States petition for secession

Right on, we'll fund our own schools. But as I said, we do need a completely separate seat of government, I don't think there's any way around that. This virtual idea, while it has its points, wouldn't work long, we really do need to have a few states secede or split the nation somehow.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Examples, please! Specific examples!As for what the intention of the First Amendment was, shouldn't you consider what the drafter of the First Amendment, James Madison, thought? Read his A Memorial and Remonstrance, which he wrote a few years before -- if you would prefer to not read my page, then just Google on the title and you will find the exact same text everywhere else. It should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer (some engineer-speak I've picked up) that it applies to everybody of all faiths, not just to Christians. Furthermore, it obviously applies to all forms of Christianity, including the multitude of Christians whom you do not wish to recognize as such. IOW, the First Amendment is not just for Christians, but rather for all Americans. BTW, the second clause is the first known (to me, at least) description of Jefferson's "Wall of Separation", though in 1785, about 25 years before Jefferson's reference.So do please be forthcoming with your specific examples of our government violating the First Amendment. I can offer three, all of them in the mid 1950's, within my own lifetime and, I assume, also within yours:
1954 -- adding the sectarian religious wording "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance.
1955 -- placing on all US currency the sectarian religious wording "In God We Trust".
1956 -- replacing the US National Motto since 1776, "E Pluribus Unum", with the blatantly sectarian religious phrase, "In God We Trust".Extra Credit: after having reading what James Madison had to say about the mixing of religion and government resulting in making religion meaningless, read about the challenges to those mid-1950's acts of Congress and how the federal courts upheld those laws because those religious statements are meaningless.

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This is one major reason I want out from under this government. The first amendment was intended to PROTECT a Christian's right to teach our children our Christian principles but it's been perverted into the exact opposite meaning.

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That's completely false. The First Amendment doesn't prevent parents from raising children in their religion. All it does is stop the government favouring one religion, for instance, by teaching it in public schools. Which WAS the intent.

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Now we've got exactly what it meant to prohibit, CONGRESS making laws against religious practice and expression, while the right that is not to be infringed is totally infringed. Not even Congress really, the Supreme Court usurping the place of Congress, making laws and calling it interpreting the Constitution. The Government anyway, encroaching on the very freedoms the amendment told it to keep its dirty paws off. Yeah, I really really want out from under this nightmare government.

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This is all bullshit. The Supreme Court has responsibility for interpreting the Constitution, and that is what it does. And there's no problem of laws violating YOUR religious freedom. (But then I doubt that you even understand what the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment even means)

Separate governments over the same territory. Frankly, I don't see how that could possibly work. Just trying to work out the every-day police jurisdiction problems would be a nightmare. But public utilities would be even worse. Having to maintain two separate sets of utilities? Where any individual household could switch its affiliation at any time, requiring physical reconfiguration of power lines, sewer lines, water lines, gas lines, etc. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!And, I agree, the virtual idea also is impractical. The fundamental problem is that, while blues are able to live and work with others who are different from themselves, reds have demonstrated themselves quite vocally to be incapable, or at least intransigently unwilling, of that basic social skill. Complete physical separation would be the only choice, outside of reds learning to live and play nice with others.As for separate states seceding off, how is that supposed to work? Referring to a Presidential Election map printed by a local newspaper, a libertarian newspaper that is considered by many as too right-wing in this ugly red spot in the blue state of California, the only states I can see that are devoid of any blue are Utah, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. If any other states were to secede and join this Red Confederation, what are they to do with their own blue regions? Expel the blues, like Spain expelled the Jews in 1492, thus leading directly into the Spanish Inquisition? What about those blues' properties, ongoing businesses? Are the Reds prepared to allow the Blues to live within their new territories with all their Blue rights intact? When I worked in Germany in 1973, a co-worker told me of his family. They used to live in either East Prussia or in the eastern portion of Germany. Then one day the occupying Soviet forces told them that this land was now Poland and they had to leave. Forced emigration. Is that what you intend for the large numbers of Blues trapped within the seceding Red states? Or are you thinking of herding all those Blues into refugee camps after having taken all their properties, jobs, lives, etc, away from them?This is all prime material for a sci-fi distopia. I plan on writing more on this!

Prior to the passage of the 14th Amendment, the First Amendment did not accomplish any such thing. Instead the Establishment Clause only prevented the federal government from favoring a religion. Even after the constitution was ratified, most states had state sponsored churches which in a number of states was the Church of England of all things. The curriculum in the public schools included the Bible stuff. Nobody was teaching Darwin's theory back then because it did not exist.I think we have previously argued about whether that situation was the intent, and I don't want to revisit that argument. Regardless of what Jefferson intended, 'Congress shall make no law' was interpreted by the Supreme Court as applying to the executive and legislative branches of the federal government and not to the states. Even after the passage of the fourteenth amendment, the Supreme Court continued to hold that the bill of rights limited federal power only.It was not until about 60 years after the passage of the fourteenth amendment that courts began to apply parts of the bill of rights to limit state power.

Separate governments would imply completely separate nations, not two governments within the same territory.As somebody mentioned way back there somewhere, RAZD probably, people could exchange properties from one region to another so as to be under the form of government they prefer. If a region decides to reconstitute itself as fullblown red -- or blue -- those of the opposite political persuasion currently within its borders would have the option of remaining under the new form of government with all its inconveniences from their point of view, or moving, exchanging property being probably the best way of doing that.I was hoping others would come up with creative ideas about how to bring it about, but so far it looks like nobody thinks it's feasible at all. Well, I don't either really, but I can think of some ways such as the above that could be considered.

Right, that's the excuse for eliminating Christianity altogether from the schools, which I along with many others consider a violation of the original intent of the amendment, an interpretation which would have come as a complete shock to the original Christians of the nation who stupidly believed it promoted Christianity in the schools and certainly protected their children from alien views. Now we have a sort of secularist religion being taught to our children which undermines Christianity but it's not called a religion so that's OK according to the secularist mindset. I really don't care how you rationalize all this, I don't think it reflects the intent of the amendment, I hate it and want out from under it.

That's an interesting topic in itself. Public schools kind of grew up organically in our early history, with a Unitarian being credited with founding the public school system in the early 1800's. But early on, contrary to the First Amendment, Protestants took control of the school systems and inserted Protestant practices, Protestant Bible readings, Protestant prayers, etc, into the curriculum. Admittedly, most people did not understand the First Amendment at the time and probably navely assumed that their own particular Protestant beliefs were universal *.Then came the Catholics. Massive waves of Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants streamed into the USA in the second half of the 19th Century -- the mass recruitment into the US Army of Irish Catholic immigrants as soon as they disembarked led to their defections in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848; "from the Halls of Montezuma") and the formation of Mexico's Saint Patrick's Battalion, "Los San Patricios").Where did those Catholic immigrants' children go to school? To the public schools, of course. And what met them there? Protestant prayers, bible readings, etc. The Protestants were forcing their Protestant beliefs upon those Catholic children. Wouldn't you agree that that was contrary to the intent of the First Amendment? That a government agency was forcing a foreign religion upon citizens? Seriously, if you personally do not agree that that is what was happening, do please state so here and now!Of course, the parents protested. And what was the Establishment's response? They ignored the protests. I had read one account, which I'm unfortunately unable to find again, that a Catholic bishop (or arch-bishop; as I said, I cannot find that reference) in Baltimore (as I recall) asked whether the Catholic students couldn't be given Catholic readings and prayers instead of Protestant, and it resulted in three days of violent anti-Catholic riots in the streets. Good Protestant Christian witnessing there!So now the Catholics had to decide to create their own parochial school system. And they sought to obtain public funds for these schools, just as the public schools got. So now the Protestants passed state laws barring Catholics from getting public funding for their schools and they got court rulings barring Catholics from getting public funding for their schools. So now the Catholics were on their own and dependent on their own funding.Then starting in the late 1940's with a Jewish parent's lawsuit against Christianity being shoved down his child's throat (a most vile thing to any Jew, given two millennia of Christian atrocities against the Jews -- and also a blatant violation of the First Amendment, wouldn't you, Faith, agree? Or if not, the do please explain most eloquently why not), the Protestants' hold on the public school system was stripped away. Then in the 1980's and beyond, private Christian schools repeatedly tried to obtain public funds for their schools and at every turn they were frustrated by the very same laws and court decisions that they had instituted against the Catholics.Gotta love it when a plan comes together like that!{* FOOTNOTE:
In basic training when our Training Instructor (TI) was finished assigning Protestant and Catholic leaders to march those segments of our flight off to chapel on Sundays, he asked if he had missed anybody and a lone hand went up. "What else is there?", he barked out. "I'm Jewish.", came the answer.
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Right, that's the excuse for eliminating Christianity altogether from the schools, which I along with many others consider a violation of the original intent of the amendment, an interpretation which would have come as a complete shock to the original Christians of the nation who stupidly believed it promoted Christianity in the schools and certainly protected their children from alien views.

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So, even you know that what you said wasn't true. And what you are describing essentially sets Christianity up as the official religion of the USA which is EXACTLY the sort of thing that Madison and Jefferson DIDN'T want.

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Now we have a sort of secularist religion being taught to our children which undermines Christianity but it's not called a religion so that's OK according to the secularist mindset. I really don't care how you rationalize all this, I don't think it reflects the intent of the amendment, I hate it and want out from under it.

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In other words the schools are following the intent of the first Amendment. Religion is left as a private matter instead of being a government matter as you want.

I used to accept all that stuff about letting all religions have equal rights. I've since learned that all that means is that the original Protestant Christianity has been undermined and lost, the very founding inspiration of the country that was shared by the vast majority even in the time of the Revolutionary war era Founders.As I recall, there was at least one Protestant voice raised against the very idea of public schools BECAUSE it would erode the faith by compromising with all the other ideologies, A A Hodge I think or another Hodge, it's been a while. There cannot possibly have been any desire whatever to dilute the original faith of the Protestants but somehow the way our institutions are now interpreted that is exactly what happened over the last century or two.I strongly wish that the Protestant inspiration of this nation had been better preserved by our institutions, as its loss is the cause of all our problems and this is of course why the topic of secession or splitting the nation appeals to me so much.I recently learned of this document, The Rights of the Colonists written by Samuel Adams in 1772. I haven't studied the whole thing but I wish the part I quote here had been taken seriously by the framers of the Constitution: This was the general view of the Catholic Church in those days in England as well as the Colonies, a subversive institution that should not be given any power within the state because it seeks only its own power and the subjugation of others, especially the hated Protestants. The doctrines of Islam are just as subversive. But today it is considered "intolerant" to prohibit such subversive ideologies, an obvious recipe for civil suicide I would think, but no, it's those who think this you'll yell at.

OK, I'll hold you to that. Though, yes, one government over one territory does make infinitely more sense. Though there are many more questions. Of course, that would assume that the Blue territories would cooperate with the newly founded Reds. Where are your guarantees? Without those guarantees, your idea is worthless.We had something similar in Orange County. At the outbreak of WWII, all Japanese-Americans were interned in concentration camps and their properties and businesses were impounded by the government. After the war, "reparations" were made. The Santa Ana River is listed as one of the worst rivers for flooding west of the Continental Divide and so the Army Corps of Engineers has constructed an impressive flood control system on the river. Before that, the river had flooded many times, leaving the area known as Fountain Valley a depository from those floods, filled with sandy soil that is not good for farming. So that is what we gave the Japanese-Americans for "restitution". So those Japanese farmers made that poor soil flourish ("fuck you, white man!"). Then the city governments decided that they could make more money by planting houses instead of crops, so they started taxing the Japanese-American farmers out of business.But would the Blue farmers and businessmen be able to do as well? A farmer who had prime farming land that he had inherited from his family many generations back is suddenly forced to move to rocky mountainous land? And a business depends on its clientele, which it builds over the years. My father was a general contractor. One of the things he taught me was that a business, such as a restaurant, will take two to four years to start to show a profit. Even if a business only moves across the street, it will lose a large part of its clientele. So suddenly and arbitrarily you require a business to relocate, you think think that shouldn't be any problem? They've been considered. They won't work.

Yes and no. I don't know about Madison but Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Franklin and even Paine during the period of the Revolutionary War, all very strongly espoused the maintenance of Christian morality in the country. At first it didn't seem like there should be a problem with eliminating state churches, but the idea among Christians seemed to be mostly that it was to prevent the suppression of other Protestant denominations, not give completely other religions equal status.Christians have been told for decades now that the country WAS originally inspired to be Christian and it is possible to point to many who said something along those lines over the years, although there is also the point of view you espouse.I think it's taken a long time for it to sink in that the pre-Constitution country was unabashedly Christian and could not possibly have wanted to abandon that, though some were deceived into thinking the Constitution with its amendments preserved that character of the nation. There were a few who raised the alarm even in that day saying that the Christians had been betrayed by the Deists and Unitarians and Enlightenment men who wrote the Constitution, but those voices got lost over time. Some today still think the Constitution defines the country as Christian. I've come to realize it doesn't and agree with those who warned that it didn't even in its own time.I definitely do NOT believe there was ever ANY idea that religion was to be just a "private matter," not in the amendment or even in the minds of the FOunders. No, I do not. The amendment prohibits the prohibiting of the free exercise of religion and that certainly does not imply keeping it to oneself.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Since you refuse to consider any of this in good faith, the conversation is over.

Instead of assuming the worst about my motivations and how all this would necessarily play out according to your most jaundiced imagination, why not consider the various problems and look for solutions to them? I'm arguing this in good faith, looking for GOOD solutions for ALL concerned, not trying to cheat anybody out of anything. Your insinuations are disgusting.

Well, shouldn't you consider that that "original Protestant Christianity" is deserving of being "undermined and lost"? Especially since your own particular Christianity is of later origin? And since the "founding inspiration of the country" is not your own particular flavor of Christianity, but rather something more derived from the Enlightenment? Assuming that the Revolutionary Period common Christianity would have been identical to your own particular Christianity is rather obsurd, whouldn't you have to agree? Especially considering the many new aspects to your theology that post-dates the Revolution? Archibald Alexander Hodge? Cannot find at the moment anything about public education. Though your appeal to "Protestants" continues to imply some kind of uniformity that simply does not exist in any specific manner. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Oscar? Which means "What the frak, over?". Which means that that makes no actual sense whatsoever.From the Declaration of Independence, we are talking about the Rights of Man and not about the Divine Rights of Kings. That's what makes Jefferson's document so revolutionary. From the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America:

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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

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which in the "secular humanist" Radical Religious Right (RRR) rhetorics of the 1980's was "secular humanism" at its worst.So then just what precisely are you referring to? Yes, the sentiment against Catholics was strong in colonial times. And it was strong throughout the 19th century. And it was still strong up until 1960 when we elected a Catholic President. So what?Does the First Amendment only apply to your own particularly approved of brand of Christians? Or does it apply to all Americans?