pecunium

Antonin Scalia, to be frank, is not one of my favorite justices. I think him a hypocrite, in part because he (as well as four other members of that august Bench) made a ruling which went against his lifelong statements of judicial thought in Bush v Gore.

So this little snippet Scalia in shul: State must back religion from the Jerusalem Post, is a humdinger in my book.

US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used an appearance at an Orthodox synagogue in New York to assail the notion that the US government should maintain a neutral stance toward religion, saying it has always supported religion and the courts should not try to change that...

Scalia said expunging religion from public life would be bad for America, and that the courts, instead, should come around to most Americans' way of thinking and to the founding fathers' vision for the US. He noted that after a San Francisco court last year barred the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools because it includes the phrase "under God," Congress voted nearly unanimously to condemn the decision and uphold use of the phrase."

So the courts need to, "come around" to the general thinking of the people. Sounds to me as though the ideals he has espoused, in writing, and speaking, for the past umpteen years (that of strict construction, without appeals to the misinderstandings of the present, where people try to trim the sails of the Constitution to the prevailing wind of social desire) is to go out the window.

Where is the noble principle (which he says is almost sacred, and to be overturned only when a clear reading of the facts of the case show previous error) of stare decisis? Not relevant now, I suppose.

And what of the public writings of the Founders? The arguments of the Federalist Papers? No longer relevant in the New World of the approaching court. Nope, "most Americans' way of thinking," is to be the guiding principle on this one.

And which religions shall he favor, when this neutral stance is vacated? Will the Muslim and the Hindu have an equal place with the Catholic and the Jew? Will the Baptist and the Mormon stand on a level with the Quaker and the Pagan?

Perhaps.

The state is not the only thing this seperation protects. When a religion is not treated neutrally, then it is either preferred, or persecuted. We have enough strong feeling here, from the athiest, to the worshippers of Thor and Odin, to the Protestants, to the Tridentines, to... that we can have our very own Thirty Years War. Nothing seems to be so popular as killing people for a mono-theist god, and few people are willing to just be assimilated (even if they are, at the surface, there is always doubt... just ponder the Marranos of Spain) and we will see an inquisition.

Combine this attitude on his part, with the laws meant to make it possible to establish local law on principles derived from admission of "spiritual authority," and the prospect of local theocracies, and the horrors that come with it.

(e.g. Deut: 12 If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the LORD thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying,

13 Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known;

14 Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you;

15 Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.

16 And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the LORD thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again.).

Am I hyperbolic? I hope so. This ranting feels as a jeremiad, and I hope, pray even, that I am not a prophet. I am, however a soldier, and one does not plan for what an opponent will do; for it cannot be known, but rather for what he can do, and the people I worry about, they have said what they wanted to do.

We would do well to listen.