Thanksgiving thoughts updated 2023

Update: November 2, 2023, Thanksgiving is a few weeks away, but events dictate I repost a blog that deals with whether this is a Christian nation or not. How did it happen we are not.  The First Amendment to the Constitution clearly says the state cannot establish a religion, the foundation statement of the separation of church and state.   The newly elected, Trump-approved House Speaker is Mike Johnson. We have never knowingly had such an ideologue in that position who is governed by the most extreme form of  Christian Nationalism. His allegiance is not to Democracy first but to his religion, whether it represents the majority (it doesn't) or surpasses democracy as rules and laws governing the nation (it does not).   Privilege in our country is for all, not just for those who demand obedience to the same religion as the ruler. This country is not a theocracy; it is a democracy, and we must keep it that way.   I am a protestant Christian, but I do not derive my politics from the same interpretations Speaker Johnson proclaims as what guides him. I do not want to live in a country that exists, favors,  and rules only for those who subscribe to his brand of Christianity or support his interpretation of how it applies to modern life. The Golden Rule or the Beatitudes have no meaning or importance in his interpretation, but they are the fundamental message Christ delivered in the version of the Bible I read.   For an in-depth study of who is a Christian nationalist and what is Christian nationalism is, go to PRRI.

 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/27/mike-johnson-christian-nationalist-ideas-qa-00123882  

Reposting of a November 2018 blog post________________________________________________________________________________This Thanksgiving, we should give our thanks to the Pilgrims, who have become an icon of what made the New World so unique in the civilizations that preceded them. They left England and the old world to seek freedom to practice their own religion, free from a government-backed state religion that oppressed them. It was a beginning. There was a rocky road ahead to laws guaranteeing religious freedom for everyone, not just one group.

 Some colonies adopted laws with limited forms of freedom of religion, while others established state-sponsored religions, hung heretics, and launched witch hunts. Pennsylvania and Virginia had enacted their own laws effectively protecting freedom of religion. The Constitution authors adopted those concepts in the First Amendment, ""Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Congress later passed civil rights and hate crimes legislation that protected religious practitioners and punished those who interfered with their practice.

A warning to the politically smug: What goes around can come around

One of the beauties of our still functioning democracy is that the political pendulum can yet swing.  Yes,  democracy is still intact, a bit wounded, though, and some  tactics that worked for the GOP in the Trump era can also be used by Democrats, too, whenever they become a governing majority. Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot, if Democrats took over the House in 2018 and the  Senate and White House in 2020. Trump era attempts to sabotage  affordable health insurance by executive order or tax breaks for the wealthy could be rolled back. Whatever discriminatory executive  orders regarding Muslims and immigrants , or discrimination  against certain groups under the guise of religious freedom, that  survived judicial scrutiny of their constitutionality could also be reversed.

All reversals and new agenda could happen more easily and quickly, too, since the GOP Senate changed rules in 2017 and set precedence for use of parliamentary procedural tricks. If and when  Democrats became the majority, they too could take advantage of them. The GOP Senate has set  in motion ways to pass legislation and approve judicial appointees with  51, instead of 60 votes, avoiding   filibusters and the need for bipartisan compromise ,  permitting a bare party majority to steamroll over the minority, and ensuring the end of moderation.

The pendulum is still able to swing and  some recent elections indicate a possible  backlash against GOP and  Trump excesses in 2018 and 2020. We still are a democracy. We still have an independent media in spite of Trump’s branding any news that is not favorable to him as fake or his wishing  to get the FCC to take CNN’s licenses away or denying their merger or treating Fox News as  the favored one to be taken as the only  truth tellers. We still have an independent judiciary in spite of fast track efforts by GOP to fill federal bench vacancies .What if there are no Supreme Court vacancies to fill until after 2020 and two occur? The Court’s ideological balance could also swing back to the center or left with Democrats in charge. Policies that both benefit little and hurt many in the middle class while making the rich richer could anger voters  as pocket book pain and disappointments  are felt in real  election time pain and disappointment. It is even more possible there would be a backlash benefitting Democrats  if  Special Prosecutor  Robert Mueller actually puts some of Trump’s close associates in jail or finds proof that Trump himself obstructed justice or was compromised by the Russians.  

What could hamper a pendulum swing?  One is foreign interference in elections and another,  ineptitude of the Democratic party. We know now  from Congressional hearings Russians  were running ads and spreading their pro Trump, false news,  cultural divisive  issue support messages to 146 million targeted  and unwitting  Facebook users. What if they try it again in 2018 and 2020?  Will voters be willing dupes or educated enough to discount those attempts or will Congress require disclosure of foreign media and internet posting  and ad sources?

Given the potential of the GOP to  alienate their moderates, Democrats should be able to ride a swinging pendulum. However, Democrats  are  without a positive  message about what they would differently and without a unifying leader, and face a divide and conquer vulnerability with a  potential fight between the moderates and the Bernie Sanders wing.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2017/10/11/mcdonnell-blue-slips-n2393579

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court-senate.html

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/15/how-budget-reconciliation-broke-congress-215706

Talking turkey about religious freedom

A version of this was published in the Sky Hi News Nov. 22, 2017 https://www.skyhinews.com/news/muftic-talking-turkey-about-religious-freedom/


Update: Dec. 5, 6, 16 2017: Supreme Court to hear the Masterpiece Cakeshop case:
http://www.newsweek.com/masterpiece-cakeshop-v-colorado-civil-rights-commission-three-things-know-730892

https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-weighs-bakers-refusal-cake-gay-couple-060222755.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-temporarily-blocks-trump-rules-birth-control-204222704.html


Hopefully not forgotten  when we feast Thanksgiving   is the reason the Pilgrims risked  the dangerous passage  across the ocean . It was to find a place to practice their religion free of persecution by the English crown.  It took another 160 years before the concept of religious freedom changed from  just for protecting  the practice of the majority group’s  religion to  Constitutionally enshrined   tolerance  of all to practice their religion free  from  government  restrictions and persecution, prohibiting  the establishment of a state religion that meant the separation of church and state.  Those. provisions were incorporated in the First Amendment :“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religions, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”

To reach an agreement  from the desire of colonialists to protect only their  own colony’s majorities’ religious practices to protecting everyone else’s took time and  bitter experiences. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony hung Quakers for not going along with their concept of purification.  Roger Williams left the Colony to found Rhode Island  as a result. Nearly every colony had established their state approved religion before 1776 and some, like Maryland, found themselves entangled in anti-Catholic  turmoil.

Interpretation of  the meaning of the First Amendment is constantly under pressure for revision  by conservative  religious  groups who want to expand its meaning to suit their own brand of theology, sometimes  to the detriment of others who hold  different beliefs and values. A changing  ideological makeup of the Courts will help  the religious right find success  for years to come

 In our divisive partisan times  there is a concerted  fast track effort  by  the  GOP majority Senate  to approve  young appointees  to lifetime  federal bench  positions who demonstrate  allegiance to a   very conservative  religious based  ideology with less regard of  their professional credentials  and  judicial temperament. In the last Obama administration years, the GOP Senate dragged its heels in approving Obama's nominations, leaving 159 seats (1/8 of the total) vacant for a GOP Senate to fill in 2017-2018. Last week  a GOP dominated  Senate committee gave approval  for a federal judgeship to  blogger Brett Talley,  a  highly partisan Trump administration family member  with no court trial experience and who was  declared unfit to serve  by the  American Bar Association.  With the appointment of  Judge Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court  this year  even past decisions could be in jeopardy  of revision given the tilt of the Court to the right, including the reversal of Roe v Wade and the right to same sex marriage. It is likely to happen..

Could tax payer funded vouchers be issued for students to attend religious based schools?  In Douglas County, Colorado,  an election of a school board that  advocated such  vouchers triggered  suits claiming violation of the separation of church and state,  resulting in stalled  court decisions, and a  successful counter revolution against  the voucher advocates in recent school board elections  this  November 7. Outside groups supporting vouchers  plan to continue the  legal fight.  Courts have ruled against state legislation banning Sharia law on Constitutional grounds .Federal courts overturned President Trump’s “Muslim ban” twice  as  religious discrimination.  However, with a  third revision, the ban was given  partial life by the Supreme Court  on procedural matters, but other challenges on substance remain. A Trump executive order in October permitted employers to stop insurance coverage of birth control on religious grounds. A court case to permit businesses  to refuse service  to gays  because of religious beliefs, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission ,will be heard and decided by the US Supreme Court in 2018.  

Even the  the candidacy of Judge Roy Moore in Alabama reminds us of his advocacy of the public  government display of the Ten Commandments to discrimination against gays were also struck down by courts on First Amendment grounds.

While Pilgrims and Puritans came to America to practice their own brand of Christianity free of the King of England’s persecution, tolerance of others was not their purpose. It was the son of the Age of Reason, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1779 and his concepts were incorporated in the First Amendment by those who argued for separation of church and state. disestablishment of state churches and protection of religious freedom.

For those who argue our country was founded on Christianity, that this is a Christian nation,  it  may have been  so at the beginning, but it was not  ultimately reflected in our Constitution.  It was the Age of Reason that was the non-religious, non sectarian view which prevailed in the First Amendment.  The new nation  reflected  Judeo-Christian values, if not a specific theology,  of the dominant  western European culture of the time.   Our founders did acknowledge that we had rights endowed to us, the people, by the Creator. Still fought by atheists is whether we are indeed “one nation under God” and much has been made that Masonic symbolism permeates our national symbols and architecture.  The model used as a form of government  by our founders mostly  was Roman. The philosophers drawn upon  in the enlightenment and age of reason  by Jefferson were Greek and their 18th century interpreters. A motivating pragmatic reason may have been the history of bloody wars and divisiveness of the Catholic-Protestant conflict that swept  England and Europe for centuries  after the Reformation, as well as the unfairness of Kings who claimed they had the divine right to govern absolutely.  By banning a state religion and providing for the separation of church and state, those bloody religious based civil wars were made less likely.

Dec. 4 2017 update.
In the recent version of the tax bill that passed out of the Senate and is on the way to conference committee, Orin Hatch sneaked in an amendment that permits tax deductions for the cost of going to a private school...any...including religious. However, for expenses parents may have to attend public school, there is no tax break. Expect this to be challenged in court.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gops-plan-to-rule-the-courts-until-2050

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0

https://www.npr.org/2016/11/09/501476919/gop-strategy-paved-way-for-trump-to-nominate-supreme-court-justice

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/07/dougco-school-board-race-election-results/

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/09/douglas-county-school-district-voucher-program-in-danger-after-election-2017/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-06/trump-rule-limits-obamacare-s-birth-control-coverage-requirement

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/10/victory-trump-supreme-court-dismisses-travel-ban-case/752401001/

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2017/09/12/bakers-supreme-court-case-set-tone-religious-liberty-us/

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/05/roy_moore_timeline_ten_command.html

Also, see the 9/19/17  blog posting on this site: Islamphobia Comes to Grand County.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-pilgrims/2013/11/22/9f93e822-52c1-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html

http://www.shmoop.com/church-and-state/supreme-court-school-vouchers.html

http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa031700a.htm

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/21/judge-removes-block-funds-gender-reassignment/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_campaign=pushnotify&utm_medium=push

The meaning of freedom for which so many died defending it

Heavily edited, reduced version appeared in the editions of the Sky Hi News, May 31, 2017.

So how are you celebrating Memorial Day? Will it be a long weekend  with friends and families and backyard barbecues? Or did you put up your flag  with a sense that you did your patriotic duty? Or have you reflected a bit  on the meaning of Memorial Day,  to commemorate those who died in defense of our country? I plan all.  Running through my head  is Lee Greenwood’s great lyric which  captures the meaning of Memorial Day the best:

“And I'm proud to be an American

Where at least I know I'm free

And I won't forget the ones who died who gave that right to me

And I'll gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today

Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land, God Bless the USA.”

Those words are ones that both sides of the ideological spectrum can agree upon.  However, in our polarized America, we have differing views of what freedom, the  core value saluted in those lyrics, means.

My grandson, raised in a Colorado household of both  immigrants  and  those who could trace New World ancestors back to the late 1600’s, just returned from a visit with relatives of his nearest and dearest in a southern state.  His comment was, “they live in a different world and now I understand why Donald Trump is popular there”.  To him  profound  political divisions became real.

I  was not surprised. I grew up in Oklahoma, the reddest of any state, but I spent the remainder  of my life in large urban areas both in Europe and in the US and  married  a refugee from eastern Europe.  I have experienced  authoritarianism and  non-free societies  practiced first hand. Not everyone has that perspective, but it has influenced my political thought about what freedom means and what I find disturbing today in this very politically polarized America.

While I respect others’ rights to hold values that differ even from what  I was taught in my  Oklahoma youth,   I see personal freedom as protected  in our Constitution’s  First Amendment : right to free speech, press freedom, religious freedom, and the freedom to peacefully assemble. I see those freedoms under attack  today by some. For them,  free speech is reserved for those who  agree with personal views, but otherwise those opinions are to be minimized, shouted down and physically intimidated. Religious freedom is not only free from government interference to practice it  or to be free of a  religion established, preferred, or enforced by a government,   but now  it  means to some freedom to refuse to serve or give the same rights to those  with different religious beliefs and values.   Freedom of the press means loyalty to one media outlet and to consider all others prejudicial  and “the enemy of the people”  regardless of the merits of the arguments or the sources of  facts. Facts become those presented by the favored news outlet; otherwise there are no such things as facts.  The freedom to assemble in peaceful protest is viewed as motivated and organized  by some sinister force to be disrespected as certainly not arising  from real self interest or values of morality and a sense of fairness.  Our military  defends our freedoms from foreign threats, but the real threat  to our traditional views of freedom lies  within our own country’s hearts and minds.