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Justice Roy Moore to South Carolinians:
(( first run on www.lewrockell.com ))
Government Can Acknowledge God
October 25, 2003
Steven Yates
On October 20, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy S. Moore
spoke to a small group at Willow Ridge Church in Lexington, S.C.,
and later, delivered the keynote address before a packed house at
the Second Annual Banquet of the Columbia-based Frontline Ministries,
Rev. E. Ray Moore Jr.’s project. Justice Moore’s topic
was "America’s Christian Heritage." Justice Moore
outlined again why his placing the Ten Commandments monument in
the Alabama State Judicial Building in Montgomery did not violate
the First Amendment, and why his refusal to remove it in the face
of a federal judge’s order did not violate the rule of law.
 Here
is the issue: can the state acknowledge God without violating the
supposed wall of separation between church and state? Can the State
of Alabama acknowledge God? Can South Carolina acknowledge God?
Can the United States of America acknowledge God?
Justice Moore’s answer: resoundingly, Yes, in all cases! Working
through the Foundation of Moral Law Inc., he has gone so far as
proposing to place his monument in the U.S. Capitol building.
To review the case, on August 1, 2001, Chief Justice Moore had
placed the 5,200 pound monument bearing the Ten Commandments along
with inscriptions of a number of this country’s founding documents
in the rotunda of the Alabama State Judicial Building. Before the
end of October, two separate lawsuits had been filed against Chief
Justice Moore by plaintiffs with the backing of three left-leaning
organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Americans
United for Separation of Church and State, and the Southern Poverty
Law Center. They charged that the acknowledgement of the Christian
God implicit in public display of the Ten Commandments was "offensive"
and unconstitutional under the First Amendment. In August of this
year, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ordered the monument’s
removal. Chief Justice Moore stood his ground even when his colleagues
instructed him to remove the monument. Finally, as August drew to
a close, the monument was physically moved from its public location
on the rotunda and placed in the equivalent of a closet. Justice
Moore and his attorneys have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A decision from the Supremes on whether to hear the case is expected
in November.
What makes this case both interesting and important, as I reported
in an earlier article, is how it illustrates the clash between the
two worldviews vying for dominance in Western civilization. I discussed
these worldviews under the names Christian theism and materialism
(or materialistic naturalism). One can use the term secular humanism
for the latter, although strictly speaking, secular humanism is
an ethical consequence of materialism. There are, of course, quite
a few different ways of cashing out such claims, as the history
of modern philosophy abundantly testifies. There are also multiple
variants on Christian theism, which is why we have different denominations
of Christian churches. But I am more concerned with similarities
than differences. All versions of Christian theism place a single
Supreme Being, God at the center of existence both metaphysically
and morally, and regard the universe (and humanity) as created rather
than self-existent or byproducts of natural (material) processes.
All modern versions of materialism—at least by implication—deny
the existence of a Supreme Being. According to materialists, the
universe is self-existent. Human beings originated from a natural
process with no thought or planning behind it; our conception of
ourselves as moral agents was part of this process. Morality being
a tool for survival, it calls for no theological justification and
has no transcendent significance.
It seems clear enough from history that the U.S. was founded by
Christian theists in this broad sense, not materialists. The Framers
did not agree on every point of theology, of course, but at the
time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Christian theism
was an integral component of what was soon to become the cultural
life of a unique land. "We hold these truths to be self-evident,"
began the Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created
equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness." When the Constitutional Convention
of 1787 opened, George Washington invited the convened to trust
that "the event is in the hands of God!" Washington’s
Proclamation of 1789 that created the Thanksgiving Holiday, began,
"It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence
of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits,
and humbly to implore His protection and favor." In 1797, Washington
would say, "Religion and morality are the essential pillars
of society."
Samuel Adams had said, in Rights of the Colonists (1772) that "the
natural rights of the Colonists are these: first, a right to life;
secondly, to liberty; thirdly, to property; together with the right
to support and defend them in the best manner they can…. The
rights of the Colonists as Christians may be best understood by
reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great Law Giver
and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly
written and promulgated in the New Testament." John Quincy
Adams would say later that "The highest glory of the American
Revolution was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the
principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."
Perhaps Adams’ best known statement came in 1798: "Our
Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It
is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." This
sheds light on Benjamin Franklin’s remark about the importance
of education—ominous in light of the past hundred years of
the gradual dumbing down of America: "A nation of well informed
men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God
has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance
that tyranny begins."
The "wall of separation between church and state" was
thus never intended as a complete separation between government
and Christianity, much less the complete removal of Christianity
from public life. Its intent was to forbid government from creating
a state-sponsored church along the lines of the Church of England.
The idea of separating church and civil government, Justice Moore
points out, was not invented by Thomas Jefferson in his famous letter.
It is implicit in Scripture itself, in passages such as Jesus Christ’s
admonition to "render … unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s"
(Matt. 22:21, KJ) The Ten Commandments themselves acknowledge that
church and government are different institutions. The first four
commandments involve our duties to our Creator (e.g., "thou
shalt have no other gods before me"); the other six involve
our duties to each other (e.g., "thou shalt not steal").
The first four are carried out in church; the latter six become
the foundation of civil society and the basis for the rule of law.
Justice Moore explained all this with two illustrations, one depicting
the Christian theist perspective of the separation; the other depicting
the materialist or secular humanist one. The first places God at
the center. Under God—separated from one another because they
serve different functions—are Church and civil government.
Thus the separation between church and state. The second places
Man at the center. It then conflates the Church with God in order
to replace the former with the latter in our consciousness, resulting
in the sort of separation between God and public life that the Framers
wanted to avoid. In other words, separating Church and state is
not equivalent to separating God and state. Reams of legal documentation
now rest on the refusal to recognize this distinction.
Therefore either federal or state governments can acknowledge God
without violating the First Amendment or any additional edict to
separate Church and state (since this edict does not appear in the
First Amendment). Justice Moore was right. Those who forced the
removal of the monument from the rotunda of his courthouse were
wrong. He defended his actions: "I’m ordained, and sworn,
to uphold the Constitution of the United States…. The rule
of law is not what a judge says it is. When a judge takes the law
into his own hands, he becomes a tyrant."
We thus have to ask, with Justice Moore, who has the real power
in our country? What is the supreme secular authority? Is it the
Constitution? There are cases on record—numerous and growing—of
judges forbidding any mention of the Constitution as they hear cases!
The Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the land.
Modern doctrines such as the "living Constitution" essentially
reduce the meaning of important statements in the Constitution such
as the First and Second Amendments to whatever the Supreme Court
says they mean or whatever federal judges say they mean. In effect
this makes the Supreme Court and federal judges supreme civil authorities,
not the Constitution. We might as well not have a Constitution at
all!
In my earlier essay I proposed that societies adopting materialism
as a worldview, whether tacitly or explicitly, tend to become more
and more tyrannical. It is important to understand: I’m not
saying that materialism causes tyranny. There are tyrannies grounded
in theistic ideologies, too (e.g., Islam); there were tyrannies
long before the rise of distinctively modern forms of materialism,
obviously. Tyrannies arise when men attain unlimited power. One
of the manifestations of sin in the lives of these men is their
lust for power. What the gradual adoption of materialism in the
West has done is loosen the ties between morality and Christianity
that formed an important bulwark of limited government, placing
a firm check on those motivated by power. To paraphrase John Quincy
Adams from above, limited government is only possible when the vast
majority of people can be counted on to live morally sound, upright
lives—within their family units and otherwise. Such a citizenry
will not put up with unscrupulous politicians. Christianity provided
the moral basis and educational framework for a free society. To
make a
very long story short, none of the secular moral theories proposed
by Western philosophers hold up under sustained scrutiny. The historically
most important based morality on structures of human reason (Kant)
or on the pursuit of the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest
number (Mill). But what the idea that morality is exclusively a
human or natural phenomenon does is something the Framers were very
aware of: it loosens the chains of those whose primary interest
is power.
In another recent piece, on the Iraq War, I proposed that the primary
problem of political philosophy is not how to build the ideal society
but how does society control power? How, that is, do individuals
who want to be free bind those who want to take away their freedoms,
and still preserve justice? A subsidiary question for those for
whom moral philosophy is not an academic game: how does society
control vice? More specifically, how do individuals control vices
resulting from powerful sexual urges, dishonesty in both government
and the workplace, sloth, etc., under circumstances when "thou
shalt not get caught" becomes the only operant commandment?
Traditionally, the answer has been: a strong nuclear family—not
government. But today, the nuclear family is under a direct and
concerted attack, whether the source of that attack is easy divorce
or the homosexual lobby. The bottom line: freedom in civil society—liberty—is
not the freedom to do whatever we please. Freedom comes with specific
responsibilities. When individuals feel free to act in any way they
please, liberty will quickly diminish, replaced by either anarchy
or statism. My argument has been that materialism indirectly encourages
both tyranny and a culturally-destructive hedonism, whether intellectuals
promoting materialism want those consequences or not.
Whether we call it materialism, secular humanism, or something
else, this latter kind of thinking permeates government schools
from kindergarten up through state-sponsored "research universities."
It permeates our mainstream media, the entertainment industry and
our legal system. This is why homeschooling has become the fastest
growing education movement in the country. This is why movies such
as Mel Gibson’s new film The Passion, depicting the life of
Jesus Christ reverently, are raising eyebrows. A lot of entertainment
industry moguls are doing whatever they can to block that movie.
This is why our legal system, with one Supreme Court decision after
another for the past 50 years, has more and more interpreted the
phrase separation of church and state to mean that acknowledgements
of God must be completely excluded from the government schools and
the public square.
Focus on the Family’s Dr. James Dobson, a long time supporter
of Justice Moore, recently observed: "The issue in Alabama
is not simply about a 5,300-pound monument depicting the Ten Commandments
in an Alabama courthouse. It is about the right of the people of
that state, and indeed, the people of this entire country, to acknowledge
God in the public square…. If we fail at this moment of destiny,
we will become a secularized nation like Canada or the continent
of Europe, whose laws are based on secular humanism, or worse, on
postmodernism, which holds that there is no truth, no basic right
or wrong, nothing good or bad, nothing evil or noble, nothing moral
or immoral. Law then will be a whimsical standard that shifts with
the sands of time….
I am all too aware that not everyone reading this is a convinced
Christian. Many libertarians are not, having been influenced by
various Enlightenment doctrines about reason, the perfectibility
of man, and such. However, I am convinced—and not just because
of my own Christian beliefs but because of these in light of my
own detailed studies of philosophy, history and economics—that
what Christian groups such as Frontline Ministries, and individual
Christians such as Justice Moore are opposing is a fundamentally
pernicious worldview, something that will eventually doom Western
civilization if it is not rolled back. No one, Christian or otherwise,
can seriously maintain that we as individuals are as free in America
as we were 50 years ago, or even that men and women were as free
50 years ago as they were 100 years ago. We have been on this slippery
slope for a long time. Under the influence of the materialistic
and humanistic doctrines that underlie both the welfare-warfare
state and our increasingly hedonistic culture, we are moving in
the wrong direction at a rate that is accelerating. Sooner or later—hopefully
before it becomes too late!—we all have to start drawing lines
in the sand, just as Justice Moore has done.
October 25, 2003
Steven Yates has a Ph.D in philosophy and is the author of Civil
Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (1994). He is currently
at work on three books: In Defense of Logic, a philosophical treatise;
Skywatcher’s World, a science fiction novel, and This Is Not
the Country I Grew Up In, a collection of past articles from LewRockwell.com
and other sources. He is an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von
Mises Institute, and in January will be joining the adjunct faculty
of Limestone College. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina.
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