Can someone please tell me how an amendment which says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," has anything to do with the Kroc Center having religious symbols?
Most of this city already thinks little enough of the city councilors, do they really now want to compare themselves to Congress? Perhaps they feel the need to live up to Mark Twain's quip "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
Duluth is in financial straits. Duluth does not have enough money to pander to each and every demand of its citizens. Duluth is in real danger of going bankrupt. How then does the Duluth City Council respond to an offer to pour an estimated 30 million dollars into the community?
Do not be fooled -- it is the cross, the badge of Jesus Christ, which is the offense here. The pretense of any legal propriety is just a smoke screen.
Surprise, surprise the clause "separation of church and state" does not exist in the U.S. Constitution. nowhere in the Constitution does it ever say there is to be a separation of church and state! Look again. I am not making it up. The idea was so totally foreign to the founders that if someone had brought up such lunacy they would have been laughed off as being drunk, or thought of as a total subversive to common sense.
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The idea of the separation of church and state was foisted upon us by the Supreme Court in a monumentally unprecedented decision written by a court led by Justice Hugo Black in 1947. He and all who ruled with him apparently did not have very good reading comprehension skills. They completely took out of context a quote from Thomas Jefferson written long after the Constitution.
Jefferson's intent was diametrically opposed to Black's understanding. At no point did he ever suggest Christians needed to refrain from involvement with their government. Contrary to what students are taught today, Jefferson was assuring the Danbury Baptists that the Federal Government had no intention of ever interfering with how they wished to worship God. The application of this abysmal ruling is happily still up for debate.
Of all the many problems which beset our nation, surely one of the most foolish is our inability to know our own history. Revisionist historians have been busily rewriting history for some time, fabricating facts, denying others, and totally obfuscating the truth. But anyone can still pick up a copy of the Constitution and read it for themselves. It would be so easy for anyone to research these basic facts. But how many will?
Certainly I do not expect the City Council to bestir themselves to actually become educated. They are far too busy pursuing politics to be concerned with truth or reason.
My contention, by the way, is that I do not think the city should pursue the center, but for very different reasons regarding the use of public funds. If citizens are really interested in such a venture they should foot the bill themselves. Why make the rest of the populace pay for something which, however nice it may be, is ultimately a non-essential?
But how silly would it be for these same councilors, who fall all over themselves to show how concerned they are about the working populace, to deny Duluth such a gem because they are bigoted against the symbol of the cross?
Approximately 70 percent of those who responded to a Duluth News Tribune poll say they do not mind having religious symbols visible at the Kroc Center.
Will our local government finally allow the people to speak here, or will it shut them up, just as it did earlier with the Ten Commandments?
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Russ Young can be reached at russyoung@thelifeline.net .
