Hugo Black has discarded the subject, verb and direct object of the constitution and replaced it with a pithy aphorism drawn from a contextually vacuous quote of a man living in France while the First Amendment was written, and who was paraphrasing a Baptist Minister who was quoting Jesus.  Justice demands nothing less than a return to the text of the First Amendment.

A specialized amendment such as one to restore school prayer not only fails to redress the dozens if not hundreds of other crimes against the American people, it legitimizes the damage done to the First Amendment at the hands of the Courts since the time of Everson v. Board of Education, (1947).  To pass a school prayer amendment is equivalent to having one's car stolen and offering to purchase the steering wheel and the left tail light from the thief at a public auction.  It not only fails to restore the thousands of other automobile parts to the rightful owner, the very act of bidding legitimizes the theft . . . as if the automobile were genuinely the thief's to sell.  It is repugnant to any patriot to have the bread of liberties stolen from them, and have to seek those unalienable rights crumb by crumb as the governments cedes its usurped power back to the groveling masses  Eventually, another amendment will be required to allow the teaching of creationism in public schools (acknowledging the Creator upon whom our unalienable rights rest).  Yet another amendment will be needed to allow a community of Hasidic Jews in New York to teach Orthodox Judaism, or a homogeneous community of Mormons in Utah to teach Mormonism from within the halls of the public schools that they finance through their hard earned tax dollars.  Yet another amendment will be needed to permit communities to restore architectural landmarks dating back 100 years or more such as restoring the Christian crosses atop their city halls which have been removed by court order.  Ultimately, there is no end to the number of constitutional amendments needed to restore freedoms once enjoyed by the several States and the citizens therein.  For at least these reasons, such a "crumb by crumb" restoration of our religious freedoms is fatally flawed.

Another obvious problem with seeking to pass a specific amendment such as a school prayer amendment is that it invites the backlash of the liberal media.  A school prayer amendment would be portrayed by the left wing media as a change being made to the first amendment and the historic American culture rather than a restoration of them.  With each subsequent amendment, the liberals would decry yet another move by the "Christian right" to remake America in its own image, and a chanting of Klansman Black's mantra of "separation of church and state."

All of these problems (and then some) would be circumvented by an Amendment similar to the proposed Religious Freedom Amendment:

The First Amendment is specifically and exclusively a prohibition against certain legislative activities of the United States Congress.  No state or federal judge shall construe the term "Congress" within the First Amendment as a reference to any private citizen, any member of the executive or judicial branches of Federal, state, or local government, or any organ of the executive and judicial branches of government.  Neither shall any judge facilitate a ruling according to the First Amendment by substituting terms foreign to the First Amendment.

Congress shall, by a minimum of two-thirds vote by the House and two-thirds vote by the Senate, have the power to regulate government activities to prevent or address government coercion or unfairness in matters of religion.  The several states shall not be prohibited from enacting legislation regulating government coercion in matters of religion, subject to Article 6 of this Constitution.

The advantages of such an Amendment are manifold:

1. The first advantage is that Americans would not have to regain their rights one amendment at a time.  A century of infidelity by the courts is wiped away in a single paragraph covers every aspect of free religious expression, rather than trying to gain back these freedoms one crumb at a time through a series of constitutional amendments.

2.   As the United States continues to balkanize as a result of mindless immigration policies, congressional action may be required to eliminate coercive use of government institutions and resources.  However, the two-thirds threshold in both the House and Senate prevents the passage of unnecessary bills political grandstanding.

4.   The proposed Amendment virtually removes any possibility of the media stonewalling its passage by contending that it violates the vaunted "separation of church and state."  Instead of constitutionalists being placed on the defensive for trying to "tamper" with the constitution, the liberals would be placed on the defensive for having perniciously distorted and replaced the original wording of the first amendment in the first place!  This removes the biggest media and political hurdle which would surely impede the passage of specific amendments directed at school prayer, creation science, the Pledge or Allegiance, or any other specific matter.

5.   The religious freedom amendment does not acquiesce to the lies of the revisionists.  It does not seek to "fix" any imagined weakness in the first amendment.  Rather, it holds forth a generation of incompetent jurists in naked shame before a watching world, showing them to be the frauds and charlatans which they truly are.  The prospect of being held up in public as an object of derisive scorn and ridicule should serve as a powerful corrective to those who might otherwise be similarly inclined in the future to perpetuate the dishonest subversion the constitution in other areas.  This would reap rich dividends beyond the restoration of our religious freedoms as freemen.  It could well lay the groundwork for the complete restoration of our constitution.

6.   An alternative version of the Religious Freedom Amendment could be written wherein the scope is limited in scope to the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause.  This would leave intact the body of law governing "the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

7.   An alternative version of the Religious Freedom Amendment could be written to incorporate the court's position in Cantwell, wherein the limitations of the First Amendment were applied to the state.

Appendix: The Religious Freedom Amendment