"Americans United for Separation of Church and State has urged officials in Green Bay, Wisc., to remove a nativity scene from government property. The display, Americans United points out, amounts to an unconstitutional endorsement of religion by government."

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . . "

Ok, Constitutional lawyers, get off your duffs this holiday season and do your jobs! I have no law degree and I may have figured it out . . . maybe . . .
 

Establishment clause: "Congress shall make no law." I have not scoured the Constitution, but will someone in the ACLU please point me toward Federal codes which state that specific religious ornaments must be placed in governmental institutions, thus fulfilling an "establishment" condition which would violate law. Then, how removing religiously based ornaments from public areas that have not been mandated by acts of legislatures is not a violation of the "prohibition of free exercise" clause for objects placed not by law.

Now I as a private citizen--be I President of the United States or the janitor thereof--of the government property I deem to place a religious reference on my own stead--barring any safety or spatial concerns--which precept of Amendment 1 do I violate in doing so? If I offend an atheist in my action, am I violating his Constitutional rights since I am not "establishing" a state religion just expressing my personal belief at which point--should this atheist address a grievance against me--in reciprocity--be denying me the second clause of the "establishment" amendment in which my freedom is being denied? Doesn't anyone find it just a bit odd that Amendment 1 is conveniently phrased as it is so as not to leave in the shadow of doubt that "establishment" requires a legislative mandate to legitimate a violation of "establishment" while the very next phrase validates the free expression of a personal nature and does not limit it with the exclusions of those it might offend?

Government should not be in the business of "establishing" what people should believe but surely must protect the rights of those who chose to believe in something and their free exercise thereof. And if the majority of governmental officials sympathize with a cultural acceptance of religious ornaments on publically owned property and have passed no law mandating their presence under penalty of law, does that constitute a legislative action, thus a violation of law and the establishment clause when no official proclamation has been made?

It's quite plain that the COTUS protects freedom of speech and religion and as such does not prohibit what a person believes or says. It does protect us from governmental decree of a particluar belief system, but nowhere can I find that a person who doesn't believe in anything has a Constitutional right to file grievance against a government that does not "establish" a religion but represents a majority of a population that does have one and thinks that those who do express themselves freely--a Constitutional guarantee no matter their position as an elected official or plain citizen--anymore than the insistence that "freedom" constitutes a protection "from" a reference to a belief system which is freely offered and not imposed by legislative action.

"Nietzsche calls himself an immoralist and harshly criticizes the prominent moral schemes of his day: Christianity, Kantianism, and Utilitarianism. However, in one important sense he seeks not only to destroy morality, but to reconstruct a new, more naturalistic source of value in the vital impulses of life itself (readers have also often seen this as a desire to return to the values of Homeric Greece)."--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Isn't it odd that nihilistic, deconstructionistic philosophers work so hard to destroy progressive civilizations that have emerged doing so much good in this world (along with the prerequisite bad on occasion!) by decrying Christian religion as the threat to all that we can be if we just believed in nothing? We could revert back to Darwinian monkeys, devoid of morality and belief, and justify smashing a ceramic baby Jesus as instinctual rather than guided by a morality no matter its source, a considered and debated framework by which no other animal however exalted on this planet can achieve at present.

Have a banana, atheists, because humanity has not been cursed by religion because you don't see its relevance. We just resist the vacuum you are trying to create since "freedom of" does not translate "freedom from" in any lexicon I can find. And it's about time our legal experts started basing their arguments on counter-nihilistic points like "if our forefathers wanted to exclude religious expression along with "the establishment of a state religion," they would of in their brilliance written the clause "Government shall make no mention of religion nor prohibit the free exercise thereof . . . " That would have been much clearer . . . were it not for "intent."

Merry Christmas to all and to all may you not be sued by the ACLU protecting someone else's freedom while denying yours.