[MLUG - DISCUSSION] "liberals" banning the bible???!!

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Here's a nice article by a legal scholar from Wake Forest.  --Mike


http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_ColumnistArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031778265865&path=!opinion&s=1037645509163

Winston-Salem (NC) Journal
October 1, 2004

Taken on Faith
GUEST COLUMNIST

By Michael Kent Curtis

According to The New York Times, the Republican National Committee admits 
that it mailed leaflets to voters in several states claiming that 
"liberals" will ban the Bible if they are elected. The mailing is part of 
the Republican effort to elect George W. Bush. It is an insult to people 
of faith.

These Republican leaders seem to think people of faith are ignorant - so 
ignorant that even the most baseless and outrageous falsehoods will fool 
them.

Of course, no one advocates banning the Bible. Such a law would never 
pass. If it did, "liberal" and "conservative" judges, supported by years 
of clear legal precedent, would join in holding the law unconstitutional.

The First and 14th amendments to the Constitution protect freedom of 
speech and freedom of religion from suppression by government, but the 
court was slow to enforce these protections. Finally, between the 1930s 
and the 1960s, Supreme Court justices appointed by "liberal" presidents 
were leaders in making these protections effective bulwarks for free 
speech and religious liberty.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt described himself as a "liberal." He 
brought us Social Security for the elderly, public-works jobs for the 
unemployed who built national treasures such as the Blue Ridge Parkway and 
the Riverwalk in San Antonio.

He brought us the G.I. Bill of Rights that for the first time made a 
college education broadly available to people from the middle and working 
classes, and a progressive income tax that imposed the heaviest burden on 
those best able to pay. He came up with the minimum wage, a federal law 
that prohibited companies from working young children for long hours in 
factories and mines, and a law that secured the right of workers to form a 
union.

Roosevelt also appointed "liberal" justices to the Supreme Court. These 
"liberal" justices and "liberal" justices on the Warren Court decided 
cases requiring states to obey the guarantees of the Bill of Rights - 
including guarantees of free speech and religious liberty. Beginning in 
the 1930s and 1940s, the justices decided cases that protected the right 
to distribute religious pamphlets, to go door to door seeking converts, 
and to preach in public. In 1943, the court held that Jehovah's Witness 
children had a free-speech right not to be forced to recite the pledge of 
allegiance, a pledge they believed violated the Bible's injunction against 
worshiping graven images. In that case, the court held that in the United 
States, government may not impose religious or political orthodoxy.

As the court has held, the First Amendment means that the state cannot 
choose particular religious beliefs and impose them on citizens or 
students in public schools. Similarly, the government cannot ban the Bible 
or other religious books.

George W. Bush has given the nation huge tax cuts that go overwhelmingly 
to the wealthiest Americans. The effect of this huge upper-class tax cut 
is not only to concentrate more and more of the nation's wealth in fewer 
and fewer hands. Its long-term effect is also to starve the government of 
resources needed to protect basic programs such as public education, 
public colleges with tuition affordable for middle- and working-class 
families, Social Security and Medicare. It will make expanding access to 
affordable health care nearly impossible. Of course, the Republican 
leaders opposed Social Security when Franklin Roosevelt proposed it. 
Republican leaders opposed Medicare when Lyndon Johnson proposed it.

The long-term effect of the Bush program will be to move the nation away 
from our ideal of a democratic nation with expanding opportunity and 
reasonable security for all toward an aristocracy of wealth. One can make 
arguments for the radical changes implicit in the Bush program. But 
instead we get bait and switch, like that identified by Thomas Frank in 
What's the Matter With Kansas. Vote to protect the Bible from imaginary 
liberals who plan to ban it: Get more mercury in the fish, a slow 
destruction of Medicare and Social Security, higher tuition at public 
colleges, a shift of more of the tax burden to the middle and working 
classes, no meaningful help with rising health-care costs, and all the 
rest.

The claim that "liberals" plan to ban the Bible is very important - but 
not for what it tells us about "liberals." It is important for what it 
tells us about the character of those who made this unfounded charge.

   ---

Curtis teaches free speech, constitutional law and legal and 
constitutional history at Wake Forest University.
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