On Repealing the Ban on Athiests Holding Public Office
The "Dear Leader", North Korea's Kim Jong Il, the chubby 2nd generation communist-atheist dictator who keeps his subjects in a state of starvation while their cousins to the south enjoy one of the highest living standards in the eastern world.
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Pol Pot, ruthless atheist-communist dictator who butchered one-third of the population of the nation he ruled, Cambodia.
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Joseph Stalin, the atheist-communist dictator of the Soviet Union, who was responsible for the deaths of millions of citizens and popularized the term "Gulag". Just to show you where their loyalties lie, TIME magazine named Stalin their "Man of the Year" TWICE!
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Ruthless Atheist-Communist Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in an idealized portrait. To see what he looked like once his grateful subjects were able to get a hold of him, click here.************************************
Atheist Dictator Fidel Castro in 1977. He he provided over 50 years of misrule, oppression and impoverishment of the Cuban people. I mean, if you have a 1956 Chevy there then you are doing really well. He did such a fine job that about anyone who can tries to float through 90 miles of shark infested waters on an inner tube to get the U.S. On the other hand, countless beard lice have depended on him for a home over the decades.
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Professing atheists don't often get to rule a country since the rise of Christianity, but when they do, they invariably make a mess of it. The plain historical fact is that it is a terrible idea to let atheists rule a country. This issue is coming to the forefront in Arkansas because our state Constitution still bans atheists from holding public office or testifying in court.
CONTINUED: Click THURSDAY below and scroll down for the analysis.
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Thursday, February 19, 2009
4 Comments:
Atheists don't recognize who God is, and therefore don't understand who man is, and therefore don't rule in human government from the correct premises. Their policies are built on erroneous foundations.
So I don't want any atheists holding public office. But that is not to say that a constitutional prohibition is the proper way to prevent it from happening.
Nothing can replace virtue in the population. Give me a country with a virtuous population with no constitution over an immoral population with a perfect constitution. Atheists should not make it to public office because an enlightened and virtuous citizenry knows that they are unfit for it, not because of a constitutional ban.
That is what I believe in principle, but the proposed amendment to lift this ban is a particular, proposed in a particular time and place. Our country once was out of balance in that people wanted to constitutionally enshrine their religious preferences, rather than have them come from the heart of the people. We have now swung out of balance the other way. That is, there is tremendous pressure on people to forgo their right to select and prefer those who believe in God as their rulers.
Some have argued that our state ban on atheists holding public office violates the U.S. Constitution. That's a pant load.
The very fact that our 1874 constitution has the ban in it is evidence that the establishment clause of the 1st amendment was meant to apply to the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. States were considered still free to establish by doing such things as banning atheists from public office.
The Establishment clause was meant to restrict FEDERAL, not state government. That is why it starts out saying "CONGRESS shall make no law...". States could and did have bans on atheists holding office both before and after the constitution was written and indeed before and after the 14th amendment was ratified.
Now many states have enacted clauses similar to the establishment clause in their state constitutions, so the citizens of those states still have protection from a state church being established, but the very fact that state constitutions contain such provisions shows that the original intent of the 1st was ONLY a restriction on what the FEDERAL government could do- if it were otherwise there would be no need to enact similar language in the state constitutions.
We have gone a long march down the road to constitutional ignorance since that time. Supreme court "Justices" who were radical secularists twisted the original intent of the 1st and 14th amendments until they could enforce them in the exact OPPOSITE way that our Founders intended. The Fed threw its weight around making sure local officials displayed no fealty to God.
In the famous Ten Commandments case in Alabama, the federal judge Myron Thompson summed up the new secular orthodoxy when he ruled that "the state CANNOT acknowledge God." Since our rights are founding on the idea that we are "endowed by our Creator" with these rights, this is tantamount to saying that the government will not acknowledge any source higher than itself as the source of our rights. This haughty attitude leads quite naturally to the human rights records of the atheist rulers displayed at the start of this article.
The bottom line is that if we lifted the ban and did nothing else then it would re-enforce the error described in this space. Because of the times we live in, a lift of the ban should be paired with language that explicitly rejects the twisted court interpretations that "the state cannot acknowledge God". The language should declare that it is the right of this state and its people, including public office holders in the performance of their duty, to acknowledge God as they see fit without interference from the Federal Government.
If the people have a problem with their office holders taking displays too far, then it should be dealt with at the ballot box. A handful of judges in Washington D.C. should not micromanage the religious expression of every local government in this great country.
Under those conditions, I would vote to repeal the ban.
I find your insinuation that Atheism had something to do with Stalin, Pol Pot etc., highly offensive. I could find you a list of atrocious behavior by Christians and followers of other religions, but it would not prove any sort of causal relationship.
Virtue does not come from blind belief in Gods, but rather from seeing value in one's fellow man. This law that discriminates based on personal belief will only serve to bring Arkansas closer to the dark ages.
Imagine for a moment that another state were to ban those that shared your belief from having the same basic rights as everyone else... would you support it with such vigor?
Ben Franklin once asked the rhetorical question, "If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?"
There is no logical reason to believe an atheist will constrain himself when given power over others. There is no fear of anything in the afterlife. He is accountable to no higher authority, but is ultimately checked only by what political or military opposition may be gathered against him.
I find your comment offensive and completely biased. Christian, Muslim, Islamic, and Hindu leaders have also done this! Also, do you have any proof that they were atheists? To prove atheists are not bad people you should check out this video: http://tinyurl.com/lkcnn
Also, heres a fact for you:
Christians are 75% of US population
Christians are 75% of US prisoners
Atheists are 10% of US population
Atheists are 0.2% of US Prisoners
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