Previous decisions trip up justices

[John Higgins]

March 11, 2005

BY ANDREW GREELEY

The United States Supreme Court justices made idiots out of themselves again last week in their decision on the death penalty for adolescents and their hearing on the Ten Commandments in public places. They did so because they are caught in the folly of previous decisions and have to become almost Talmudic in their efforts to escape even more folly.

In the case of the death penalty, the court is caught up in the absurdity of its earlier reversal of the abolition of the death penalty. Most of the arguments in the case of killers under 18 can be applied to all death penalty sentences. The civilized world agrees not only that the execution of teens is immoral. It also agrees that the death penalty is immoral. The court is trying to find a way back to the old ban without actually doing just that.

It is certainly true that the "executive" segment of the brain emerges late in the developmental process, and that argument should have been enough. To fall back on the behavior of other countries shows only how retarded American criminal justice still is. Incidentally, if you can't be fully responsible for murder till you're 18, why can you be fully responsible to drive a car? The answer is that parents are fed up with chauffeuring their kids everywhere.

It is worth noting that 19 of the adolescents whose lives have been spared are from Texas. Samuel P. Huntington in his new book suggests that the swarm of Mexican invaders might eventually return Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to Mexican sovereignty. This is bigoted fantasy, but it would probably be a good thing to let Texas go.

The Ten Commandments issue is unbelievably absurd. Is the court to take Moses and the Commandments off the frieze in its own courtroom? I doubt that Commandments in public places will have the slightest effect on the morality of the country, such as that may be. For many conservative Protestants, however, it is a testimony to the Judeo-Christian heritage of the country. They don't seem to grasp that the judicial doctrine of separation of church and state, which the court began to develop in the 1940s, in effect denies the importance of that heritage, mostly for fear that it will offend those who are not Christian, especially atheists.

The words "separation of church and state" are nowhere to be found in the Constitution, much less the "wall of separation," which the New York Times and other secularizing media repeat mindlessly. All the Constitution says is that the Congress should not establish religion. One can interpret the Ten Commandments on public property as "establishing" religion only if one is caught up in the ideology of previous decisions. Several members of the court were distinctly uneasy at the implications of this reductio ad absurdum of their ideology. Thus they will have to go through what will be almost Jesuitical reasoning to keep the Commandments in public and still be consistent with past "separationist" decisions.

The court would be much better advised in this case or in some similar case in the near future to realize the folly of the current theory and drastically revise it. Make no mistake, the secularizers are determined to use court decisions to drive religion out of American public life. They would if they could do away with prayers in the court and in Congress, chaplains, and tax exemptions for religious groups, among other traces of public religion. They will never get legislative support for such "reforms," so they will have to use the court as a third legislature. In the face of the role of religion in the history of this country, such reforms are absurd, but having, for example, banned prayer in public schools and at football games, the secularizers are hungry for more victories.

I'm not sure the deity will be displeased if all of these acknowledgements of Her presence should disappear. Nor am I sure that Americans will become any less religious a people. I am sure, however, that the current interpretation of the ''separation'' is a violation of all that we know of American history and of judicial common sense, and that the court would be well advised to start over with a much more flexible and realistic theory.

Copyright 2005, Chicago Sun-Times

[vern humphrey]

Is Greeley still in Holy Orders?

[Veritas]

A good rule of thumb:
If Greeley wrote it, ignore it.

You might miss a gem or two, but think of all the time you'll save.

[Lance]

Originally Posted by Veritas

A good rule of thumb:
If Greeley wrote it, ignore it.

You might miss a gem or two, but think of all the time you'll save.

I would make it mor than a rule of thumb, I would make it hard and fast.

[John Higgins]

Some of you are so wrapped up in bashing the liberal you don't realize that in the first half he agrees with the Holy Father and for the second half he agrees with most everyone here.

Ah well, I was going to reference Matt 7:6, but that doesn't take into account the many lurkers.


John

[Stormy_NY]

I had to look twice to see if it was really him I was reading .....WOW

Give credit where credit is due ..He was on the mark here.

[aimee]

Originally Posted by Veritas

A good rule of thumb:
If Greeley wrote it, ignore it.

You might miss a gem or two, but think of all the time you'll save.

I believe I must agree with you....

[Richardols]

Originally Posted by Lance

I would make it mor than a rule of thumb, I would make it hard and fast.

What's in his article that should be disregarded? As another poster said, he's on the mark here.

[SHEMP]

I would agree with Fr. Greeley's desire to make CP rare but I think that doing this by Judicial Fiat is mistaken. These type of court decisions have lead to the constitutional protection of abortion, contraception, gay sex, etc (and eventually will lead to the removal of the Ten Commandments and anything else religious from the public square). Capital punishment needs to be limited by the legislature. If you allow the judges to be the "moral" police rather than the judges of law then you slide down a slippery slope!