Religious Tests For Office

[LeSellers]

Ah, there you go again, raging against your favorite boogey man and the source of all our country’s ills – those “government-run, tax-funded schools” a.k.a. public education.

To whom would you lay the blame since the country's children (of whatever age) don't know the most basic facts of history?

And, for the record, they are a serious source of evil in USmerica, but they are not the only one, so you are wrong in assigning this label to them for me. I woudl appreciate it if you stopped doing so. I am fully capable of identifying and ordering the demons undermining our union and society for myself.

Lehi

[zerinus]

Again, the Constitution only addresses governments, almost exclusively the federal government.

Wrong. As it was pointed out in post #52:

Article VI, paragraph 3, and states that:

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.

Got the idea now?

The principle underlying the "religious test" clause is, indeed, one that wise people will follow. But the Constitution does not address citizens, and was not designed to do so.

The Constitution addresses citizens. It is made by citizens, and addressed to citizens. Here is what it says:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." (Preamble to the Constitution.)

Thus the Constitution was made by the people (citizens), and for the people (citizens) of the United States. It addresses citizens and government alike. Government is made up of citizens.

Anyone trying to make the Constitution limit them, even by "the spirit of the law", does not understand what the Framers were doing, nor why they did it.

And of course you do! How smart of you to do that!

Why do you (and anyone else who holds this position, feel free to chime in) believe there is a Constitution? How did we get it? What was the background they who wrote it played against when they did? Anyone without answers to these questions is very unlikely to be able to understand what the Document is, and what it means.

Read the Preamble quoted above; it tells you. LOL!

The lack of these answers, as I said before, indicates a poor education, a crime I lay at the feet of government-run, tax-funded schools, the politicians who own them, and the bureaucrats who run them.

By the look of things, that makes you the biggest victim of that terrible crime!

Edited January 13, 2012 by zerinus

[thesometimesaint]

Zerinus:

The most influencial classes were at the private schools I attended. But I did get the basics at the public ones I attended.