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.