Article VI, last sentence: “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
And of course, the first part of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…”
What do I win? In all seriousness, I have heard actual claims (from the loony right) that Article VI REALLY means either “You can’t test for a specific kind of religion (but atheists and agnostics need not apply)” or “You can’t test for a specific kind of Christianity (but all other religions can/should be barred)”.
About as often as I hear claims (from the loony left) that the Establishment clause clearly and unambiguously means that the government cannot ever do anything that touches religion ever–in reality, it kinda hinges on what the word “establishment” means.
As a final comment, our Founding Fathers really loved their motherfucking commas. If the second amendment was punctuated like the first (with a couple of semi-colons separating ideas) maybe it’d make some unambiguous sense.
No, it’s more that Democrats consider people worthy.
Maybe some. I’m a believer in the Great Man theory of history myself, & a bit influenced by revolutionary history, so I tend to see government as the effective use of power. But there’s a lot of good that comes from other institutions, & most Democrats would admit this. I suspect active Democrats don’t really want a Ruling Elite, hence the “Democrat” name.
I would love to get a factual answer. I’ve asked in GQ (oneand two) for two years for any hard evidence showing the torture got results. I’ve gotten some interesting bites, but no direct hits. Feel free to chip in.
OK, it’s poorly worded. That wasn’t his point. It’s in the middle of a list of protections of *individuals *from the government. Imagine if a recipe went:
Beat 2 egg whites until frothy.
Mix the dry ingredients.
Only use synthetic engine oils after your engine has 75,000 miles.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees…
A protection of *state governments *from the federal government in that list makes no sense.
That was my point–the U.S. Constitution has never overtly required a separation of Church and State. Even though I tend to lean towards being a strict construtionist, I do view Article VI as prohibiting religious tests, but you cannot exclude agnostics/atheists/any other non-Christian religions. You are absolutely right about needing to maintaining some degree of separation, because if you don’t keep that in check, you will run into some establishment problems.
Also, I am delivering a lecture tomorrow where I’ll have to refer to the U.S. Constitution–I would like to use your last qoute as an aside. I’ll be sure to use proper attribution.
Oh, so if you wanted to assert a collective right, you can’t because the remainder are all individual rights? That makes no sense.
It’s a list not a set of directions. Laundry lists can be varied.
One carton of milk
Buy socks
Drop off car to replace carburetor
Work out at gym
Again though, I’m not saying here that it’s necessarily a collective right for the purposes of this thread – I’m saying the text is poorly worded and ambiguous. OTOH, a constitutional historian or an historical linguist might very well have some insight into the matter. At any rate, we have to interpret the constitution we have, not the constitution we want.
I tend to agree that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. However, I do not see why the Second Amendment guarantees anybody the right to bear any arm their little heart desires, any more than the First Amendment guarantees me the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded armory.
I absolutely believe that there are common sense restrictions on all our basic rights, and that the Second Amendment Fundamentalists do not recognize this is a failure to think it through on their parts.
