"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
For those of you who were educationally abused in our public school system, the above is the First Amendment. It may very well be the most important sentence ever written in the English language, since it's the backbone of American society. It guarantees the rest of the Constitution. No other part of the Bill of Rights has ever generated the debates the First Amendment has, despite being crystal clear.
What the uninformed do not understand about the First Amendment is that it is a negative right. It does not guarantee what you can do, it only guarantees what can't be done to you by the Big Mommy Regime. Now this may be news to the 2+2=5 Progressivevik crowd and to idiots like Pete Stark (Commie-CA), but there are limits to what Big Mommy is allowed to do.
However, there is plenty states can do, like, oh, I don't know, forbidding mosques being built at Ground Zero.
The First Amendment limits what Congress can and can't do about religion, but it leaves the door wide open for the Dystopia known as New York to stop the Cordoba Project dead in its tracks. By a strict reading of the First Amendment, you'll notice that the words "state government" or "local government" are curiously absent. That means the state (or more appropriately the city) of New York can act to prevent the mosque from being built two blocks from Ground Zero. This would not violate the First Amendment since they wouldn't be forbidding the building of all mosques, just that one in particular. (For bleeding imbeciles like Ed Schultz, all cities and towns in the US have little things called "zoning laws" that are designed to keep inappropriate buildings away from each other. It's why we don't have nudie bars next to preschools.)
The moral to this story is this: Michael Bloomberg, grow a set. You're the mayor of the largest city in the world. You have a responsibility to apply the law as it's written, not the way you want it to be. Is this Cordoba hubbaloo a test of our Constitution ? ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY! Will you pass the test, Mike ?
God help us all.
1 comment:
Well said. In fact, a number of states actually had official religions at the time of the Constitution. Though this does not endorse restriction of religious practice, it shows that the First Amendment was not meant to apply to the states.
There is a larger issue in my opinion. Originally, I did not oppose the mosque/cultural center because of the right to private property. However, when the mosque went through a long and rigorous approval process (zoning, historical status for the old building), I realized that private property was not an issue. Any other building in that location would have required approval, as well.
While the mosque has gotten approval, the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church that was destroyed on 9/11 has not yet gotten approval from the Port Authority to rebuild.
So, if you want to see this as a freedom of religion issue, why hasn't the Greek Orthodox Church gotten approval but the mosque has? It is my opinion, and should be the opinion of all sensible people, that a church destroyed on 9/11 be given equal if not preferential treatment to a new religious institution, whether it be Muslim or any other.
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