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You're either for the Constitution or you're against it

Frank Rich writes about the "Justice Sunday" mob. Go ahead and read what he wrote -- it's pretty good.

That said, I don't want to get distracted by a discussion about religion. Personally, I think that is off-point. I refuse to accept the frame.

This battle is most certainly NOT about religion. This is about the Constitution and whether we, as a people, will continue to pledge our allegiance to it.

In short, you are either for the Constitution or you are against it.

Here's the thing: the President of the United States, when he takes the oath of office, is sworn to uphold the Constitution, not the Bible, not God's teaching, not the Ten Commandments, not Mosaic law. If he breaks that oath he can be impeached.

On the other hand, if commits enough sins, I suppose he'll go to hell. But that's between him and his God. Here on earth, in our system of self-governance, we agreed a long time ago that we would govern ourselves using the Constitution as the ultimate arbiter of what is right or wrong. We are the first government to do so explicity -- we, the people, grant the government certain powers as set forth in the Constitution. Everything else is ours, as people here on Earth.

The radical conservative Republicans want this to be about religion because they know that, by doing so, they can get a lot of votes.

But the fact is, our nation's foundation rests on the bedrock of Constitutional doctrine -- not Biblical doctrine, not the Ten Commandments, not the New Testament. We are a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Not for Jesus, not for the Pope, not for Krishna, nor Allah, nor even God. In fact, God is mentioned not once in the Constitution. If we accept an ultimate authority for self-governance that goes beyond the Constitution, then we, as a nation are lost. My God will be invoked as being more powerful than your God. It will be the Crusades all over again.

But what about Jefferson's words in the Declaration? "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men 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."

Jefferson uses the broadest possible term to refer to Deity for a reason -- he understood that by mentioning Jesus or Mary or Krishna or Zeus or God would be exclusionary. But more importantly, he puts Man at the center of the Declaration and acknowledges (as "self-evident") the bedrock principle that no one on Earth has the right to deny us what we are born with: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As soon as we surrender the Constitution to a higher authority, as soon as we accept some higher authority in our self-governance, the moment we pledge ultimate allegiance to the church or the synagogue or the mosque or the temple, and not the Constitution of the United States of America, in that moment we will lose the essential liberties and freedoms that this country was born to protect.


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