The Nuclear Solution to Judicially Imposed Atheism

December 12, 2004

Conservatives and other normal people can politely note all we want that the Founding Fathers quite deliberately intended a benevolent and providential Creator to be at the heart of our concept of liberty and of law, and Leftists will not budge one inch as long as compliant judges conspire with them to treat the faithful majority like the Cossacks treated the Russian people under the last Romanov.

A minority, a distinct minority, of Americans believe that God should be driven out of any school or civic activity. Those who maintain that the language in the foundational document of the American polity, the Declaration of Independence, a more basic constitutional document than the Constitution itself, can be ignored if politically incorrect are beyond reason.

There is a “nuclear solution” to this issue which can place it beyond the meddling of militant Christophobes and Deiphobes: amend the Constitution. The amendment need not be dramatic or radical, but simply a restatement of prior government documents of the American republics. The text of the amendment should be something like this:

“SECTION ONE: The government of the United States holds this truth to be self-evident: that all people are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

“SECTION TWO: Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, shall forever be encouraged. The foundational principles of the American government are based upon the faiths of Christianity and of Judaism.

“SECTION THREE: When any judge of the United States or justice of the Supreme Court of the United States construes the Constitution contrary to the foregoing sections of this amendment, then when two thirds of the members of the House of Representatives concur, that officer shall be removed from office.

Does this sound draconian? Section One, of course, is drawn directly out of the first part of the Declaration of Independence itself. The first part of Section Two is much less familiar but it is even more important: it is from Article Three of the Northwest Ordinances, a statute passed by the Congress under the Articles of Confederation and reaffirmed by the Congress of the United States under our present Constitution and a law widely recognized as a model of good legislation.

The second part of Section Two is straightforward. It does not provide for religious tests to hold office. It does not deny the right of any American to be an atheist or to adhere to any other religious faith or metaphysical system. It simply asserts historical fact: America was deliberately created upon the Christian values, with strong deference to Judaism.

This amendment is not “unconstitutional.” Leftists have become so entangled in their Orwellian myopia that they sometimes propound the most preposterous notions. Maxine Waters, for example, several years ago suggested that Bill Clinton could run for a third term because the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution was “unconstitutional.” It is hard to take such people seriously: the Constitution can be amended in any way, except to deprive each state of its equal representation in the Senate. Presumably Ms. Waters was relying upon the Fourteenth Amendment, the catchall for every harebrained Leftist rule. If so, then the Twenty-Second Amendment, which amended the Constitution after the Fourteenth Amendment, would have also amended the Fourteenth Amendment itself.

Leftists will doubtless raise the bogeyman of a theocracy, but that is absurd and ahistorical. State governments had formal state religions for decades in the early years of the current American Republic and these states continued to have formal, state religions after the passage of the Bill of Rights. Did this create a bigoted and intolerant government? Hardly. Consider the shadowy specter of Christian theocracy. Did this exist among formally Christian states?

The first Jews elected to public office in history were in this period of American history. Indeed, Francis Salvador was chosen to the Provisional Congress from South Carolina while the Revolutionary War was ongoing and David Emanuel was first President of the Georgia State Senate and then Governor of Georgia in the decades following passage of the Bill of Rights.

Jews were elected to the United States Senate from antebellum South and served with distinction in the Government of the Confederacy, as well as being elected to a number of different state and federal offices in the South after the Civil War, right in that part of America which nebish like Michael Moore disparagingly call “Jesusland.”

Utah, the last polity within the United States founded because of a particular religion, elected a Jew as Governor of Utah, despite an overwhelmingly Mormon population. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony in his eulogy of Julius Caesar: “Theocracy should be made of sterner stuff.”

Established Christian religion has been the best indicator of safety and of tolerance to Jews throughout the modern world. The United Kingdom has two state religions, one for England and one for Scotland; the English and the Scots stood alone against Hitler while a France which had strict separation of Church and State surrendered and collaborated in the Holocaust.

Sweden had a state religion when Swedes like Bernadotte and Wallenberg risked their lives to rescue Jews. Finland, an ally of Germany, threatened to declare war on Nazi Germany if Finnish Jews were mistreated; Finland, also, had no separation of the Lutheran Church and State. Denmark, whose king Christian X wore a Mogen David on his arm in solidarity with Jews in occupied Denmark, had and has a union of Church and State.

The theory is that established Christianity endangers Jews. Modern history disproves that theory completely. But this amendment would not establish Christianity, much less a particular branch of Christianity as in Denmark, England, Norway or Scotland, as the state religion of the United States; it would simply make clear that the people, who are sovereign in America, wish Christian and Jewish values to be recognized in civic life and the Blessed Creator on whose those values rest to be respected.

Why an amendment instead of the appointment of more Supreme Court justices? Several reasons. It would shift the argument from the question of whether the Constitution is godless to whether the Constitution ought to be godless. Leftists routinely tell conservatives that if they do not like the weird ruling of a federal judge, then we have the option of changing the Constitution: fine, then let the argument be about that.

Because the argument would be a legitimate political question rather than a legitimate constitutional question, elected officials would be compelled to take a position one way or the other on this issue. Conservatives should ignore Congress in seeking this amendment and should work instead through state legislatures, which have the power, if three quarters of them concur, to call a constitutional convention.

Unlike Congress, which is remote and which, because of the rules of the Senate, can simply prevent this proposed constitutional amendment from ever coming to a vote, state legislatures are very close to the people. Legislators meet in the state capital and actually live in the community of their legislative district.

The internet and talk radio allow all of us in Flyover Country to know very quickly what position our state legislatures are taking on this amendment and, specifically, which state legislators are supporting it and which are not. President Bush carried thirty-one states and came very closing to carrying five more states - New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The President lost by relatively close margins in four more states - Maine, Oregon, Hawaii and Washington.

Those forty states are six more than needed to propose, through a constitutional convention, this amendment and two more than needed to ratify the amendment. All of these are quite within the reach of that sixty percent of Americans who call themselves “conservative.” Those state legislators and governors who tried to obstruct this amendment or who opposed it would face tough reelection battles and could easily lose on that single issue.

Support or opposition to the amendment would also be a fair question for congressmen and senators seeking reelection. Sixty-two senators come from states that President Bush carried and another ten come from states that he almost carried. Coming out against this amendment could easily cost Democrats the votes they need to filibuster legislation generally.

Once the amendment was adopted, the pressure would be on the House of Representatives members to hold accountable arrogant judges making reckless and hurtful rulings. No fig leaf will be available for House members who say that they cannot remove a judge just because they disagree with their decision; this would specifically grant them this right.

Finally, this limited amendment would be a warning shot against entrenched Leftists who misuse the federal judiciary to effect de facto amendments to the Constitution all the time, but who lack the courage and the honesty to amend the Constitution in the way created by our Founding Fathers. This Constitution, we will remind them, belongs to we, the people.

Bruce Walker