This is not an establishment of religion, but it permits executive agencies to act in ways which are functionally the same as establishment. This one's quacking like a duck even if it looks like a cat... Your interpretation narrows the scope of the antiestablishment clause too far...... "The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded against by an entire abstinence of the government in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect against trespass on its legal rights by others." One can hardly remain "entirely absent" by permitting appeals to God to trump court rulings. No, entirely is such a strong word that it cuts both ways--government stay out, church stay out; back off both of youse! It seems pretty clear from the context of his other statements on the subject that he was referring to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in the same way that I am - separating the church - any church - from support by the state and an active role in the state, such as the various C of E bishops have in the English House of Lords.
Your own self-professed knee jerking clouds your arguments. Why do my conservative friends always mention Robert Byrd as if a) nothing ever changes and b) he's still running around wearing the sheets? You said ex-klansman, right? Was that a necessary detail to make your point? Insofar as it was sensational, I suppose it served. For the same reason my liberal friends (Windy being an exception) always bring up David Duke.
While you're talking about 1964, however, let's not forget that LBJ (you know, the democrat who was president at the time) said "We've lost the South for a generation" when he signed that bill. Not to mention it was way back in 1948 when Hubert Humphrey gave an anti-segregation speech that Strom Thurmond (who died a Republican) left the party to form the Dixiecrats. There's your street level realpolitik. Those dems all became FORMER dems and voted for Nixon in vast numbers in 1968 & 1972. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" laid the map for continued GOP victories and it capitalized on the racial divide in a way (solid history on it at Wiki's southern strategy entry) that no Democrat had done in decades. If that's what's on the Wikipedia article, then it's ahistorical crap. Southern whites voted for George Wallace in 1968, not Nixon, and the main issues in that election were the Vietnam War and the maintenance of public order. Don't take my word for it (even though I was there), follow the links. As for 1972, McGovern lost that campaign by taking the Democratic party too far to the left for the voters in 49 states to stomach. Race was not an issue, the Vietnam War was. To maintain, as some revisionist historians have, that the GOP actively sought the votes of racist white Southerners is to make the same mistake some folks on the Right do when they accuse the DFL of pandering to Communists and Socialists.
no subject
Your interpretation narrows the scope of the antiestablishment clause too far...... "The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded against by an entire abstinence of the government in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect against trespass on its legal rights by others." One can hardly remain "entirely absent" by permitting appeals to God to trump court rulings. No, entirely is such a strong word that it cuts both ways--government stay out, church stay out; back off both of youse!
It seems pretty clear from the context of his other statements on the subject that he was referring to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in the same way that I am - separating the church - any church - from support by the state and an active role in the state, such as the various C of E bishops have in the English House of Lords.
Your own self-professed knee jerking clouds your arguments. Why do my conservative friends always mention Robert Byrd as if a) nothing ever changes and b) he's still running around wearing the sheets? You said ex-klansman, right? Was that a necessary detail to make your point? Insofar as it was sensational, I suppose it served.
For the same reason my liberal friends (Windy being an exception) always bring up David Duke.
While you're talking about 1964, however, let's not forget that LBJ (you know, the democrat who was president at the time) said "We've lost the South for a generation" when he signed that bill. Not to mention it was way back in 1948 when Hubert Humphrey gave an anti-segregation speech that Strom Thurmond (who died a Republican) left the party to form the Dixiecrats. There's your street level realpolitik. Those dems all became FORMER dems and voted for Nixon in vast numbers in 1968 & 1972. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" laid the map for continued GOP victories and it capitalized on the racial divide in a way (solid history on it at Wiki's southern strategy entry) that no Democrat had done in decades.
If that's what's on the Wikipedia article, then it's ahistorical crap. Southern whites voted for George Wallace in 1968, not Nixon, and the main issues in that election were the Vietnam War and the maintenance of public order. Don't take my word for it (even though I was there), follow the links. As for 1972, McGovern lost that campaign by taking the Democratic party too far to the left for the voters in 49 states to stomach. Race was not an issue, the Vietnam War was. To maintain, as some revisionist historians have, that the GOP actively sought the votes of racist white Southerners is to make the same mistake some folks on the Right do when they accuse the DFL of pandering to Communists and Socialists.
Continued in next post...