Better yet, specifically why do you believe those things. I am not a social darwin kind of guy (illiterate in that area) nor have I ever viewed the Constitution from a religious point of view.Originally Posted by Classact
The Ghin Tzu Master
Better yet, specifically why do you believe those things. I am not a social darwin kind of guy (illiterate in that area) nor have I ever viewed the Constitution from a religious point of view.
I'm Phil -- 40 something heterosexual white male, fairly self sufficient, great with my kids, wed 29 years to the same woman, and I firmly believe that ones actions have logical consequences. How much more out the box can you get nowadays? -- MSgt of Marines (ret)
Senior Member
Why did the Articles of Confederation fail? Why didn't they have a Constitution from the git go? The Constitution failed too... it couldn't be ratified.
The term Social Darwinists is defined as the pecking order... Darwin was not born yet, but the definition does relate. If you read the constitution it is written in a way that reflects the value of persons based on their wealth and power, a person's value is in their accomplishments of wealth and power. For an example the constitution is set up like free market capitalism... the best of the best stay in business... those with poor management fall to the wayside. Here I'm speaking of the constitution without the amendments.
Examples of the above are the construction of the Senate, who selects them... The election of the President, who selects them... In the original constitution only rich, powerful property owners could select Senators and the President... The vote of "the less than rich and powerful" was subordinated to the judgement of the Electoral College (rich, powerful folks from each state)...The Senate was appointed by the State Legislators... The Electoral College was likewise appointed. The House of Representatives that reflects "the people" is elected by the people... but if you look at the above powers given the Senate and President you must admit that the rich and powerful were to be selected by and amongst the rich and powerful. Look at the powers of the President... he can dismiss Congress or he can call them in at 6:00AM every day if he so desires under the established constitution... Would you not agree that is Social Darwinist? About the House of Representatives... Who could vote at the time? In the North "Property Owners", down to small shops could vote... in the deep South only plantation owners ports authority voted in federal elections.
So how is the Bill of Rights based on religious values? Can we agree that John Locke was the father of the Bill of Rights? He was a religious philosopher who visited the colonies and made friends with the NC Governor... the governor was impressed with his philosophy and created a State Bill of Rights... VA and other states did likewise... Does this guy qualify as religious?
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/#HumNatGodPurAccording to Locke, God created man and we are, in effect, God's property. The chief end set us by our creator as a species and as individuals is survival. A wise and omnipotent God, having made people and sent them into this world:
…by his order and about his business, they are his property whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our's.
It follows immediately that ”he has no liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, yet when some nobler use than its bare possession calls for it.“ (II. ii. 5) So, murder and suicide violate the divine purpose.
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
---Thomas Jefferson (or as Al Sharpton calls him: Grandpappy)
Transplanted Yankee
Henry Ford was a religious man. That doesn't mean his cars were a product of religious values.
The first amendment is contrary to Judeo-Christian values as it violates the first commandment.
Senior Member
My point was the constitution alone only supports government power while the Bill of Rights recognize and secure the rights of the people. The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights have the same origin and that is Locke... Well Madison imported them from VA but the origin was Locke... So the Bill of Rights do in fact support the religious values of the people because the people were and are religious. The keys were the citizens rights to common law and trial by jury... in other words the law reflected the religious morals of the people and were judged by the people.
In what way?The first amendment is contrary to Judeo-Christian values as it violates the first commandment.
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
---Thomas Jefferson (or as Al Sharpton calls him: Grandpappy)
Transplanted Yankee
"Freedom of religion", AKA "worship whichever god you choose" violates "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods but me".
Yes that is a .50
The Articles Failed because the states were still to divided to defend America.
"We needed to join or die. ( Ben Franklin). "
I know that quote was earlier than 1787 but it was still true for us.
It was natural evolution . brought on by necessity.
Your post is a great question . But where will we go with this?
Are you trying to assess our religious commitment as a country today?
Form a religious standard to approach future policy direction?
Question how much religious infulence is nessary?
Debate is fine , and fun. I just wondered if you are looking toward a
resolution to some loose ends found in the Constution. or Bill of Rights.
For Freedom's battle once begun ,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though battled oft' Is never won.
Corporal. 15th Combat engineers 77-80
Banned
The Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence were all based on the ideas of freedom, justice and above all the equality of mankind. Seems some folk failed in the interpretations through the years and they are still failing, miserably.
Senior Member
My idea was to debate the idea that the founders were just a bunch of rich guys looking to get richer and they wrote a constitution that the people rejected... the people refused to ratify it. Later the people, the religious people, ratified it after removing much of the power from the federal government while protecting the power of the people from the government. The very fact that 99.9% of the population were Christians including the rich fat white powerful folks running things would indicate this is a Christian nation and the Constitution, as amended by the Bill of Rights reflects the religious values of "the people". How does it do it without saying cause God says so... it does it by the amendments associated with common law and judge by jury... Christians will make the moral laws they like and they will be the determining judge of fact and not a rich fat white powerful government official. I would like everyone to consider that there is a possibility that the founders did not have the people's best interest at heart at that time.The Articles Failed because the states were still to divided to defend America.
"We needed to join or die. ( Ben Franklin). "
I know that quote was earlier than 1787 but it was still true for us.
It was natural evolution . brought on by necessity.
Your post is a great question . But where will we go with this?
Are you trying to assess our religious commitment as a country today?
Form a religious standard to approach future policy direction?
Question how much religious infulence is nessary?
Debate is fine , and fun. I just wondered if you are looking toward a
resolution to some loose ends found in the Constution. or Bill of Rights.
Look at the historian Charles Beard. and look at rebellions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion and now look at this guys prospective... http://americareads.blogspot.com/200...rigins-of.html
Is everyone aware that the first printing of the American bible was authorized and printed by the first Congress of the US? It is a matter of Law. The American version of the King James Bible... Government Printing Office...
Last edited by Classact; 11-26-2007 at 11:03 AM.
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
---Thomas Jefferson (or as Al Sharpton calls him: Grandpappy)
Senior Member
The First Amendment means "worship whichever denomination of the Protestant religion you choose but the government will, unlike Europe choose a winner to associate with".
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
---Thomas Jefferson (or as Al Sharpton calls him: Grandpappy)
Gunny's nightmare
AKA "worship at any church you choose, any religion that you choose, or none at all", AKA: "exercise your free will".
Last edited by glockmail; 11-26-2007 at 09:01 AM.
Senior Member
Nonsense. The Constitution is a product of compromise, experience, and a well-founded fear of the power of central government. It was written for the purpose of (a) creating a new form of government, and (b) limiting the powers of that government - things that had never been tried before. It was successful beyond any of the Framer's wildest expectations, until we started flagrantly disobeying it around the turn of the (20th) century.
It gave the Fed govt only certain, limited powers (those specifically named in it), and by doing so, implicitly forbade all other powers to the Fed govt. Some of the powers not mentioned, and thus forbidden, were the power to regulate speech, religion, weapons, etc. A lot of people thought that would be too easy to violate (history has since proven them right), and so demanded that some of the most important rights be also specifically mentioned and the govt banned from interfering with them. So the Bill of Rights came into being shortly after the Constitution was ratified.
The Constitution alone does NOT "only" support govt power. It gives the Fed gov certain powers, true, buth then it LIMITS the Fed to only those powers, leaving the rest to the states and lower govts to exercise as they chose. Except for those few powers specifically given to the Fed, of course. And it calls for a deliberately complex, cumbersome amendment process, assigning veto power to even a small minority of states, that must be fulfilled if any more power is to be legally taken from the states and given to the Fed govt.
That limitation was what made the Constitution the great, enduring document it is. The recent violation of that limitation by our current "progressive" liberals (in both parties) is what makes them the country-destroyers they are.
BTW, the Bill of Rights does not "secure the rights of the people". It only secures some of them - those the Framers considered the most important. It contains a statement pointing this out (9th amendment), saying that the rights it mentions, aren't necessarily the only right the people have.
Most of those declarations of rights, were unnecessary and superfluous, since the onstitution gave the Fed govt no powers to interfere with them in the first place. But many people at that time, knew that slick lawyers and power-grabbers would ignore the Const's implicit limitation, all too well. And so they tried to "cast in stone" the most important rights, to make them harder to unconstitutionally violate. How right they were to do so. Our "progressives" now have to flagrantly ignore written Constitutional mandates to violate those rights - something they do anyway, with increasing frequency in the last 70+ years.
Last edited by Little-Acorn; 11-26-2007 at 10:19 AM.
Senior Member
The point of my post, BTW, was to point out that the Framers had NO particular religious or judicial point of view in mind when they wrote the Const and the BOR. Thinking that they did, can lead you down the wrong path to understanding why the Const says what it does.
The Const was written as it was, mostly because the Framers thought that (a) it would work that way, (b) it would keep central govt out of people's hair enough to provide a maximum of freedom and individual responsibility, and (c) they could get enough states to ratify it that way. Hence some of the compromises (slave is 3/5 of a full citizen for enumeration purposes in the House, etc.). Some states demanded a BOR as a condition of their ratification, and so that was soon provided, superfluous though it mostly was.
The Framers by and large agreed with what we call Judeo-Christian values (though many of those values are simply good ideas whether Jews, Christians, or whomever agreed with them or not). And some of that did rub off into the Constitution as the Framers tried to provide for freedom. But they were doing it less because the values were Judeo-Christian, than because they felt it would provide for maximum freedom while still giving a govt strong enough to do what it needed to do.
Senior Member
You make some very good points. On the boldened area above I would point out that the Constitution wasn't ratified until after the Bill of Rights were added. There was a war going on between the Federalists and the Anti Federalists which is a good part of the theme of this thread... check out this link: http://www.constitution.org/afp/afp.htm
Also when the Federal Government was established it was to the states like the European Union is to the European States and it was never considered to have much power. The US Federal Government got it's power through the Buck Act, a trick to bypass the states to deal direct with state citizens... the Social Security Card is a state citizens contract with the federal government according to that act that makes the citizen federal property. Check out this link http://www.svpvril.com/OACL.html the entire link is a two week read but the Buck Act is at the bottom of the page (about an inch and a quarter on your scroll) from the bottom.
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
---Thomas Jefferson (or as Al Sharpton calls him: Grandpappy)
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