October 17, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH




IMPEACH CHENEY


JAMES MADISON ON CHURCH-STATE SEPARATION

The Framer more responsible for our Constitution than any other is James Madison. If anyone understood the "original intent" of the Constitution it was Madison. Madison was explicit in his statements supporting a separation of church and state. He would be appalled at the mixing of church and state we see under the Bush administration's "faith based initiatives." This comes from a column by Brooke Allen is at www.latimes.com:

The people who really did build this nation most definitely did not define "religious freedom" as the right of churches or other religious groups to benefit from taxpayer dollars. In fact, James Madison, the thinker who probably contributed more than any other to the legal foundations of our nation and who is frequently referred to as the father of the Constitution, was unambiguous on the subject.

First of all, he thought the idea of a church — any church — acquiring property and wealth to be directly contradictory to the principles of the Constitution. In his "Detached Memoranda," a collection of private reflections, Madison warned against "the danger of a direct mixture of Religion & civil Government" as well as "an evil which ought to be guarded ag[ain]st in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations…. Are the U.S. duly awake to the tendency of the precedents they are establishing, in the multiplied incorporations of Religious Congregations with the faculty of acquiring & holding property real as well as personal?"

NEVER MORE

When Republican President Herbert Hoover presided over the beginning of the Great Depression it stayed in the minds of Americans for decades. People who lived during that time learned a lesson in Republican economics and the havoc it causes. Hoover seems great in comparison to the Bush administration. At least Hoover didn't launch an immoral war and cause the deaths of countless innocent people. Hoover didn't trample all over civil liberties and torture people. The crimes and incompetence of the Bush crowd should be seared into the memories of all Americans and it should be engraved into our history: Don't take this road again. This article by Andrew Bard Schmookler is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

what is important here is not just that this particular regime be overcome, but that the patterns expressing themselves through the regime be exposed and discredited. The contempt for law. The lust for power. The constant strategy of dividing people and creating enmity. The arrogance and bullying. The unbridled greed. The lust for domination. The self-righteousness. And above all, the lies upon lies upon lies so that the foundations of the democratic process were eaten up by the acid of deception.

The fall of these Bushites should not be a time for indulging in revenge. But it should be a time to imprint upon the consciousness of the American people just what it is that evil looks like when it comes to America to seduce the American people. For that smiling face of evil --with its false righteousness and sense of entitlement-- affords a look into the dark places in the American soul. A look into the forces that, though they may always linger in this nation, should "Never again" be allowed to rule its destiny.