For What It’s Worth

For What It's Worth is the title of a Buffalo Springfield song that begins, “There’s something happening here, But what it is ain’t exactly clear.”  The refrain then states, “It’s time we stop, Hey, what’s that sound?  Everybody look, what’s going down.”

Buffalo Springfield from 1968

Perhaps now is the time for everyone to look at what’s going down.  Conservatives who will whip out a copy of the Second Amendment faster than Marshall Dillon could clear his holster, want to skip right over the First Amendment.  They will cherry-pick parts from the First that suit them but ignore the rest.  They will support free speech if it is their speech.  They love a free press if it is in line with conservative thinking.  The right of the people to peaceably assemble will be restricted to just white people assembling for conservative causes and the peaceful aspect of it be damned if they feel that violence is warranted.

Matt Dillon (James Arness) from the television show Gunsmoke

The part that they mostly ignore, skip over, and regularly try to regurgitate as something never intended by the writers of that Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  This has uniformly been interpreted to mean that the federal government is prevented from establishing an official religion.  The government may respect religion but not establish a religion.  It has been long accepted that this Establishment Clause bars any government support that would tend to establish any religion.  This would mean that the government is prohibited from sponsoring, providing financial support for, or active involvement in, religious activities.

Religious neutrality is at the core of the First Amendment and protects both believers and non-believers.  This would be inconvenient to those who would like to establish Christianity as the formal national religion.  In this regard, the First Amendment is “inconvenient” to those who advocate the governmental adoption of Jesus Christ as the spiritual leader of our country.  To “reinterpret” the meaning of the First Amendment, conservatives want to do an end-run around that pesky obstacle.  Their actions have sometimes been subtle but recently, they have become more forthright with their goals.

They want to control all three branches of government.  They denied President Obama his appointment to a vacancy on the Supreme Court claiming that one year was “too close” to a new election to even consider the matter.  They cited the “Thurmond Myth” like it was an official rule.  This allowed Donald Trump to later appoint three conservative Supreme Court justices; Jackson, Barrett, and Kavanaugh.  All three were supportive of some of the more extreme conservative religious values.  Despite denials to the contrary, once on the bench, they would use religion to influence decisions.

For abortion rights, the appointment of those three judges meant iacta alea estdie, the dice had been cast.  Those newly minted conservative appointees tipped the scales favoring Christian morality and Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey were both overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.  This was done, not with some new legal insight but by twisting the law in favor of a powerful minority.  I say minority because, while the numbers may vary a bit between polls, somewhere around 85% of Americans think abortion should not be made illegal in all circumstances.  50% think it should be legal in certain circumstances and 35% believe it should be legal in all circumstances.  But, like gun control, policymakers will contradict the will of the majority to placate a vocal and tenacious minority.

The conservatives are also using the education system to promote Christian values in our schools.  We have seen certain books banned that didn’t meet Christian standards.  We have also seen a starving of public-school funding through the diversion of tax dollars to private charter schools and some schools of parochial sponsorship.  Once underfunded public schools begin to falter, better-funded private charter schools can take their place.  Private and parochial schools won’t be so bothered with a pesky First Amendment when it comes to promoting Christianity.  This also allows them to “reinvent” history by only approving those books that make White people feel more comfortable when talking about topics like slavery, Jim Crow laws, and our past oppression of people of color.

Thomas Jefferson; the third president of the US; drafted the Declaration
of Independence; spent $15 on Lousianna Purchase

Thomas Jefferson stated that the First Amendment created “a wall of separation between church and State.”  This was from a letter he wrote to the Danbury Baptist Assn. on Jan 1, 1802.  This statement was quoted in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education where the SCOTUS said that this wall “must be kept high and impregnable.”  It went on to state that neither the Federal Government nor the state can set up a church, or pass laws that aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.  They confirmed that “no tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions.

Sherlock Holmes

It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to see how this ruling is being regularly violated by the newly emboldened White Christian nationalists and their elected stooges.  Using campaign donations and the voter support of their parishioners as a giant carrot, legislators will twist the First Amendment into a pretzel.  They will do this to satisfy the desire to impose Christian morality on all within our borders.

In their zeal to impose this Christian will, they will ignore the sins of their puppets.  By no stretch of anyone’s imagination is Donald Trump a religious man.  He is immoral, untrustworthy, and as un-Christian a person as you might ever meet, yet he will sing whatever tune the choir puts before him to achieve his own goals.  More dangerous still is Ron DeSantis, arguably the next presidential hopeful from the GOP camp.  He is imposing Christian morality on the citizens of Florida.  With teacher salaries just two up from the bottom, charter schools are his solution.

The White Christian nationalists use fear of reprisal to control the non-believers.  To get back to our musical lyrics, “Paranoia strikes deep, Into your life it will creep, It starts when you’re always afraid, Step out of line, the men come and take you away.”