Abstract
In fact, the government is lacking in many areas as social injustice in recent years has increased. The social crime rate has increased, and that causes moral decline, and surely that was not the dream of the founding fathers of America.
Introduction
We know as the 20th century finished, and the whole world wishes to achieve knowledge from the USA that the ethical and political autonomy that comes from capitalism and free organization is the main top and dynamic way to classify civilization. So at the same time, we in America are found that moral decline is not enough to sustain healthy, stimulating custom (Lemay, pp. 11-45).
As a result, we are learning the tough way that a self-governing state must comprise self-regulating entities, and a breakdown in the ethical fabric of society has awful consequences (Lemay, pp. 11-45).
Examining the thought of the American founding fathers on any subject is more than just an academic exercise. It is part of the process that citizens of the United States go through in framing public policy and making law. We seem even to have a national commitment to capitalizing on the term “Founding Fathers” so as to celebrate their near-divine status. If somehow we can just implement their ideas, we think, everything will be okay. But life in America today is much different than in the founding era, and we would make a mistake if we adhered too rigidly to the founders’ ideas. Nevertheless, their views are usually the starting point for a discussion on many subjects, and in most cases, a relevant and important starting point (Lemay, pp. 11-45).
Among the principal subjects about whom we seek to know the founders’ intentions is the relationship between religion and government. This is because there are so many pressing questions that confront us today for which we need help: the relevance of religion to political campaigns, the place of religion in lawmaking and public policymaking, whether the state should support religion (e.g., through supporting private religious schools under voucher programs), whether we should protect a seemingly infinite number of religions, whether the state should itself take a partisan position on religious questions, whether the nation should declare itself to be a Christian nation, whether students should be permitted to pray in the public schools, and on and on. All of these questions have risen to a new level of importance in our own day; it seems because we sense that our nation is in moral decline. The tragic shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and other public schools around the nation have elevated to a fever pitch the sense that we must take action to re-establish our moral foundations. We begin looking around, asking, what can we do? Can’t we do something? Consequently, and quite naturally, we ask, what did the founding fathers have to say on the subject?
Discussion
Present bush administration and founding father
Bush has presented the concept of freedom in two methods, and he has preserved the awareness that Republicans are more economically libertarian as compare to Democrats, and he has waged war against a distant movement with unique totalitarian principles. In fact, it still leaves his adversaries with plenty of shells, such as his hypocritical protectionism and development of government, and his delusion that liberal democracy can be easily forced on Arab societies, But his invocation of “freedom” has an impression of consistency, and, like it or not, it reverberates with many voters (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
Here is no lack of things to criticize in the current administration. Corrupt, mendacious, useless, autocratic, reckless, aggressive to science, and pathologically limited, the Bush administration has dissatisfied even many conservatives as it is not clear what is to be gained by evaluating these vices as the desired upshots of some logical supporting philosophy, especially if it requires the implausible buffoon planned by Lakoff. Nor does it seem gainful for the Democrats to brand themselves as the festivity that loves lawyers, taxes, and administration regulation on belief, and that does not suppose in free markets or entity obedience. Lakoff’s reliance on the power of euphemism to make these positions pleasant to American voters is not justified by current cognitive discipline or brain science, and I would not advise any politician to dispose of the usual reason and logic for Lakoff’s “superior wisdom.”
The most recent polls have come out the supporting philosopher and last week, and President Bush’s endorsement ratings have gone down another 3 percent, and In fact, he’s so disliked that the Democrats are going to have to work in fact, really tough to screw up this election. If they take the thoughts of George Lakoff seriously, they just might be successful (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
While I was in a Growing age, I was taught that communism leads to dictatorship and capitalism to the democratic system, and as we’ve seen from the Bush management, the latter proposal does not for all time hold. At the same time, as free markets tend to democratize a society, loose capitalism invariably leads to communal control of the administration (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
These days, more than ever, it is grave for American citizens to recognize the disparity between the free-market capitalism that made our nation great and the corporate cronyism that is now humiliating our political process, choking democracy, and devouring our countrywide treasures (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
On the contrary, I would like to explain that the view of personal nature that is shown in the assertion of self-determination is taken more from the Bible and our founding fathers that that examination is in disparity with two of the three papers given in class. The Biblical perspective of man is that he was created by a divine Creator with a specific plan in mind and made in the image of his Creator. Men are entitled to the pursuit of happiness but also required by the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God to be the just attendants of the land and of the governed. The Nature of man is sinful so that they must be governed, but those who govern must be accountable to God just as the founding fathers were. God is Sovereign over men as the final Judge. The Declaration of Independence is a document co-written by the founding fathers in order to declare their independence of the Crown of Britain, and they believed this to be within their rights endowed upon them by their Creator, Believing that they were under religious persecution and certain forms of ‘absolute tyranny’ from Britain the founding fathers felt it was necessary to break the bonds that connected them to the monarchy. Not only did they feel they had the God-given right to do that, but they also based their arguments on the workings of governments of the time and contemporary theories of government of writers and political-social thinkers of their time. The three writings s that were given to us in class, Politics by Aristotle, Of Commonwealth by Thomas Hobbes, and Of the Limits of Government by John Locke, are all very interesting writings s on how the government is supposed to function. Although the founding fathers probably read all three of these writings s and similar philosophical thought went into the writing of The Declaration of Independence, I think that the only writings really used by the founding fathers was Of the Limits of Government by John Locke. Unfortunately, the version of this writing given to us in class was truncated and consisted actually of two different writings s written by John Locke as Thomas Hobbes [1588-1679] is the founder of the theories of Hoboism, which calls on absolute monarchy in order to deal with what he calls inherently selfish, aggrandizing nature of humanity.
The founding fathers saw the deliberate purpose of a Creator in nature, where Aristotle sees mankind on par with plants and animals. Aristotle gives details that we have a natural desire to leave behind a picture of ourselves and as Man is an electrochemical piece of equipment that operates simply on what happens around him and, like an animal, finds a suitable mate and joins himself to her to make extra offspring of himself. Subsequent to this kind of idea, governments join themselves together just for the purpose of making war, later making treaties, and in conclusion making additional governments to further this very industrious cycle (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
The men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ of Commonwealth could only be related to the thinking of the founding fathers in a most basic way to their ideals. Thomas Hobbes also seems to be a syllogistic thinker like Aristotle because he never thinks above elemental, getting his most basic logical conclusions from observations of nature and number two, for thinking along philosophical lines that don’t agree with the Biblical perspective. Hobbes sees man as an elevated creature capable of self-governing, self-evolving conduct. Hobbes doesn’t understand the Biblical view of fallen man, ‘the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?. Hobbes also not succeeds to see the need for a partition of powers in Government when he talks about a total monarchy and the Commonwealth is the explanation to management and the idea of separation of powers is a biblical idea that comes from Isaiah, ‘For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king. This is the system that our forefathers set up, and I’m sure glad that Clinton is not my Judge, Lawgiver, and King all in one. Baron Charles Louis Joseph de Secondat Montesquieu [1689-1755] a French professor, author, and legal philosopher who wrote the book ‘Spirit of the Laws’ (which greatly impacted the American government and was the source most frequently quoted by the Founding Fathers, next to the Bible_) on the subject of separating of powers in relation to human nature wrote, Nor is their liberty if the power of judging is not separated from legislative power and from executive power. If it [the control of reviewer] were joined to lawmaking power, the power over life and autonomy of the citizens would be subjective, for the judge would be the congressperson, and if it were joined to the executive power, the judge could have the strength of an oppressor. All would be lost if the similar…body of major men…exercised this three supremacy Also in comparison to the thought of monarchy and commonwealth of Thomas Hobbes, Montesquieu wrote, ‘The morality of Christianity, acutely engraved on the heart, would be a great deal more controlling than the false honor of monarchies, than the humane merits of republics, or the servile fear of dictatorial states’ (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
John Locke’s view of personal nature and politics greatly unfair to the founding fathers in many other writings, counting, and the Constitution of the United States. In his discourse Of Civil Government’ Locke writes, ‘For Men being all the Workmanship of one invincible, and substantially wise Maker they are his Property Those Grants God made of the World to Adam and to Noah, and his Sons…has given the Earth to the Children of Men, given it to Mankind in widespread… also given them reason make use of it to the best gain of Life and expediency.
In fact, the Americans have forever-distinct true freedom as an environment in which one may resist evil and do what is right, dignified, and good devoid of fear of retaliation. It is the being they’re of sprite tempered with kindness, and it is the rule of law based on basic moral realism that is devoid of difficulty understood and fairly and professionally managed (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
The topic of this essay is morality in America, in particular, what the founders envisioned linking to the role that the government should play in making America a fit and moral place in which to exist and the key question focused on is the amount to which the founders thought the administration should be an ethical agent, or whether morality-building and character-building should be left to the personal sphere, thus leaving us to depend on families, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and other religious and private institutions (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
There is nowadays a pervasive sense across America that we are in problem ethically. Almost everyone seems to think that we are in an unparalleled moral free-fall from where we were even twenty-five or thirty years ago. Separation rates are up, the offense is up, use of alcohol and drugs is on the rise, adolescent pregnancy rates are high, students carry guns to school and from time to time use them on their classmates, student test scores are not what they should be, and on and on. Numerous want to tell us that these problems are directly related to the Supreme Court’s decisions favoring the separation of church and state. They would point to key consequences such as Engel v. Vitale (1962) so as to prohibited teachers from leading prayer in public school classrooms. Indeed the Engel choice hit America like a thunderbolt in 1962. Senator Sam Ervin spoke for a lot of Americans when he said, “Good Lord, the Supreme Court has kicked God out of the community schools” (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
That was tracked by the 1963 decision in Abington v. Schempp, in which the Court said that daily Bible reading and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in the community schools is banned. In 1980, in Stone v. Graham, the Court ruled that posting the Ten Directives in public school classrooms is also a religious act that violates the Establishment Clause of the First Alters. In all of this assessment, the Court was fundamentally saying that government should stay out of confidence and leave religion to the people, that government interfering in religion is an infringement on the citizens’ right to expand their own religious ideas apart from government influence and interfering. So in the 1970s and 1980s, the Supreme Court issued a number of decisions that made it very tricky for the government at any level to monetarily assist private religious schools, yet again holding that such funding would disobey the Establishment Clause.
Did these decisions generate the current moral disaster? If we visit the local Christian bookstore, we will have no complexity finding books that take this position. So far, while these decisions may have made some input to the current ethical decline, it is almost certainly somewhat naive to blame all on the Supreme Court. There have been a number of communities and civilizing forces at work in the last forty years or so that have shared to what is perhaps a very real moral turndown. The greed that followed the victory in WWII, the rights rebellion of the 1960s (women’s, children’s, minorities, criminals, etc.), the Vietnam War, the increase of sexual category and violence themes in the media, particularly television and the movie industry, ‘all have been major contributors to the searing of civilization that we have witnessed in current decades.
The question really comes down to how a nation-best provides for the moral foundation of its citizens. Is there not something we can do to tweak the nation’s superstructure that can put us on a more virtuous path? Should we reverse the decisions alluded to above? Have we vastly misconstrued what the Constitution says? Let us consider some of the founders’ thoughts on this subject because they actually considered this very issue in some detail (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
History shows that even our forefathers worried about prayer. Not just in government but in schools as well. Ben Franklin took a stand to bring prayer to the attention o those at the Constitutional Convention. He stood up during the convention and said, “At the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had our daily prayers in the room for divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered”¦ and have we forgotten this powerful Friend?” (Ivan, pp. 177-189). Our country was founded on the prayers of our forefathers and the citizens of that time.
Supporters of school in prayer find a powerful correlation between the decisions made in 1963 and a moral turn down because that time and Supporters feel that because students in schools have not been trained what prayer is or how to pray in school and that is the cause for the dramatic rise in these figures and Former Secretary of Education William Bennett exposed in his educational indexes that between 1960 and 1990 there was a stable, ethical decline. Through this period, divorce doubled, teenage pregnancy went up 200%, youngster suicide increased 300%, child abuse reached an all-time high, violent crime went up 500%, and abortion amplified 1000% (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
So we can say that Follower states that the mainstream should rule. The public estimation has powerfully contrasted the Supreme Courts’ conclusion in 1967. Generally, problems have been taken again and again in excess of the years expose that the ordinary Americans people will always organize the prayer in public schools, but Supporters dispute that it is unbalanced to stop the greater part will be helping the minority.
The Supreme Court had asked a lot regarding this issue, but we know many people claim that the Constitution will always be in the interest of the prayer in the school area.
However, there are many groups that stand behind the court’s rulings. The ACLU is one of the loudest voices in the fight to keep our school’s prayer-free. Other groups joining them are the Anti Deflation League, American Atheists, American Jewish Congress, and Americans for Separation of Church and State (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
The founding fathers were genuinely concerned about creating an environment that was conducive to the cultivation of values, of moral development, and not a framework that just turned everyone loose to pursue their own self-interest. It seems clear that within the superstructure they conceived, they believed that the Constitution’s provisions separating church and state would contribute significantly to the overall goal of providing for the nation’s moral foundations. But the problem was complex for them, just as it is for us. Many of the founders were astute readers of history. In examining the history of Western civilization to arrive at the best possible government framework, they were basically drawing on a history that was very much impacted by Christianity. Yet, it was not the Bible per se that they were drawing from but two strands of political theory through which the Bible had been variously interpreted (Cuilenburg, J. van, Scholten, O. and Noomen, G.W, pp. 55-78).
On the one hand, they were illustrations from the classical practice, that of Ancient Greece and Rome, a very rich tradition inherited from the writings of these illustrious figures like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Zeno, Plutarch, and others, in which it was usually held that government is an ethical agent. That is, traditional thought held that it is one of the purposes of government to help make people good and moral, and thus government should sense free to promote and go forward and teach religion as the main basis for moral expansion. The Greco-Roman culture was very polytheistic, but there was a base of common teaching about the principal gods, a part of the education of all citizens, which was very much, and a part of the learning of all people (Daniels, pp. 77-99).
The public adoration of the gods was a compulsory part of nationality as well. Christianity grew up in these surroundings surpassing it and overtaking it, of course) and essentially adopted this biased theory under which government is to be an ethical agent. Thus, once Christianity officially turns out to be the religion of the Roman Empire in the late fourth century, the empire advanced the new common confidence in its enlightening and political missions, generally toward the goal of ensuring that the people were moral through the lessons of Christianity. Once the empire fell to the northern barbarians in the fifth century, this tradition, through the power of the Roman Catholic Church, continued throughout Europe. Catholic Christianity was basically in close partnership politically with virtually every region and country across Europe. The union of church and state, what is sometimes today referred to as Christendom, was the order of the day; there was no such thing as separation of church and state (Daniels, pp. 77-99).
The Catholic form of Christianity was lastly challenged in the improvement of the sixteenth century, but the political hypothesis that promoted the idea that government should be an agent and supplier of Christianity was not actually challenged until the seventeenth century.
It was then that quite a few thinkers, the primary one being John Locke, suggested that Christianity was more private than communal and that a chief reorientation of government was in order. Locke held that all humans have fundamental rights that government is accountable for protecting, things like life and property, and sure liberty rights, one being the free practice of religion. Thus, in his plan government is to remove itself from promoting faith (government just gets in the way) and should instead defend the right of the inhabitant to pursue religious truth on his or her own. Locke wanted to modify the superstructure of government (Daniels, pp. 77-99).
Government propagated religion had too often been the source of society’s issue, not the explanation and as an outcome, for Locke, as for many others, the millions of human beings who had been killed in the name of conviction over the centuries had to do with the government having too a great deal power over religion, and with that influence, it was natural that it would seek to enforce its version of factual religion, which unluckily all too often conflicted with the considerate of citizens of minority belief. As a result, we have in the West a very extended history of religious persecution, witch hunts, investigations, and religious wars, all perpetrated in the name of promoting a common religion, the absence of which, it had been for all time believed, would result in collective confusion. Certainly, the inquest itself, which lasted in its various manifestations from 1231 until 1834, was accountable for the executions of as countless as 1.5 million people by some approximation, merely because their beliefs were not in observance with those of the officially accepted form of Christian faith. Locke lived and wrote at a time when most of these executions had before been carried out (Karatnycky, pp. 11-44).
He lived in a day when witch trials were still ordinary in ‘Europe and even in New England, and of course, he lived in an era of spiritual wars that claimed the lives of factually tens of millions.
Locke had a deep impact on the founding fathers. He was amongst the most extensively read philosophers of the day. It may be something of an exaggeration to say so, but the establishment essentially adopts a Locke and construction rather than a classical one. The founding fathers understood and valued the classical concern for the promotion of morality during government plans but thought that moral training was improved left in the hands of other institutions. Therefore morality, character development, virtue, and personal integrity would not be (brined and shaped by government institutions but by churches and other holy institutions, families, voluntary organizations, and the like. Decent training was to be part of the nation’s infrastructure, not its superstructure. The founders were well aware that the democratic system they had created would not stay alive unless it was composed of moral people, but they were banking on ethics being inculcated by the private sector, not the social one (Karatnycky, pp. 11-44).
This is not to say that the founders believed that government couldn’t contribute anything to the development of virtue, but in terms of government using religion as a tool toward that end, with a few exceptions (discussed below) that were considered out of bounds. Thus our form of government is basically a Locke and one, and the separation of church and state is part of that framework. Government is to stay out of the religion business, for the most part. The Supreme Court, in deciding the cases already cited, basically saw it that way too. Thus, in the case of school prayer, for example, the Court has held repeatedly that government (and every school district is an agent of government) is prohibited from being a moral agent and using religion as a tool to cultivate virtue.
Therefore, In keeping with this Locke framework, the Establishment Clause denies the government the opportunity to shape anyone’s religion. But many good people suggest that this limitation on government is the source of today’s moral decline. They would argue that we have gone too far with Locke a framework, indeed that the founders did not intend to put so many obstacles in the way of government to support religion. Thus we have a very active debate today on the original meaning of the first sixteen words of the First Alters, which provide: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” This language was passed in 1789 at the First Congress as part of the Bill of Rights. The most controversial questions revolve around what the framers meant by saying that establishments of religion would be prohibited (Dworkin, pp.11-33).
Thus, to permit teacher-led prayer in public schools, the placement of religious symbols (e.g., nativity scenes) on public property or the monetary support of religious schools is banned. The other permits the development of religion provided it is done nondiscriminatory. In other words, if Congress wants to suitable $100,000,000 for religious schools, it can do so, give it makes money available to schools of all diverse faiths. Likewise, if we want to have prayer in public schools, it is satisfactorily provided people of all faiths have the chance to participate in the most important prayer. Nowadays, we see proponents of equal positions on the Supreme Court, not to talk about among academics. Currently, there is a virtual war being waged in the Supreme Court and in the scholarly writing over which of these positions represents the prospect of America. Both sides, of course, state to have the founding fathers on their side.
What the position of the accommodation calls for, if we think about it, is an infusion of the old classical notion that government should have a strong role in the moral advance of the citizenry. It calls for a revision of the nation’s superstructure to permit the government to become an active participant in building the morals of the people by becoming a moral agent. This position opposes Locke and framework, but perhaps, just perhaps, we really do need an infusion of the old classical spirit. But we should proceed along these lines with considerable caution. Government promotion of religion virtually always infringes on the freedom of the individual person. Take school prayer, for instance. Having students supplying their own form of prayer in class, perhaps on a rotating basis, is an enchanting prospect for many critics of church-state separation (Dworkin, pp. 11-33).
This is real religious liberty, they would say. But consider the confusion this would create. Do we really want our youth subjected to an environment in which all prayers are seen as equally valid? Undoubtedly many parents would be upset enough about this policy alone to remove their children from public schools. But this is not even the worst potential problem. The worst problem would be the peer pressure generated for students to conform to the majority religion, which, in virtually every school, of course, is Christianity. Children can be terribly cruel. Imagine a student being the only Jew, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist in a class and being laughed at continually by his or her classmates because the proffered prayer was the “weirdest one.” The potential for making students feel like second-class citizens in this scenario is enormous (Heidenheimer, Arnold J., and Michael Johnston, pp. 64-67).
What about the traditional position, resurrected nowadays in the accommodations considerate of the religion clauses that call for government financial support of churches and other faith-based institutions to let them perform social programs or have holy schools? And again, the idea is that we need more help today from our churches and other trust communities to stem the ethical decline.
It is this writer’s view that, typically, churches and other spiritual groups who want management money are asking the government to do their jobs for them. If we have an ethical disaster in America, and perhaps a good disagreement can be made that we do have such a crisis, then the solution, it seems, is not more government and more government capital, but more people are becoming grave about their faith, willingly contributing to their own churches and or else flattering more involved to help their own churches and faith communities become part of the solution to the difficulty (Heidenheimer, Arnold J., and Michael Johnston, pp. 64-67).
Government financial support of religion is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. We could undoubtedly learn a lesson from Europe on this point. For centuries, the government has funded holy institutions all over Europe. Yet many Europeans today unhappily look upon religion across much of Europe as just another government plan. Attendance in most European churches is terrible (Ivan, pp. 177-189). The people have lost, to a very large degree, the will to support their own religious institutions because the government does it for them. It would be a disappointment indeed if, in the United States of America, where religion is alive and robust, we would choose to adopt funding practices that for years have characterized most of Europe, where religion is essentially moribund. Yet this seems to be where we are headed, given the various kinds of legislative funding proposals now being considered by Congress (Klitgaard, Robert, pp. 66-88).
It may be job counseling, contribution in literacy programs, marital counseling, teenage pregnancy psychotherapy, or any of hundreds of extra kinds of initiatives that can reach people with real needs. To the and perhaps new commitments on the part of the corporate world as well. Why not create a new strain of partnerships across America in which churches and other spiritual and common service organizations partner with corporations to meet human being needs? Not only would this be high-quality for alleviating poverty in America, but it would also permit the institutions administering the programs to avoid the government monitoring that would be connected with government financial support (Kpundeh, Sahr, pp. 111-134).
Conclusion
In a nutshell, it is simply suggested here that it is the American people that must carry the ball in making an additional moral America. It is not the government’s job. This does not mean that government must get rid of itself totally from anything having to do with construction moral character. There are a lot of things that government can do. These include 1) contribution more courses in our public schools on moral excellence; 2) offering more after-school mentoring programs; 3) so reminding us periodically that it is our job, as personal citizens, to build a nation of virtue; and 4) by encouraging Americans to elect to public office those who are good quality moral examples. We could add to this list, of course, but in keeping with our separations custom, these are things that can be done completely apart from sacred considerations (Ivan, pp. 177-89).
However, in the bigger picture, it would probably be unwise to remove belief completely from our superstructure, from our public philosophy, from that core of beliefs that has and does make America great. Yes, we must oppose the kind of government advocacy of religion and funding of religion that interfere with the right of people to develop their own faith and their responsibility to support it willingly. Up till now, it is also possible at the same time to be a proponent of the sort of civil religion now enshrined in the American order–the social religion that authorizes the phrase “In God We Trust” as our nationwide motto and on our currency, that recognizes public prayer by our presidents and even calls for a nationwide day of prayer (Ivan, pp. 177-189).
The Founders, even those the bulk disbelieving of organized belief, supposed that man’s place in the world was no mishap that man himself and the world in which he lived were shaped and continued by an instantly and loving God. “It is nearly impractical to account for the foundation of the world with no agency of a Supreme Being,” wrote George Washington, “and it is not feasible to govern the universe without the aid of an absolute Being:” James Madison put it this way: “The trust in a God All dominant, wise and good, is so basic to the ethical order of the World and to the contentment of man, that influence which implements it cannot be drawn from moreover lots of sources” (Ivan, pp. 177-189).
The founding fathers did seem to favor these kinds of universal practices–and they are exceptions to a severe Locke and framework. The founding father wants a very healthy environment in all US as far as ethnicity and religious independence is concerned. These are subtle compromises that, yes, are an abuse of a strict notion of the division of church and state but are not coercive upon young, impressionable minds in the way that, for example, public school prayer is. These forms of civil religion provide a rather vague but essential sort of social glue that draws from both conventional and Locke and political theory (Della Porta, Donatella, and Alberto Vannucci, p.74).
These types of civil, religious expressions no hesitation offend many Americans, but they confirm for most Americans that our nation still considers God to be vital to our nationhood. These kinds of public acknowledgments fit within a comprehensive picture of reality; it seems, in which most Americans consider God to be sovereign over all matters, including our state live and not just our private lives. This vision is arguably a balanced one and one that seems in keeping with what the founders intended. It is not the total instruction for what ails America, but maybe it is at slightest a part of it. The origin Fathers never intended for the president to have broad control of the National Guard without states’ consent. It seems as if Washington wields only one weapon these days: a cudgel. The assets attack every challenge not with a surgically crafted response but with a blunt overreach and expansion of power swung from the shadows. In fact, recently, Congress, with the approval of the Bush administration, wishes to usurp ability over the National Guard from governors and hand it to the president. A proposal in the National Defense Authorization Act would permit the chief executive to take manage of Guard troops in the occasion of a “serious natural or man-made disaster, accident or catastrophe. No doubt the president will get to make a decision what counts as “serious. The move is both a response to the terrible handling of Hurricane Katrina a year ago and a preparatory measure for future radical attacks (Ivan, pp. 177-189).
So, in the words of Arkansas’ Republican Gov. Mike Chickadee, the ex-chairman of the National Governors Association, “violates 200 years of American olden times.” The Founding Fathers, wary of a central government that wielded too much power, adopted a Jeffersonian view of strong states’ rights and granted states authority over their local militias, the ancestor of the National Guard. Congress and the president may call upon the Guard in the precise situation, but almost forever only with gubernatorial consent. The chief exemption is in times of rebellion (Ivan, pp. 177-189).
In a wonderful showing of bipartisanship, governors from 51 states and territories signed a correspondence opposing the new section. They were chiefly enraged that Congress slipped the language into the act without consulting or informing them. Their concern is well placed. The planned change would upend the balance of power that protects America from any president who might fancy himself more a ruler and seek to use his place as commander in chief to seize uncontested power. Reply to a catastrophe on par with Katrina or a terrorist attack should feature collaboration between all levels of government. Americans have witnessed the fall down and failure of such support in modern years, and that calls for improving the lines of communication and restoring trust between localities, states, and the central government, not unilateral presidential authority (Ivan, pp. 177-189).
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