Secular extremists and stealth socialists are America's subverters, NOT America's elite

By Michael Gaynor

Secular extremists and stealth socialists are NOT my idea of elites. They are grave dangers to the constitutional republic under God that the United States of America was created to be. Unfortunately, the connotation of the word elite is positive and people aspire to be part of the elite and to emulate them. The Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com/elite) defines the elite as "[a] group or class of persons or a member of such a group or class, enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status" and "[t]he best or most skilled members of a group: the football team's elite." But the elites about which Ms. Ingraham has passionately written and spoken for years are the antithesis of "the best" and "superior."

In Federalist No. 26 (December 22, 1787) (http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_12s17.html), Alexander Hamilton opined: "Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community require time to mature them for execution."

Hamilton was right about that, but that did not discourage the secular extremist or stealth socialist schemers. For centuries secular extremists tried to extend America's institutional separation of church and state into a complete separation of church and state, with no governmental references to God or public policy based on religious values, and stealth socialists rejected American exceptionalism and capitalism and tried to "fundamentally change" America from the land of individual opportunity into a Big Government socialist state.

The notion that America's Founders were not mostly very religious and instead were mostly secular extremists or deists is nonsensical. George Washington, president of the Constitutional Convention, described himself as "a humble agent of a favoring heaven" and said that God had marked the path "so plainly that I cannot mistake the way." James Madison, "father of the Constitution," wrote: "It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in the creation of the Constitution a finger of that Almighty Hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution." George Washington called the American Revolution "a miracle." And alleged deist Benjamin Franklin, in support of his proposal to invite clergymen to attend the Constitutional Convention sessions and offer daily prayer, stated: "In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered ... do we imagine we no longer need His assistance? . . . We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this ... I therefore beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberation be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business." (Franklin's motion was not passed because the Convention had no authority to acquire or disburse funds to pay ministers, who then were customarily paid, not because the Founders believed in complete separation of church and state.)

Unsurprisingly, the secular extremists failed for more than a century and a half after the First Amendment was adopted to impose a complete separation of church and state. For example, they tried but failed to end the military chaplaincy in the nineteenth century. But in 1947 the United States Supreme Court suddenly abandoned the constitutional path to the delight of the secular extremists, by declaring that the First Amendment mandated governmental neutrality between religion and irreligion.

Openly avowed socialists never came close to attaining political power in America and so perennnial socialist presidential candidate astutely observed that socialism had to achieved steathily in America.

Thomas: "The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." (Check the Princeton yearbook of Obama's first United States Supreme Court appointee, Sonia Sotomayor, and see that she selected that quote for inclusion.)

In 2008, to the delight of both secular extremists and stealth socialists, Barack Obama, backed by ACORN, SEIU, La Raza, George Soros et al,, won the presidency election, by promising hope and change and running to the center. Since then, he's been pursuing a socialist agenda, for example, Obamacare, while pretending otherwise.

Obama's election was a huge victory for the "elites" about whom nationally syndicated radio talk show host and Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham wrote in Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN Are Subverting America (2003).

Ms. Ingrahm: "Elites have hijacked the Constitution and distorted it to support their campaign of discrimination against religion. These radical elite views have no basis in the Constitution and no basis in our history. Instead, they seek to transform a right to practice religion freely into a so-called right to be 'free from religion.' In their view, any discussion of religion is an establishment of religion, even when the expression is not by the government but by private citizens. Any exposure to religion at all, to religious expressions, to religious ideas, to religious texts is a violation of rights. Exposure to religion in the free marketplace of ideas, in the elite view, amounts to coercion, which equals establishment, which must be crushed. So they must shut down the marketplace of ideas — at least when it comes to religious expression — and ban religious belief from the public square. The free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution must give way to the elite vision of a Godless America."

TRUE!

Ironically, it was soon after World War II that the United States Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment meant that the United States must be neutral between religion and irreligion.

During World War II, the United States wisely turned to, not from, God. Recently, I walked by the shop of a 91-year old barber in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York (open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday). That man is a veteran who displays in his shop window a poster of "Private Joe Louis" (aka the heavyweight champion of the world), dressed in military uniform, saying "We will do our part...and we will win because we are on God's side."

To secular extremists, trying to be on God's side is a bad thing. About three score years after that poster was issued, Protestant theologian Martin Marty charged that "Bush's God talk will set the tinderbox that is the Muslim world on fire" and claimed, "The problem isn't with Bush's sincerity, but with his evident conviction that he is doing God's will."

The Americans who overcame the Depression and won World War II didn't think like that. (And after Hitler invaded Stalin's Soviet Union, America's Communists suddenly were FOR America fighting Hitler and winning!)

Ms. Ingraham: "Even elite icon Franklin D. Roosevelt took God's existence as a given and made reference to our national commitment to Him. In his 1942 State of the Union Address, for example, FDR spoke of Nazi Germany's godlessness compared with America's belief in God: 'They know that victory for us means victory for religion. And they could not tolerate that. The world is too small to provide adequate "living room" for both Hitler and God. In proof of that, the Nazis have now announced a plan for enforcing their new German pagan religion throughout the world — the plan by which the Holy Bible and the Cross of Mercy would be displaced by Mein Kampf and the swastika and the naked sword.' FDR knew — as did Hitler — that victory for America meant victory for religion, victory for the Holy Bible, victory for the 'Cross of Mercy.'"

But that victory was short-lived. In 1947, in Everson v. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court disregarded history and misconstrued the Constitution at the urging of the secular extremist minority and the expense of the overwhelming religious majority in ruling that neither federal nor state governments "can pass laws which aid...all religions...." It set in motion the process of making secular extremism or agnosticism the national religion.

In so ruling, the Court presumptuously substituted its personal view for the views of those who founded the United States, wrote and ratified the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, and adopted the First Amendment and misused a much-quoted letter in which Thomas Jefferson had described the First Amendment as "building a wall of separation between church and state."

The First Amendment did not create a wall between church and state. It prohibited Congress from making a law "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The kind of separation that was intended is suggested by Pierre L'Enfant's plan for a national cathedral. In 1791, Congress selected the site to be the capital of the United States. George Washington, previously President of the Constitutional Convention and then President of the United States, then commissioned L'Enfant to design an overall plan for the future seat of government. That plan included a church "intended for national purposes, such as public prayer, thanksgiving, funeral orations, etc., and assigned to the special use of no particular Sect of denomination, but equally open to all." The Founders and Framers favored governmental neutrality among denominations, but they never expected government to be barred from supporting religion generally to please a tiny Godless minority.

Traditional nonsectarian acknowledgements of God by federal or state government, such as the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" on United States currency, the recitation of a voluntary nondenominational prayer in a public school, and the display of a Ten Commandments monument in both federal and state courthouses, were intended to be constitutionally permissible, and coercive or sectarian governmental acts that establish a religion or prohibit or penalize the free exercise of religion (or personal choice NOT to be religious) were intended to be unconstitutional.

In 2004, the elites lost: President George W. Bush was re-elected and Senator John Kerry, the elites' candidate, was rejected. Ohio, the key state called "God's country," was won by President Bush, to the consternation of the elites.

In his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush had infuriated the elites by declaring that "the liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, but God's gift to humanity."

America's Founders would agree.

Ms. Ingraham noted: "This statement provoked an outcry among the elites, and the chief White House speechwriter was directly challenged by a reporter as to whether he understood why such a statement would be offensive. This reaction illustrates just how far elites have come in their extremist contention that belief in God has no place in our public life and our national discourse. The long-accepted truth that rights are God-given, a self-evident truth enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, may no longer be uttered by an American president because — according to the elites — such ideas are offensive to Americans. Our sacred truths have become 'hate speech.' Karen Yourish, writing in Newsweek about Bush's statement, warned that it 'raised a red flag for supporters of separation of church and state.'"

Secular extremism would have raised a red flag for America's Founders, whom secular extremists misrepresent for their own purposes.

Ms. Ingraham:

"The modern elite hostility to religion, and in particular to religious expression in public life, contradicts American history and tradition dating back to our founding. In our Declaration of Independence, our founders made clear that the rights they were declaring were God-given, and could not be legitimately taken away by kings or governments of any kind: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and they they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'"

"Today — in the elite worldview — the Declaration of Independence would be an unconstitutional violation of 'separation of church and state' and an offensive expression of religious belief by government official. It directly contradicts all of the modern elite inventions: (1) that there is no God; (2) that in any event He is irrelevant; (30 that man is the supreme being; (4) that our choices are unconstrained by objective moral law and cannot be judged; (5) that our rights come from nowhere but the will of man; (6) that these rights come without obligations or responsibilities; (7) that we can 'define' right and wrong, subjectively, without acknowledging God's law, and it is logically impossible to do otherwise; (8) that belief in God is irrational and dangerous to democracy, and has no place in our national life; and (9) that any mention of God in public life or as the basis for law or government action is irresponsible, illegitimate, and unconstitutional. These, of course, are all strange and false elite concoctions that were rejected by America's founders."

YES...but in 1947 the United States Supreme Court disregarded the amendment provisions prescribed in the Constitution and effectively amended the First Amendment while purporting to follow it!

It is secular extremism and judicial activism that are dangerous.

Ms. Ingraham: "The bottom line is that when elites eliminate God in our national life, they eliminate the source of our rights and, at the same time, destroy their security. Elites remove the rock supporting our rights and instead seek to place the security of our liberty on the shifting sands of subjectivism. If no truth is possible, then 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' cannot be self-evident and true rights granted by the hand of God and demanding protection as a requirement of justice. This is the fundamental irrationality of the elite position."

It's fundamentally un-American too.

John Quincey Adams, on July 4, 1837, 61st anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

"Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day?

"Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the Progress of the Gospel dispensation?

"Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth?

"That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfillment of the prophecies announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Savior and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets 600 years before."

Secular extremists and stealth socialists are NOT my idea of elites. They are grave dangers to the constitutional republic under God that the United States of America was created to be. Unfortunately, the connotation of the word elite is positive and people aspire to be part of the elite and to emulate them. The Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com/elite) defines the elite as "[a] group or class of persons or a member of such a group or class, enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status" and "[t]he best or most skilled members of a group: the football team's elite." But the elites about which Ms. Ingraham has passionately written and spoken for years are the antithesis of "the best" and "superior."

© Michael Gaynor