By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Here we go again, Save Jerseyans.
Every Christmas season, the Left tries to convince us that its efforts to remove nativity scenes from schools and municipal grounds around the country isn’t anti-Christmas; they say their opposition is merely consistent with the time-honored “separation of church and state” that’s central to our American legal cultural tradition.
We know better.
First and foremost, you and I know that the original phrase, “wall of separation between church and state,” isn’t in the Constitution but found in Thomas Jefferson’s famous 1802 letter to theDanbury Baptist Association. Jefferson wrote:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, 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.”
Jefferson was arguing that the First Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights prevents the establishment of a national church or national religion. Jefferson wasn’t at the convention. He also clearly wasn’t arguing against religious displays in the public arena; an ardent critic of the Virginia Anglican establishment, the third president simply didn’t want Americans forced into a theocracy.
A godless man couldn’t have concluded his second inaugural address by calling upon God “to whose goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that whatsoever they do shall result in your good.” Right?
Ignorance leads to a lot of confusion over the “separation” question. There’s also plenty of deliberate behavior at work here. Anti-Christmas behavior.
Check out this story from our friends at Chasing New Jersey out of Teaneck where local officials refuse to prominently display a nativity next to the giant menorah sitting in front of town hall. Like Jefferson, I couldn’t care less if there’s a menorah, nativity, Rangoli decorations, whatever, all lined up in a neat little row on the state house lawn.
Lefties don’t care, either, save for the Christian symbol. They’re not filing ACLU complaints to remove a menorah!
“They are Man’s,” famously thunders the Ghost of Present in Dickins’s classic Christmas Carol, looking down at two scrawny, dirty children clinging to legs beneath a heavy robe. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!”
It’s a timeless warning in any context. Guard against it! And for God’s sake, don’t let yourself be bullied! Merry Christmas.
A VERY Merry Christmas to you, Matt.
Minor note – the menorah is not religious and neither is Channuka. That being said, as a generic non-Christian, these folks who twist themselves over Nativity scenes are spoil sports.