In Con-law we observe the ideas of yesterday that have been made into basic law as they either fade away, are modified to meet new conditions, or are rejected as benighted superstitions or values of a previous age. Not all of them suffer change and ignominy easily.
The religious wars of Europe and England which produced the Massachusetts Bay Colony which developed, along with the other British colonies into the United States, after a revolution, were a product of the Protestant Reformation to whom Martin Luther was given the credit, followed by John Calvin of Geneva.
Slavery and Jim Crow in this country follow, and we still deal with the effects of the failure to respect all people as equals morally and legally.
Attempts by gays to be treated as morally and legally equal are widely seen as violating cultural norms, especially on the subject of gay marriage. See Lawrence v. Texas (2003).
When Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, suffered a series of strokes that have left him incapacitated and in grave condition, the Rev. Pat Robertson of 700 Club fame, a leader of the right wing of the GOP, and a big supporter of Pres. George W. Bush, now says that God is punishing Sharon for giving up Israeli occupied land to Palestinians. No matter that Sharon as an Israeli general led the invasion of Lebanon to stop the rocket attacks and raids from over the border, or that he was widely blamed for the infamous murders in the Shatila refugee camps that killed many Palestinians. That was okay with God, I guess, but withdraw from the Palestinian occupied Gaza strip and the wrath of Robertson's God is sure to follow.
Robertson represents a way of thinking about God that goes back a long way, to long before this country was established. When A does something that B doesn't like, and later A suffers some misfortune, B, a magical-thinker, can then say, "God is punishing A for his sins." B has aligned himself in his own mind with God, and vice versa, so that what B wants must be what God wants.
This is what caused Nazi Germany to imprint on its soldiers' belt buckles, "Gott Mit Uns," God is with us.
Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address (reprinted below), portions of which are carved in stone in the Memorial in Washington, observed with some wonder that both sides in the war for and against slavery relied on the same god.
My personal god is way too smart to fall into the trap of letting opposing sides commandeer her. She won't have anything to do with human beings.
CNN.com has an article, below:
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Robertson suggests God smote SharonEvangelist links Israeli leader's stroke to 'dividing God's land'(CNN) -- Television evangelist Pat Robertson suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which Robertson opposed. "He was dividing God's land, and I would say, 'Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations or the United States of America,'" Robertson told viewers of his long-running television show, "The 700 Club." "God says, 'This land belongs to me, and you'd better leave it alone,'" he said. Robertson's show airs on the ABC Family cable network and claims about 1 million viewers daily. Sharon, 77, clung to life in a Jerusalem hospital Thursday after surgery to treat a severe stroke, his doctors said. The prime minister, who withdrew Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza and parts of the West Bank last summer over heated objections from his own Likud Party, was breathing with the aid of a ventilator after doctors operated to stop the bleeding in his brain. In Washington, President Bush offered praise for Sharon in a speech on Thursday. "We pray for his recovery," Bush said. "He's a good man, a strong man. A man who cared deeply about the security of the Israeli people, and a man who had a vision for peace. May God bless him." Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to the United States, compared Robertson's remarks to the overheated rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Full story) He called the comments "outrageous" and said they were not something to expect "from any of our friends." "He is a great friend of Israel and a great friend of Prime Minister Sharon himself, so I am very surprised," Ayalon told CNN. Robertson, 75, founded the Christian Coalition and in 1988 failed in a bid for the Republican presidential nomination. He last stirred controversy in August, when he called for the assassination of Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez. (Full story) Robertson later apologized, but still compared Chavez to Hitler and former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the process. The same month, the Anti-Defamation League criticized Robertson for warning that God would "bring judgment" against Israel for its withdrawal from Gaza, which it had occupied since the 1967 Mideast war. Robertson said Thursday that Sharon was "a very likable person, and I am sad to see him in this condition." He linked Sharon's health problems to the 1995 assassination of Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo peace accords that granted limited self-rule to Palestinians. "It was a terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless, now he's dead," Robertson said. Rabin was gunned down by a religious student opposed to the Oslo accords. The killer, Yigal Amir, admitted to the crime and was sentenced to life in prison. Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, criticized Robertson's comments Thursday, saying the televangelist "has a political agenda for the entire world." "He seems to think God is ready to take out any world leader who stands in the way of that agenda," Lynn said in a written statement. "A religious leader should not be making callous political points while a man is struggling for his life," he said. "I'm appalled." Ralph Neas, president of liberal advocacy group People for the American Way, said "it is astonishing that Pat Robertson still wields substantial influence" in the Republican Party. "Once again, Pat Robertson leaves us speechless with his insensitivity and arrogance," Neas said in a written statement. According to The Associated Press, Robertson spokeswoman Angell Watts said of people who criticized the comments: "What they're basically saying is, 'How dare Pat Robertson quote the Bible?'" "This is what the word of God says," Watts told the AP. "This is nothing new to the Christian community." Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report. |
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Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/05/robertson.sharon/index.html |
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Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address toward the end of the Civil War:
| Fellow-Countrymen:
AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. |
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| On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. | 2 |
| One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." | 3 |
| With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. | 4 |