Soon after taking office, President Bush established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and faith-based offices in departments like Justice and Education. They were intended to increase the federal grant money going to religious organizations, and they seem to have been highly effective. It worked! Figures show that from 2003 to 2005, the number of federal grants to religious groups increased 38 percent. In other words, there wasn't more federal money given out, the beneficiaries just got narrowed down to religious organizations of Bush's choice. If you don't go to the right Church, you don't get a grant even if you save abandoned babies or feed the homeless. Nope, sorry, those dollars are going to our homeboys who vote for us and meet us for Sunday worship.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation and several of its members sued. They say that because the faith-based initiatives favor religious applicants for grants over secular applicants, they violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits government support for religion. Now Bush and his cronies are trying to make it illegal for anyone to nay say anything the president does because as U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement said
taxpayers who believe the White House is unconstitutionally promoting religion should not be accorded legal standing to sue in court. It would be too "intrusive on the executive branch" to permit lawsuits contesting the way the president and his advisers conduct their affairs".
Yeah, the government has all the rights and we have none. Excuse me, Mr. Bush Sir, didn't mean to intrude on you while you spend MY MONEY on something I don't approve of or believe in. And just when exactly did we become a dictatorship and not an at least semi-free country? Was there a memo that I missed or something? I know I'm old but back when I went to school and they taught us government we learned about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and it was made plain that BOTH WERE LAW TO BE OBEYED BY EVERYONE INCLUDING THE PRESIDENT AND HIS HENCHMEN.
In fact, one of the main purposes for both was to limit the ability of our government to run rough shod over us poor peons. So much for separation of Church & State or any real freedom. First our tax dollars are supporting religion, not necessarily the religion of your choice and doing it in a public forum in blatant disregard of our Constitution. Next you'll have Dubya and the Right Wing Nazis pounding ou your door at 2 AM and dragging you out on the street.
In the United States, the structure and wording of the First Amendment with both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, demonstrates that our forefathers were smart enough to know that Religion is power, Government is power and the two combined would result in absolute power. And as everyone well knows:
In a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists Jefferson, quoting the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, writes: "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State".
If Jefferson isn't a good enough source for Bush then there is James Madison, the principal drafter of the United States Bill of Rights, who wrote "Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States," and he declared, "practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government is essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States"
{{{insert sarcastic tone-of-voice here}}} Of course what did Madison and Jefferson and all the rest of those old guys know? Dubya is driving now and if you don't like it you can lump it. How the hell did we ever get into this bad a shape as a country?
In the immortal words of Bette Davis "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night" and I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel until/unless we get someone with some common sense and a much smaller ego than Duba in the White House.
politics Bush First+Amendment Freedom religion faith+based+initiative
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