Lexington Herald Leader Column Misrepresents Constitution

Reprinted from Bluegrass Bulletin by request:

Tom Eblen writing for the Lexington Herald Leader complains that Kentucky should stop promoting God to save money.

Someday, when state officials have added up all of the taxpayer money that will be spent on the lawsuit filed this week by an atheist group, I hope they will send the bill to state Rep. Tom Riner.

American Atheists Inc. sued the state because Riner, a Louisville Democrat and Baptist minister, inserted the amendment two years ago into legislation organizing the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security. The amendment designated the office’s first duty as “stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth.”

As a person of faith — and a fellow Christian — I agree with Riner’s views about God’s role in the security of our state, nation and world.

As an American citizen, though, I don’t think it is government’s place to promote God.

And, as a Kentucky taxpayer, I’m furious that tens of thousands of dollars of public money is likely to be spent litigating this obviously unconstitutional attempt to require government to do the work of churches, synagogues and mosques.

I wouldn’t be so angry if this was an isolated case, but it’s not. Certain stripes of Christians have, time and again, cost Kentucky taxpayers big bucks because they insist on mixing church and state.

It’s hard to say how much public money has been spent defending these lawsuits… But the cost has been significant, both in public employee time and taxpayer cash paid to plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Tom justifies his arguments by suggesting that the Courts and the Constitution are on his side. He is right on the first count, but like the courts, wrong on the second.

Eblen says:

Federal judges, whether appointed by Democrats or Republicans, have generally agreed for the past half-century that when the framers of the U.S. Constitution wrote that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” they meant it.

History supports him when he says that this approach within the court system is a recent development. In fact the notions now sanctified by one court decision after another were unthinkable until the middle of the last century.

Prior to the organized assault on our American heritage as a Christian nation which began in the 1950’s it was a foregone conclusion, and beyond question that America’s strength, our liberties and our charity to the rest of the world was the proud result of our open and continuing recognition that it was in God we trusted, from whom all of our blessings flowed and in whose corner we firmly stood as Americans. But in the 1950’s things began to change, and not by accident.

Karl Marx, the father of socialism, once observed that “The goal of communism is to dethrone God, and replace capitalism.”

The book “Brainwashing-A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics” was compiled by the former card-carrying Communist Kenneth Goff. For revealing the communist strategy Goff was assassinated. But Goff made it very clear that the plan being implemented by the enemies of America employed very specific strategies. He outlines how he, as a dues paying member of the Communist Party attended their school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

He details the course of study for waging psycopolitical warfare against the American people with the ultimate goal being the takeover of the nation. He exposes the manual used in their training called “The Communist Manual of Instructions of Psychopolitical Warfare”. Just listen to what that manual said:

Degradation and conquest are companions…However, degradation can be accomplished much more insidiously and much more effectively by consistent and continual defamation…Continual and constant degradation of national leaders, national institutions, national practices , and national heroes must be systematically carried out, but this is the chief function of Communist Party Members, in general, not the psycopolitician… By attacking the character and morals of Man himself, and by bringing about, through contamination of youth, a general degraded feeling, command of the populace is facilitated to a very marked degree.

We have battled in America since the century’s turn to bring to nothing any and all Christian influences and we are succeeding. While we today seem to be kind to the Christian, remember we have yet to influence the “Christian World” to our ends. When that is done we shall have an end of them everywhere.

Tom Eblen does not assume a place of honor by hiding behind the robes of brainwashed judges. And historical accuracy is completely abandoned in favor of revisionism by suggesting that the First Amendment was ever intended to give courts the power to erase all references to God from our law, our government and our history books.

Each colony had its own church, and at the time the Constitution was written the biggest concern of the sovereign states was giving up too much control to a centralized government. Many of the states had their own “official” state church. They feared the establishment of an official “national church” and laws preventing them from practicing their own state religion by the acts of a Congress. That is what the words in the Constitution meant, and the ongoing effort to expand the meaning of those words beyond original intent is nothing less than an assault on the single most important recognition of fact which gave rise to the unique vision of liberty which was born here and articulated by our founding fathers: the self evident truth that God is the source of all our rights.

At the very moment when this concept was being fully revealed and considered by those brave men who were so bold as to speak this truth, one of the chief advocates for liberty, Patrick Henry had this to say:

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often, that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For that reason alone, people of other faiths have been afforded freedom of worship here.”

And at the very moment the Constitution was being written, the elder statesman whose influence in American life cannot be too strongly emphasized, Benjamin Franklin, at the age of 81 said this:

“I have lived a long life, gentlemen, and the longer I live, the more convinced I become that God rules in the affairs of men.”

The Plaintiff’s in the lawsuit filed against Kentucky this week advocate that America must become a Godless nation. Regardless the cost in dollars, which Tom Eblen values so highly, of defending against their claims, the real cost to America of succumbing to this fraudulent notion is much higher.

We must resist the efforts of those who would divide us from each other and separate us from God. For it is only when we join together as one nation, under God, that we are indivisible and undefeatable, and can guarantee liberty and justice for all.