It related to giving released prisoners humane treatment. That is a good thing to do. However, the expression depicts more than humane treatment. In encompasses the morality of our entire evolving culture.
Once cherished liberty has become license. Rights are now considered entitlements.
John Leland, who played a significant role in the codifying the Bill of Rights of our Constitution wrote: “Whenever a number of men enter into a state of society, a number of individual rights must be given up to society, but there should be a memorial of those not surrendered, otherwise, every natural and domestic right becomes alienable, which raises Tyranny at once, and this is as necessary in one form of government as in another.”
In effect he foresaw that unless what the government can’t take away is defined, it can take it away. Thus, the items in the Bill of Rights were the original entitlements.
In a drive to change our culture secularists, knowing they likely could not repeal the rights, simply went about redefining them. In certain instances the redefinition has given the right the opposite meaning from that originally intended.
This is how liberty, the Bill of Rights, becomes license. Liberty entails personal restraint within well defined borders. It is the giving up of certain rights for the good of society as Leland observed. It is also the preservative of defined rights. It is also the defending of certain defined rights. It is objective. The object determining the borders is the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
License is subjective and is concerned with the self-will of the individual who sets personally gratifying standards. Liberty is considerate of the entire community. License is absorbed with personal interest.
The more one values liberty the more self-restraint they are willing to exercise. The more one favors license the greater freedom they feel to do and say what they want to when and where they want to.
The government of late has joined the fray. When this happens the Tyranny of which Leland wrote begins. From there it is a slippery slope regarding what rights they can abrogate.
Using the liberty afforded by our rights moralists have reinterpreted the language granting the right. They are winning the semantics battle. It is becoming less a matter of law and more a matter of linguistics.
Hermeneutics is the science of language long used to interpret the Bible. One basic principle is if you want to know what a word authored years before means look at documents of the era to see how it was used and what it meant at the time of use.
If that were done with only the first one of the Bill of Rights our society would be dramatically different. Words slowly evolve and with them the principles on which they were based changes. Thus, “the evolving standard of decency.”
The first word in the First Amendment is “Congress.” It was intended to put restraints on government, not religion. It was as Thomas Jefferson originally meant by his out of context statement regarding a “wall of separation.” It was used to assure the Danbury Baptists that Congress would not name any one denomination as the official religion of the nation while giving freedom of religion in the market place of ideas.
The rhapsodic Old Testament prophet Jeremiah spoke of increasing challenges using figurative language: “If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with the horses?” Translated, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
The Rev. Dr. Nelson Price is pastor emeritus of Roswell Street Baptist Church.
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America was already a Christian nation. If the Founders intended to found a secular nation, their constitution would have been utterly rejected.
As for the Treaty, I'm always happy to repost the facts.
The phrase in question does not appear in the Arabic version. The phrase was understood to mean that the US did not have officially hostile relations with nations which were officially Muslim.
The treaty was renegotiated a few years later. The phrase was indisputably NOT a part of the subsequent treaty.
In 1783 the US and Britain ended the war with the Paris Peace Treaty.
The treaty was written by John Adams, John Jay, and Ben Franklin.
Its very first words are "In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity. It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts . . ."
Clearly America WAS a Christian nation, so any claim that it "never" was is inaccurate.
Nothing legally changed America from a Christian nation to a non-Christian one. Certainly the Treaty with Tripoli did not.
You have strong motivation to convince all that you are correct when, indeed , you are compelled by your religion of atheism to prove a point through the merits of your religious beliefs.
You selectively chose to ignore the additional evidence, beside the fact that the statement did not exist in the Arabic version and was added by Barlow.
It also stands inn historic records that the article was removed when rewritten in the 1805 treaty.You are trying to prove that your religion of atheism was endorsed through this treaty and use it in further arguments against Dr. Price. You attack him for religious reasons not for historical. I will extract and post one more item and then I am done with it for there is none so blind as those who ill not see.
I am, on the other hand simply trying to prove historical facts about the USA.
Misterbill pretends he's only interested in historical facts, but he simply doesn't have the facts correct. My best guess is that this is because, as with Nelson Price, he *wants* the facts to be different. But you don't get to choose your own facts. Please, misterbill or anyone else interested in this, go to a law or university library and read Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States, Volume 2, Documents 1-40: 1776-1818 (Washington, 1931: US Government Printing Office).
I have the facts. You refute them. You have chosen to go afield to prove a point for atheism.
The FACT is, the treaty was replaced with the Treaty of 1805. The FACT is that article 10 was not in the Arabic version. This is so listed in the Avalon project and other documents.
Among many:
http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=125
I do not care what religion you or anyone is. But as the Christians and Jews have been accused of forcing their beliefs down someone's throat, so too, are you, trying to prove a point to substantiate your religious belief.
PS This discussion is, to me, quite old. I followed it on another site some 4 years back. My conclusion, having, at that time, checked each of the references sited by the debaters, come to the conclusion that what I have written here is the truth, so help me, God...
Toof says it is Dr Price's fourth or fifth coli=umn on the subject, while indeed there is a fifth column and toof is a charter member. That Fifth Column is the anti Christian group.
Good Grief somehow twists into the Second Amendment--no surprise her. He/she could find nothing wrong with Dr Price's article but needed to join in and since Price mentioned the Bill of Right , chose one that has naught to do with the column.
But True Patriot wins the silliest one today. What a slimy, sneaky heart and mind he has in twisting Dr Price's column into an attack on Jefferson's morals about Sally Hemming which in very recent times has had a cloud of doubt cast over it. To you True, I say, "Go and sin no more".
PS True, spend a little time researching the article about the Jefferson descendants and the DNA study.
Regardless of t=what you find , you are a low, mean specimen of human.
Don't get your panties in a wad. The point I was making, as stated, was over constitutional intent and the use of semantics.
For too long the atheists and the "No God" people have been telling us and teaching our children, the opposite of what you wrote. They cite Jefferson's letter to the ministers. Even Christians have come to accept this false concept.
What you wrote is the intention of the First Amendment. I hope that many people read it and clear their minds of the false interpretation that has been preached for years.
Years later, when the Barbary pirates were taking American ships and sailors, our government signed a treaty with the Bey of Tripoli. The treaty specifically stated that "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion". This argument has been used very often. No one bother to add that the treaty was rewritten because the version that included that statement was interpreted from Arabic. The formal rewrite does not include that statement.
The wrong information is so ingrained, I doubt many will be persuaded to accept the truth.
Wikipedia reports the first part and not the fact it was rewritten.
Second - among many sources the Yale law library explains the Tripoli treaty and I find you wanting in your knowledge.
You also confuse free establishment and practice of religion with an attempt to to gain governmental power. You are nt completely wrong though. The founding fathers did not want a state religion as created by Henry VIII.
A side issue:
"Furthermore, it was Adams who declared:
The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were. . . . the general principles of Christianity. . . . I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature."
Your efforts to sustain your position of atheism leads you astray as you nip at the heels of history and fail to do a complete study.
Further from the amended 1805 treaty which was ratified:
Article 14
" It is declared by the contracting parties that no pretext arising from Religious Opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the Harmony existing between the two Nations; And the Consuls and Agents of both Nations respectively, shall have liberty to exercise his Religion in his own house; all slaves of the same Religion shall not be Impeded in going to said Consuls house at hours of Prayer."
Whose religion will be allowed to slip through the barrier and influence government? There are American Muslims? Mormons, Unitarians? Were I a Muslim commanding a military base, would I be able to to ban the use of Chapel Crosses because then "attack my religious freedom?" To allow the Baptists to influence policy with their beliefs, but not the muslims, or the Mormons, or the Unitarians --- or even the Atheists --- is the first step to establishment and the first step in Government interference that you decry.
In the final analysis, your proposal for a one-way barrier may ameliorate some short-term problems, but it will exacerbate the long-term ones.