THE FRAMERS of the constitution
never intended to erect a wall of
separation between church and state, merely to prevent the government
from
establishing a state religion.
Even liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
acknowledged
that the framers didn't forbid all church and state interaction. In
Zorach
vs. Clausen (1952), he stated: "The First Amendment . . . does not say
that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of church
and
state. . . . Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each
other
- hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly. . . . Municipalities would
not be permitted to render police or fire protection to religious
groups.
Policemen who helped parishioners into their places of worship would
violate
the Constitution. Prayers in our legislative halls; the appeals to the
Almighty in the messages of the Chief Executive; the proclamation
of Thanksgiving as a holiday; 'so help me God' in our courtroom oaths -
these and all laws, our public rituals, our ceremonies, would be
flouting
the First Amendment."
Last week Congress showed uncharacteristic courage by enacting
politically incorrect legislation permitting the Ten Commandments to be
displayed in schools and other government buildings. This represents a
radical liberation from our cultural bondage to liberal historical
revisionism.
Last week, Joe Farah made
the excellent point that "the Ten
Commandments form the very basis of Western law." We should be
aware
that other Biblical laws were also foundational to our system of
jurisprudence.
In the Book of Exodus following the Ten Commandments are
further
laws, sometimes collectively referred to as the Book of the Covenant.
As a lawyer I was fascinated to discover just how much of
our law - torts, contracts, property and criminal law - is obviously
traceable
to this section of scripture. One provision reminded me of my first
year
in law school.
In Torts class, we studied the rules regarding an animal
owner's
liability for harboring a dangerous animal, most often applied to dogs.
Our professor told us that many mistakenly believed that dog owners
were
exempted from liability from their dog's first bite. But the rule was
more
sophisticated.
RATHER, A DOG owner (or owner
of any other kind of animal) was liable
if he had knowledge of his animal's vicious propensities prior to the
animal
injuring a person, even if the animal had never bitten or injured
anyone
before. I had assumed that this "more sophisticated" rule concerning
vicious
propensities had replaced the simplistic "first-bite" rule. Not so!
When I read Exodus 21:28-29 and 35-36, I was amazed to find
that the "sophisticated rule" was not new at all, but had derived from
those passages: "If a man's bull injures the bull of another and it
dies,
they are to sell the live one and divide both the money and the dead
animal
equally. However, if it was known that the bull had the habit of
goring,
yet the owner did not keep it penned up, the owner must pay, animal for
animal, and the dead animal will be his."
As you can see, the animal owner's knowledge of his animal's
vicious propensities is what triggers his liability. And there is no
question
that today's legal principle concerning vicious propensities emanates
from
this ancient, Biblical law. A reading of the other specific laws in the
Book of the Covenant reveals additional striking similarities to laws
still
in force today.
Indeed, English jurist William Blackstone observed that the
entire English legal system, including the jury system, the court
system
and the practice of oaths, was based on the Bible. The American legal
system,
of course, is based on the English system. U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Joseph
Story in 1829 wrote, "There never has been a period in which the Common
Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundations."
Don't be fooled by the secular elite into believing that our
Founding Fathers feared any intrusion of Biblical precepts into our
governmental
system.
THOSE WHO teach that the
framers prescribed total separation of church
and state are pitifully divorced from objective truth and from
undoctored
American history.