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Category Archives: Supreme Court

Have We Been Deluded?

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Patti Wells

I’m going to quit talking about this soon (maybe!), but I recently heard a news personality say the first amendment was “freedom from religion.” See what I mean from my last post? We must get back to what the founders meant, not what the court’s have changed the Constitution to mean. One more time, the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This is not freedom from religion, but freedom from Congress’s establishing a religion or interfering with individual religious exercises. How much clearer can this be? How do we expect justices to correctly interpret a 2000 page bill if they can’t get this one right?

The Bible says Satan “deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.” [2 Thess 2:9-12]

Have we been deluded? Consider the following:
  • The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock with little more than their Geneva Bibles and their Calvinistic teachings that church and civil government should be separate and that man can serve God in any area of life. They knew first-hand the tyrrany and persecution of a state run religion, and they realized the importance of education in achieving their goal. Toward that end, they passed the Old Deluder Act in 1647, recognizing “the chief project of that old deluder, Satan” was to keep people from learning the true meaning of the original Scriptures.
  • The New England Primer, published by Benjamin Harris in 1690, was used by students into the 19th century. The Primer used the Bible to teach reading. Note the content of the 1877 edition, especially the questions at the end.
  • Upon completion of the Constitution, the Second Continental Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance off 1787 to determine how new states should be added to the union. One of the its stated purposes was to “extend the principles of civil and religious liberty.” [Section 13]. “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” [Section 14, Article 3]. The Congress saw the need for schools to teach children religion, morality and knowledge, in that order. They knew that citizens educated in Biblical principles were necessary for good government. “When the godly are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked are in power, they groan.” [Prov 29:2]

Benjamin Franklin wrote, “History will also afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion…and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern.”

Have we been deluded? Have we listened to the lie long enough to believe it? What do you think?

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What Happened to the Supreme Court?

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Patti Wells

The recent Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act and the subsequent discussion of factions of the court cause me pause. What happened to impartial jurists who rule on a law’s constitutionality based on the US Constitution? Isn’t the reason that justices serve for life, unless they retire or are impeached, to protect the court from political decisions?

According to CBS News, those inside the court claim that Chief Justice Roberts, unlike other conservative justices, “pays attention to media coverage…he is also sensitive to how the Court is perceived by the public.” Though we may never know what influenced his decision, it appears that Roberts may have bowed to outside political forces from the media to protect the reputation of his court. If this is indeed the reason he changed his original view, what does this have to do with the Constitution?

We have moved so far from the original intent of the court with liberal and conservative wings that it is no longer trusted by many Americans to do what is was instituted to do. The latest Rasmussen Reports shows that a majority of Americans believe “the high court is too liberal and that court justices pursue their own agendas rather than acting impartially.”

One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, spoke to the situation that we now find ourselves in:

 Changes in the constitution ought not be lightly made; but when corruption has long infected the legislative, and executive powers: when these pervert the liberties of the people; if THEY tamely submit to such misgovernment, we may fairly conclude, the bulk of that people to be ripe for slavery.

Chief Justice Roberts rightly stated that the commerce clause has been wrongly used to justify the overreach of the federal government. He was correct that there are consequences to elections. But, he rewrote the law to arrive at a convoluted justification for his decision. Furthermore, in so doing, he instituted a precedent that allows the federal government to tax any behavior it deems unacceptable, a giant step toward totalitarianism.

We must pay close attention to the people we choose to represent us. As we have seen many times, we cannot always believe the words of candidates, or their opponents for that matter. Instead, we must look carefully at their records. We cannot allow others to make these choices for us, because at this time in history we are “ripe for slavery.” We must not shirk our responsibilities as citizens. We must not “tamely submit to misgovernment.”

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