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Earl Doherty
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Scalia
in shul: State must back religion
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used an appearance at an
Orthodox synagogue in New York to assail the notion that the US
government should maintain a neutral stance toward religion, saying it
has always supported religion and the courts should not try to change
that.
Speaking at a conference on religious freedom
in America on Monday hosted by Manhattan's Congregation Shearith
Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in North America, Scalia said
that the founding fathers never advocated the separation of church and
state and that America has prospered because of its religiousness.
"There is something wrong with the principle of neutrality," said
Scalia, considered among the court's staunchest conservatives.
Neutrality as envisioned by the founding fathers, Scalia said, "is not
neutrality between religiousness and nonreligiousness; it is between
denominations of religion." Scalia cited early examples of support of
religion in the public sphere by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
and Benjamin Franklin, the last of whom went so far as to argue at the
Constitutional Convention in 1787 for the institution of daily prayers.
Today, Scalia noted, the government exempts houses of worship from
real-estate tax, pays for chaplains in Congress, state legislatures,
and the military, and sanctions the opening of every Supreme Court
session with the cry, "God save the United States!" "To say that the
Constitution allows the court to sweep away that long-standing attitude
toward religion seems to me just wrong," he said. "I do think we're
forgetting our roots."
Scalia's speech, at a conference marking the
350th anniversary both of Jews in America and of Shearith Israel,
elicited a standing ovation. Scalia was nominated to the nine-member
Supreme Court in 1986 by president Ronald Reagan to fill the seat
vacated by William Rehnquist, who became the chief justice after Warren
Berger retired. Now, with speculation that Rehnquist is on the verge of
retirement after a recent diagnosis of thyroid cancer, Scalia may be
the leading candidate to take his place. It is widely believed that
President George W. Bush will appoint a staunch conservative as chief
justice if he gets the chance, and the only other Supreme Court justice
considered sufficiently conservative is Clarence Thomas, appointed by
president George H.W. Bush.
Originally from New York, Scalia wore a black
skull cap as he addressed the congregation with his back to the ark.
"The founding fathers never used the phrase 'separation of church and
state,' " he said, arguing that rigid separation of religion and state
– as in Europe, for example – would be bad for America and bad for the
Jews. "Do you think it's going to make Jews safer? It didn't prove that
way in Europe," he said. "You will not hear the word 'God' cross the
lips of a French premier or an Italian head of state," Scalia said.
"But that has never been the American way." Most establishment Jewish
groups, however, are staunch supporters of church-state separation.
Earlier this month, for example, the American Jewish Committee was part
of a coalition that won a lawsuit to block a Florida program allowing
state aid to go to parochial schools. In 2000, the Anti-Defamation
League led several Jewish groups in criticizing vice presidential
candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman for talking too much about God on the
campaign trail.
Scalia said expunging religion from public
life would be bad for America, and that the courts, instead, should
come around to most Americans' way of thinking and to the founding
fathers' vision for the US. He noted that after a San Francisco court
last year barred the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public
schools because it includes the phrase "under God," Congress voted
nearly unanimously to condemn the decision and uphold use of the
phrase. "I suggest that our jurisprudence should comport with our
actions," he said. If America's approach toward religion does change,
it should be through democratic process, not "judicial fiat." America
believes in "a personal God who takes an interest in the affairs of
man," Scalia said. Quoting a line from Psalms that says the faithful
will surely prosper, he added, "I think it is no accident that America
has prospered."
E.D.: Apparently, Justice Scalia fails
to understand that a Constitution is designed to protect the country and its citizens from the way
the majority believes and behaves, not to be governed by it. If
majority "thinking" and "actions" determined political rights, a lot of
people and minority groups would be in deep trouble. A Constitution is
supposed to be above whatever
the current or even traditional majority expression might be, and there
are many jurists who interpret the U.S. Constitution as being just
that. That a Chief Justice should hold and voice these opinions is a
frightening failure of the judicial system, or of the political system
that feeds the court its appointed members.