Right-Wing Justice Scalia is Crusading to Establish Religion by Constitutional Fiat

The idea of a human being striving, as far as possible, to reduce or eliminate biases, prejudices, or subjective evaluations by relying on verifiable data is what it means to be objective. For a judge in America’s legal system, being objective means putting aside one’s personal beliefs and prejudices to make objective decisions based on established law or, where no legal precedent exists, the United States Constitution. Obviously, the current crop of Catholic conservatives on the nation’s highest court cannot refrain from basing a rash of recent decisions on anything other than their personal religious beliefs that has led them to glaringly establish religion by Supreme Court fiat. One Justice on the Catholic High Court has taken “establishing religion” a step  farther and is actively campaigning to establish his religion in the public school system, judicial system, and the government.

On Wednesday last, Koch and Vatican surrogate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia delivered a judicial sermon at Colorado Christian University and informed 400 faithful Christians that the separation of church and state “doesn’t mean the government cannot favor religion over non-religion.” Scalia said that secularists concern over the overreach of religion into the government and every aspect of the public sphere is “utterly absurd” and that the Constitution’s only obligation is to protect Christian’s freedom of religion and was never intended to protect Americans from religious imposition. Scalia must be removed.

Scalia defended his strict adherence to a purely theocratic reading of the U.S. Constitution and assailed the concept of a secular government. He claimed that what Christians must do is prevail in “the main fight to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor one religion over others or non-religion.  We do Him [god] honor in all our public ceremonies, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. I think we have to fight that tendency of the secularists to impose it on all of us through the Constitution.” Scalia is parroting the religious right’s projectionist claim that atheists are “shoving their disbelief down our throats.” Scalia must go.

Now, there are several problems with Scalia’s claim and none are more malicious than interpreting the 1st Amendment as Constitutional cover to not only favor one specific religion, but to impose it on every other American. Scalia was not even attempting to conceal his theocratic aspirations and complained that, “Our [the Supreme Court’s] latest take on the subject, which is quite different from previous takes, is that the state must be neutral, not only between religions, but between religion and non-religion. That’s just a lie. Where do you get the notion that this is all unconstitutional? You can only believe that if you believe in a morphing Constitution.” Putting aside the “morphing” argument for a second, the originalists who wrote the founding document insisted favoring one religion over another, or over non-religion, was unconstitutional; that idea is not new or  has not morphed with the times. Antonin Scalia needs to be impeached.

Scalia could not be more wrong and it is stunning that as an alleged constitutional scholar and “originalist-turned theocrat,” he cannot countenance the Framers’ intent that the Constitution was specifically set up to “morph” from its original 1789 form.  The Framers inserted the Ninth Amendment in the Bill of Rights particularly  to “clarify that the specific individual rights stated in the Constitution, particularly in the Bill of Rights, does not constitute an explicit and exhaustive listing of all individual rights possessed by the people, and cannot be used by the federal government to increase its powers in areas not stated.” Areas such as Scalia demands in establishing religion according to the last three Catholic-majority Court decisions imposing and establishing Christianity on the nation.

If anything is “utterly absurd,” it is Scalia’s assertion that the Constitution was not created to “morph” to protect rights of all the people, and his contention that the First Amendment does not protect the people “from” religion is contrary to volumes written by the Framers and Founders. If he were a tenth the so-called Constitutional scholar and originalist as he claims, he would comprehend that very rudimentary premise. In fact, two of the Framers, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison realized a pressing need to address  “exceptions in the constitution in favor of particular rights” so they would not “be so construed as to diminish the just importance of other rights retained by the people; or to enlarge the powers delegated by the Constitution.” This includes Scalia’s intent to use the Constitution to enforce religion by government edict as interpreted by the Catholic majority on the Supreme Court. It is in direct contradiction to everything the Constitution’s true “originalist” Framers and Founding Fathers believed adamantly, wrote extensively about, and demanded to protect the nation from a government-by-Christian theocracy at the nation’s founding and into perpetuity.

Scalia has, unethically, been using the Catholic Court’s ruling that legislative sessions should be opened with sectarian (read Christian) prayers to campaign  and push for mandated public prayers in the public schools, state and federal legislatures, and every courtroom in the country. In June, Scalia harshly criticized his faith-based Court cabal for declining to hear a case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled a public school district decision to conduct graduation ceremonies in church violated the Establishment Clause. Scalia and his little Koch accomplice Clarence Thomas were furious at not getting an opportunity to further decimate the Establishment Clause because according to their dissent, “the First Amendment explicitly favors religion” over the Founders and Framers’ well-documented opposition to favoring or establishing religion.

There are many reason Justice Scalia must be removed from the nation’s High Court besides his strict devotion and adherence to the whims and wishes of the Koch brothers. He travels around the nation actively promoting hardline conservative policies, and over the past year has made appealing for cases to establish Christianity by judicial edict a primary goal when he is not ruling according to Vatican dogmata. The First Amendment could not possibly be clearer in prohibiting the establishment of religion, and yet an alleged constitutional scholar and originalist is crusading to establish religion openly and with increasing frequency.

Scalia, with his Catholic cohort Justices have made three consecutive rulings shredding the Establishment Clause to impose Christianity as government policy in direct opposition to the original intent of the Constitution. Since Scalia, particularly, has blatantly opted to abandon judicial objectivity for Catholic biases, prejudices, and subjective evaluations to hasten America’s rush toward theocracy, he must be removed and sent to the Vatican where his special talent for pushing Christianity is not inherently unethical and unconstitutional. He has no rightful place on the Supreme Court or the secular nation the Founders intended America to be at its founding and in the 21st Century.

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Rmuse

Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.

Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.

Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.

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