A Breath of Sanity in a Chaotic Week

There is a lot to talk about this week in our wide, wacky world.

For one thing, there is the scandal of Harvey Weinstein’s long-time and widely-known sexual assaults on women. It doesn’t reveal Hollywood’s objectification and sexualization of women – we already knew that. It does, however, shatter the myth that you can make millions of dollars exploiting of women onscreen while still respecting them in person.


Also in the news is Wednesday’s announcement that the Boy Scouts will admit girls. But this, too, is nothing new. The Boy Scouts began admitting girls on January 30, 2017, when they announced that girls who wished to be thought of as boys could join. Wednesday’s announcement only drops the requirement that they first declare their desire to be thought of as boys.

But amid all this mayhem, there was some sanity that deserves our attention. On October 6, 2017 the Justice Department issued a memorandum titled “Federal Law Protections for Religious Liberty.” This memo was released almost five months to the day after the executive order that mandated it.

Since I wrote about that order here (“Executive Order falls short,” Uinta County Herald, May 9, 2017), and was critical of its weakness, I think it only fair to eat my words in public. My concerns centered around the fact that strong language defending the Constitution and the federal laws supporting it had been stripped out of an earlier draft and reassigned to the Departments of Justice, Treasury, and Health and Human Services.

Now that some results of that move have been released, I can see that President Trump was acting on good advice. There is no way he could have been as thorough as the Attorney General’s guidelines. He would have been mercilessly criticized while the Department of Justice would have been scrambling to defend his words.

Instead, the Department of Justice has taken the necessary time and care to produce a document of sound constitutional principles and careful examination of the applicable federal laws. While the usual suspects were quick to condemn the memorandum, their criticisms merely parrot tired talking points, but cannot claim to cite either constitutional language, or federal statute.

The memorandum begins by quoting James Madison, the main author of the Constitution. Two years before penning the Constitution, he laid down our country’s foundation for religious liberty in “Memorial and Remonstrance.”

“The free exercise of religion ‘is in its nature an unalienable right’ because the duty owed to one’s
Creator ‘is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.’”

On this we should all agree: You did not create yourself, neither did the government make you. But whoever made both you and the government was prior to government, and has a more fundamental claim on your loyalty than the government itself. That’s why this right is “unalienable.” Government cannot take from you what government did not give you in the first place.

From this foundation, the memorandum articulates nine principles from the First Amendment of the Constitution. I wish there were room to print them all, but here are a few of the most important points.

First, free exercise “includes the right to act or abstain from action.” It is not only the right to believe, or the right to worship. It is the right to order your concrete, physical life in the public square according to the demands of God as you understand them.

Beginning with a 2009 speech from then Secretary of State Clinton, there has been an attempt to reinterpret the First Amendment to cover only the “freedom to worship.” This was a sleight of hand that had no grounding in the Constitution. The Justice Department has weighed it against the words of the First Amendment and plainly rejected it.

Second, your freedom to act is not limited to the privacy of your own home. It also protects you in the public square. If you want to work with others by incorporating yourselves into organizations, the government cannot deny free exercise to you. So, free exercise is for “religious denominations, schools, private associations, and even businesses.”

As a result, American citizens don’t give up their religious freedoms when they open their doors to the public – whether as a school or business. Nor do they have to stop practicing certain aspects of their religion to be appointed to government office, or participate in a government program.

This also means that the government may not make policies which penalize businesses for following religious practices, nor can it disqualify people or organizations from government benefits like welfare, or school lunches just because of their religious practices.

One of the most important principles is, “8. Government may not officially disfavor particular religious groups. Together, the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause prohibit government from officially preferring one religious group to another.” This is called the “principle of denominational neutrality.”

It is undeniable that our culture wars have revealed a gaping chasm between old mainline denominations which have modified beliefs with the cultural shifts, and conservative Evangelicals who have not. Moreover, this same divide can be seen within Catholicism and worldwide Anglicanism on issues of sexuality and the sanctity of human life. These are thoroughly denominational differences. As such, the government is not permitted to favor one side or the other.

In recent years, policies, statutes and city ordinances have been written to penalize some of these denominations while rewarding others. Laramie’s “discrimination ordinance” is a case in point. It threatens Evangelical congregations and schools with fines and jail for maintaining religious practices which all denominations held unanimously only a few years ago.

We have also seen in recent confirmation hearings in the Senate that there is a move to ban certain religious denominations from public office. Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin and Al Franken want to keep an “orthodox Catholic,” Amy Barrett, out of the federal judiciary, but would be pleased to have her if she were a catholic more like Dick Durbin or Nancy Pelosi.

Bernie Sanders wants to keep a conservative Evangelical out of the Office of Management and Budget, but would be happy to confirm someone who didn’t believe the Bible was inerrant. Here in Wyoming, the Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics has no problems with judges of many denominations expressing their religious views, but when Judge Neely of the Lutheran Church expressed hers, she was removed from her judgeship.

All of this is called out as unconstitutional by the Department of Justice. While this memorandum cannot stop the unconstitutional actions of these senators, it has the force of law to stop such injustices from continuing in hundreds of Washington bureaucracies.

These are only a few of the 20 constitutional principles that the memorandum spells out. It goes on to unpack the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Finally, it commends “The Clinton Guidelines on Religious Exercise and Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace.”

In short, the Justice Department has done an excellent job of summarizing the actual Constitutional and bi-partisan content of our federal protections of religious liberty. I hope that you will be able to look up the document and read all of it. It is a breath of fresh air for all Americans.

The Federalist: Stephen Paddock Exemplifies The Dangers Of Weaponizing Human Minds

 

 

While we have a moment of unity in our feelings of disgust and judgment upon the Las Vegas murderer, let’s engage our minds to make that common ground last.

“It was an act of pure evil,” President Trump described the murderous attack in Las Vegas. Nobody can disagree. There is no nuanced explanation for it. It is repulsive even to suggest that Stephen Paddock had good intentions for what he did.

Labeling it as “pure evil” needs no explanation, but it does merit comment. We are awash in excuses and explanations that make good and evil into matters of personal preference. Amid such moral relativism, these words crackle with clarity.

 Continue reading on the Federalist.

 

Pure Evil and the Value of Human Life

“It was an act of pure evil.” With these words President Trump described Sunday’s attack in Las Vegas. Nobody can disagree. There is no nuanced explanation for this murderous act. It is repulsive even to suggest that Stephen Paddock had good intentions for what he did.

Labeling it as “pure evil” needs no explanation, but it does merit comment. We are awash in excuses and explanations which make good and evil into matters of personal preference. Amid such moral relativism, these words crackle with clarity.

Las Vegas has blown away the smokescreen. We are utterly united that the murder of 58 people and the wounding 527 others is evil. Even to ask the question, “why?” sounds surreal and out of place. But we must ask it.

Part of the climate of relativism is that we make moral judgments with our guts and feelings and leave our minds out of the picture. But feelings and moods can change with the wind.

Consider how often in history horrific evils have come to be accepted as mainstream. Be it genocide or slavery, feelings can always change. But clear, reason-based judgments remain true no matter how much our feelings become conditioned to evil.

So, while we have a moment of unity in our feelings of disgust and judgment upon the murderer, let’s engage our minds to make that common ground last.

What makes the Las Vegas massacre evil is the killing of human beings. We would not be having this national conversation if Stephen Paddock had sprayed death into a nest of hornets. Even if he had poached 58 deer, it would be a weird curiosity, but not a national tragedy.  We are in shock and horror because he killed 58 human beings.

Human life is more precious than any other life. Yet Stephen Paddock hated it with a passion. Months of thought and research, thousands of dollars, and weeks of preparation were focused not on destruction in general, not even on the destruction of life in general, but on the destruction of human life.

Moreover, it wasn’t just “others” that he hated. He seemed to hate his own life just as much as his victims. It could not have been personal animosity toward his victims, something else drove him to kill. Could it be purely that they were human beings like himself?

Wayne Newton, Mr. Las Vegas, said in an interview on Tuesday, “I think that in his own mind, by committing suicide he might have escaped earth justice, and the justice of the people.” Whether self-inflicted suicide, or suicide by cop, it’s a good bet that Paddock believed a bullet in the brain would exempt him from any consequences of his evil actions.

Hindus believe in a Karma that carries on after death. Jews, Muslims, Christians and others believe that a final judgment will determine your eternal status. Paddock was betting the house that everyone is wrong.

Whatever was on his mind, right now, unseen by us, he is learning whether he held a royal flush, or was merely bluffing. Wayne Newton spoke for most when he said, “I know there’s a seat waiting for him in hell. So, he’ll suffer a long time.”

Verily, Stephen Paddock’s eternal fate hangs on the question of whether human beings have an eternal existence, or merely die like animals. But the fate of those 58 murdered and 527 wounded hung on the question of what Paddock believed about eternity. That is simply the fact of the matter.

Imagine a group of 59 people all tied together along a rope, and walking around near a cliff edge. What happens if one of them steps off the cliff will happen regardless of what he believes. Gravity will do its work whether he believes in it or not. But the entire group will be adversely affected by one person who doesn’t believe in gravity.

Your own fate is a reality that you cannot change. But what you do to those around you depends entirely on what you believe about that reality. That’s what happened in Las Vegas. It was an extreme example, to be sure. But it clearly demonstrates the relationship between any person’s view of ultimate reality and the fate of those around him.

On account of this, no amount of laws in the world can infallibly protect the rest of humanity from a single human being who holds antihuman views. Once a human mind becomes “weaponized,” no one is safe.

Human beings are by nature free to follow their beliefs. We have the capacity to think, to invent, to create, and to use the resources around us for incredibly great good. But with that freedom and ability comes an equal ability to do incredibly great evil.

The two come as a matched pair, and they can’t be uncoupled. You cannot keep a man from doing evil without affecting his ability to do good. Put a robber in jail, and he no longer can work to serve you. Shackles intended to limit people’s capacity to do evil, will in equal proportion limit people’s capacity to do good.

In addition to this consideration, we also need to think about what kind of shackles are effective for what kind of people. If someone’s aim is to get money, we can limit his ability to do evil by fining him. If his aim is physical freedom, we can restrict him by the threat of jail. But what if his ultimate goal is death? For such a person laws, fines, punishment, and incarceration have no power whatsoever. That was the case of Stephen Paddock.

How many more are there like him? More to the point, are we, as a society weaponizing other minds? By teaching people to believe that human life is nothing but a vapor, with no value and no meaning we contribute to our own demise. All the security agencies in the world cannot guarantee to protect us from someone acting on that belief.

It is time for us to remember this reality. Societies are not made safe and secure by abandoning any communal search for eternal truth while forever ratcheting up restrictions on individual freedom. The safest and most peaceful societies foster a common respect and love for human life while leaving as much freedom as possible for human ingenuity and energy to act on that love.

Is human life meaningless or not? There is no avoiding this question. To say, “I don’t know,” is to say, “it means so little to me that I can’t even take a stand.” It is an attitude which contributes to the making of ever more Stephen Paddocks. It is an act of pure evil, and it’s time we stopped pretending otherwise.

Further Reading:
The Federalist: Stephen Paddock Exemplifies the Dangers of Weaponizing Human Minds

Children Suffer When Birth Certificates Lie

The Federtalist: When Kaepernick Took A Knee, He Was Feted. When Joseph Kennedy Took A Knee, He Was Sued

 Colin Kaepernick is known for taking a knee in a pre-game protest. Joseph Kennedy is known for taking a knee in a post-game prayer.

Continue reading on the Federalist.

Who Stands for the Common Citizen?

The doctrine of Judicial Review has been a reality in America for over 200 years. It is the idea that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has the authority to judge whether laws and policies from congress and the president pass constitutional muster.

It all began with Marbury v. Madison (1803). Marbury thought that he had been personally deprived of his rights by then-president Thomas Jefferson and his Secretary of State, James Madison. The Supreme Court heard the case and ruled against him.

Nevertheless, they established a precedent which remains in effect today: if any person believes that an act of congress, or an act of the president, is personally injurious to him, he has standing before the court to sue the government and review the constitutionality of the action.

That’s Judicial Review, and state courts, too, have claimed this power.

Increasingly, Judicial Review has been used to strike down all kinds of long-standing laws, as well as new laws. Even portions of validly adopted constitutions have been declared unconstitutional.

In 2008, California citizens overwhelmingly adopted an amendment to the state constitution to recognize, as valid, only marriage between a man and a woman. This was struck down by a state judge, and sustained at the California Supreme Court.

In 1996 Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act by about 80-to-20 percent, and President Clinton signed it into law. But in June 2013 SCOTUS struck it down by Judicial Review. More recently, SCOTUS struck down marriage laws in all 50 states when James Obergefell claimed a constitutional right to obtain a marriage license.

Note the pattern here. If a solitary citizen sues the government, he has standing before the court to represent for an entire subset of American citizens.

Perhaps the most notorious of these cases is Doe v. Bolton (1973). This opinion was handed down on the same day as the more famous Roe v. Wade, which struck down first-term abortion bans in all 50 states. But Doe v. Bolton was another matter. Mary Doe was the pseudonym for a woman who supposedly wanted a late term abortion. Doe v. Bolton used Judicial Review to overturn every state law which limited abortions all the way up to the moment of birth.

Sandra Cano testifying before the Senate

However, here’s the twist. Sandra Cano, the woman listed as Mary Doe, never wanted an abortion. Sandra did not even know that an unscrupulous lawyer, Margie Pitts Hames, was using her name before the SCOTUS to argue against her own desires. It took nearly a decade for her to get the records unsealed and expose the fraud.

From that time until she died in 2014, Cano testified that Doe v. Bolton should be vacated because her standing before the court was never verified, and was in fact fraudulent. Sadly, she was told that the statute of limitations ran out before she even found out that her name was on the case, and the fraud of Doe v. Bolton still stands.

Karl Allred

I have outlined a few famous cases of Judicial Review to set some background for a case which is currently before the Wyoming Supreme Court. Last Wednesday, September 20, the Wyoming Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought by Evanston resident, Karl Allred.

The case was originally filed by Allred, and State Representative Gerald Gay almost a year and a half ago. It questions the constitutionality of Wyoming Statute 9-5-111-113 which was passed and signed in the 2016 legislative session. The suit alleges that the law violates several provisions of the Wyoming Constitution, as well as Wyoming state law.

Gerald Gay

But here we are, almost 18 months later, and court has not even agreed to hear the case. The question has gotten bogged down in the matter of “standing.”

Marbury had standing before the court because he was personally affected by Madison’s actions. Obergefell had standing before the court because he personally could not get a marriage license. Sandra Cano had standing before the court because her lawyer fraudulently claimed that she wanted an abortion. In all these cases, not only did the plaintiffs have standing, but each stood for an entire subset of Americans.

But what happens when you are standing not for a subset, but for everyone? Do you still have standing to sue? That’s the question before the Wyoming Supreme Court.

So far, the courts have denied either Allred or Gay standing to sue. Relying on the so-called “Brimmer Test” adopted by the Washington State Supreme Court, the State of Wyoming has been working to keep the courts from even considering the merits of the case.

Among other things, the Brimmer Test requires parties to have “existing and genuine, as distinguished from theoretical, rights or interests,” in order to have standing to sue the government. The lower courts have deemed that the right of a citizen to have his government follow the Constitution and statutes is only “theoretical” and not “genuine.” That’s a curious position for the state to adopt.

Do you, as a citizen, have only a theoretical right to expect your government to follow the constitution? Or, since your rights are shared with a half-million other Wyoming citizens, do you have no rights to assert when elected officials violate the Constitution? Justice Kate Fox asked Special Assistant Attorney General, Jay Jerde, “If these plaintiffs don’t have standing, then who does?”

That’s a good question. Jerde had no answer. He could only say that if a citizen thinks any government action to be unconstitutional, he has the right to change it through the political process.

This answer troubles me greatly. It forgets the most fundamental reason for having a Constitution in the first place. A Constitution is a document that places limits on popular sentiments. It sets down in law that there are certain rights that citizens, have no matter how many people vote against them.

Even if 99% of the people want to do something unconstitutional, the 1% have the right to be protected from that action. Even if the Executive and Legislative branches together agree to an unconstitutional course of action, our common Constitution makes their action illegal and, therefore, null and void.

I am not here asserting anything about the merits of the case. I am merely pointing out that Constitutional questions are not subject to the political process, but limit what can be done by the political process. To be a constitutional republic means that we reject mob rule and place limits on the power of the popular vote.

For over 200 years, Judicial Review has recognized this reality and placed the responsibility to enforce the Constitution within the power of the courts. Sometimes the courts have served us well in upholding the Constitution. Other times they themselves have become politicized and have created laws and precedents contrary to the Constitution.

However, to throw out the idea of Judicial Review and subject everything to politics would be a gargantuan mistake. All of us have a genuine right and interest in making sure that this doesn’t happen. To deny any one of us common citizens the standing to assert this right in a court of law is to strip every citizen of the real and abiding protections written into our common Constitution.

No matter what you think about the merits of the case, we should all want Mr. Allred to have his day in court. His right to be heard is also your own.

Further Reading:
Casper Star Tribune: Who Stands for the Common Citizen?

We Should All Reject the Religious Test for Office

On September 7, in a confirmation hearing before the US senate, Professor Amy Barrett faced a barrage of questions about her religion. Illinois senator, Dick Durbin, asked her, “Are you an ‘orthodox Catholic’?” Then, bizarrely, he went on to opine, “There are many people who might characterize themselves as ‘orthodox Catholics’ who now question whether Pope Francis is an ‘orthodox catholic.’ I happen to think he’s a pretty good Catholic,” Barrett interjected, “I agree with you.” And Durbin continued, “Good. That’s good common ground for us to start with.”

While these two Catholics were using time in a Senate confirmation hearing to exchange their views on whether the pope is Catholic, the rest of us were wondering what this has to do with confirming a judge to the appellate court.

Clearly, for Durbin it was not just small talk from one Catholic to another. It was somehow, “common ground for us to start with.” That remark vaulted the entire discussion into a different light. By it Durbin indicated not only that her Catholic faith was relevant to the hearing, he also signaled that her opinion about an intra-Catholic dispute is germane to the question of whether she is fit to serve in the US government.

That is alarming.

Durbin was not alone in his opinion. Ranking member Dianne Feinstein also grilled Barrett about her faith. First, she tried a line of questioning designed to corner Barrett into stating that her faith made her incapable of fairly judging some cases. Unsuccessful, she simply used her remaining time to pontificate.

Feinstein said, “I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern...” She continued, “over time, we [senators] also learn to judge what they [judicial nominees] think, and whether their thoughts enable them to be free to observe the law.”

Like Durbin, she could not point to an occasion when Barrett failed to uphold the Constitution or words where she refused to do so. But in the absence of evidence, she intended to judge what she thinks, and to divine Barrett’s thoughts by how strongly “the dogma” of the Catholic faith “lived within” her.

These remarks would be troubling enough if they were an isolated instance. But they are not. It seems apparent that they are part of a larger effort. Like the raptors in Jurassic Park, Democrats are making coordinated attacks on the Constitutional prohibition against religious tests, to test how Americans will respond.

We have also seen this in Wyoming. Judge Ruth Neely was removed from her appellate judgeship not for anything that she did on the bench, or any misconduct at all. Rather, she was given a test: “Renounce your religious teaching or you will be dismissed.” She did not renounce it. She was dismissed.

Another example happened in another confirmation hearing three months ago. On June 7, Senator Bernie Sanders was questioning a nominee to the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought. Sanders quoted an article that Vought had written in defense of his alma mater, Wheaton College. In it he simply stated the meaning of John 3:18, “Whoever believes in him [Jesus] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Sanders went on to do what could only be described as badgering the witness. Unwilling to hear Vought answer in his own words, the senator repeatedly interrupted him with questions like, “Do you believe that that statement is Islamophobic?... Do you believe that people in the Muslim religion stand condemned? …Do you believe that other people who are not Christian stand condemned?”

Note the refrain: “Do you believe?” Sanders was not concerned with actions, but faith. Then, not allowing Vought to answer, he pronounced judgment, “I would simply say, Mr. Chairman: This nominee is not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about. I will vote no.” He didn’t condemn Mr. Vought’s actions, or competence. He condemned Mr. Vought’s person because he believed the Bible.

Imagine another confirmation hearing, perhaps for a position in the Department of Agriculture. Imagine senators asking questions about her competence, her evenhandedness, her history as an administrator, etc. Then suddenly, one of the senators asks, “Is it true that you are a Hindu?”

Puzzled, she replies, “Yes, Mr. Senator, I am.”

He continues, “are you aware of the writing in Sri Caitanya Caritamrita adi lila, chapter 17 verse 166 ‘Cow killers and cow eaters are condemned to rot in hell for as many thousands of years as there are for each hair on the body of every cow they eat from.’”

Taken aback, the nominee hesitates. “Sir, I have not memorized every Hindu sacred writing...”

“Aha!” says he, “so, are you accustomed to adopt a religion without knowing what it actually teaches? In that case I question your good judgment, and therefore your ability to serve.”

“But, Mr. Senator, I am aware of my faith’s high regard for cattle. I was merely noting that I could not vouch for every word of the text.”

“Oh, I see. That’s understandable,” answers the senator. “In that case, I would simply ask a follow up question: Now that you are aware of the scripture condemning anyone who either eats or kills a cow, do you believe it? Remember, you are under oath.”

The madness and danger of this line of questioning should be as plain as day. To judge the fitness of anyone to serve a governmental post based on their religious ideas is simply out of bounds. Of course, it would be relevant to her confirmation if she regularly treated ranchers and meat-eaters unfairly and with personal animosity. In that case, it could hinder her ability to effectively perform the job.

But if that charge were true, it could easily be proven by testimony from any of her fellow workers. You wouldn’t need to bring up their religious beliefs at all. Not only is it unnecessary, it is also forbidden. Article VI of the US Constitution states, “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

To serve in a governmental position, the only requirement is that one “be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this (US) constitution.” (Art. VI). This clause has enabled people of mutually exclusive religions to serve together in a peaceful government for 230 years.

Atheists and Catholics can seek common ground as well as Buddhists and Evangelicals. Nobody is excluded from government office. But now there is an attempt to exclude some people from the table based purely on what they believe.

If successful, not only will conservative evangelicals or ‘orthodox Catholics’ be dismissed from government service, but the door will be open to excluding any person in the future not based on their actual behavior or integrity, but based solely on their perceived thoughts.

The Execution of Queen Mary

16th century England learned all too well the horrors of such religious intolerance. Bloody Mary earned her name, and her protestant sister Elizabeth persecuted Catholics with equal fury. Unless we want to see those days return, all of us should stand up with united voice and rebuke anyone who uses a religious test.







Further Reading:
Daily Signal (2/21/18) Trump Nominee Attacked for Faith Finally Heads for Confirmation Vote