Evil visited our nation again yesterday as Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered twenty innocent children and six adults, including his mother before he left home, and ending with the killing of himself. It was yesterday afternoon when this tragedy came to my attention. I don’t mind telling you that this salty old Master Chief and Viet Nam veteran cried when he heard of the senseless slaughter. I express my sincere sympathies and condolences to those who lost their loved ones. We, individually and as a nation, must indeed mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who need comforted in the coming days.

 

In the aftermath the proponents and opponents of “gun control” will begin their spin of the same tired arguments which will ultimately lead to no solution of these atrocities. I would like to offer a different assessment as to why so many young Americans are disposed to violence such as was perpetrated yesterday in Newtown, Connecticut.

 

In A Free People’s Suicide, Os Guinness wrote concerning “the golden triangle of freedom.” It is his premiss, shared by this writer, that the three elements that make up the triangle – freedom, virtue, faith – are interdependent. If any of the three are lost, the American way of life is lost and our Constitutional Republic will fail. Is this not what John Adams, our Second President said when he stated, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.  Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

 

In our nation, mass murders such as yesterday are a twentieth century phenomenon. In Mass Murder in the United States: A History, Grant Duwe identified three periods of mass murder in our twentieth century history – 1900 to 1939; 1940 to 1965; and, 1966 to 1999. I believe this latter period extends to the present. Mr. Duwe attributes the first period to economic conditions related to the depression and war. The second period saw a decrease in incidents due to “increased prosperity and the attainability of the American Dream.” I think the beginning of the third period at 1966 is significant.

 

A survey of a history of our Constitutional Republic will support that for at least 109 years there appeared to be NO problem with the Second Amendment from 1791 when it was ratified until 1900. I personally believe that this period could be extended until 1960. You ask why 1960? It was then that the attack by the Left on the “golden triangle” began in earnest. An attack which has left our Constitutional Republic “morally bankrupt!” To illustrate consider the following:

 

Our Declaration of Independence and our 1787 Constitution as written by our Founding Fathers were based upon Judeo-Christian principles and the acknowledgment that God rules over nations. This was supported by the Supreme Court for a least 116 years as is indicated by  CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY V. UNITED STATES, 143 U. S. 457 (1892), where in MR. JUSTICE BREWER delivering the opinion of the Court stated: “These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”
Further evidence of this opinion can be found in my book Our Constitutional Republic: Seeds of Birth — Seeds of Destruction, Chapter 11, where several examples of rulings support Mr. Justice Brewer’s opinion. For 170 years this nation was considered a “Christian” nation by the Supreme Court and other courts of the land. The Bible was used as a textbook and morality was taught in the schools of America.

 

Then in 1947, in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), the Supreme Court began its “slippery slope” of decisions regarding religion in the United States. In the decision MR. JUSTICE BLACK wrote:

 

 The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups, and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation between church and State."

 

It was then that the Supreme Court began to ignore the “spirit” of the First Amendment in favor of the “letter” of the First Amendment. A move which began the moral decay and the destruction of the “golden triangle of freedom.”

 

Then on June 25, 1962, the Supreme Court began it outright assault against Christianity and the principles held by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. Through their judicial activism they began ruling by ruling, against the specific wording of the First Amendment, to prohibit “the free exercise” of Christianity.

 

1. In Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), MR. JUSTICE BLACK, in the face of 186 years of legal precedents, wrote for the Court against Christianity and without citing a single precedent, made it unconstitutional to pray in the Public Schools of this nation.

 

2. A year later in School Dist. of Abington Tp. V. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203 (1963), MR. JUSTICE CLARK writing for the Court, again without a single precedent cited, that reading the Bible and reciting the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of the school day was unconstitutional. This decision also flew in the face of history and tradition as the Bible had been used as a “text book” within all schools, public and private, since the Pilgrims first stepped on Plymouth Rock.

 

3. Five years after this in Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97 (1968), the Court continued its assault on Christianity. MR. JUSTICE FORTAS writing for the Court declared that, “The sole reason for the Arkansas law is that a particular religious group considers the evolution theory to conflict with the account of the origin of man set forth in the Book of Genesis.” “The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and non-religion.” “A State's right to prescribe the public school curriculum does not include the right to prohibit teaching a scientific theory or doctrine for reasons that run counter to the principles of the First Amendment.”

 

By this decision the Court, itself, did not apply neutrality. They did not mandate teaching both evolution and creation. They instead mandated for the non-religious theory of evolution and excluded the religious view of creation as set forth in Genesis.

 

4. Lastly, in 1980 they ruled in Stone v. Gramm, 449 U. S. 39 (1980), even that the presence of the Ten Commandments posted in the schools was unconstitutional. The “Posting of religious texts on the wall serves no such educational function. If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.” Yet the Supreme Court rendering this opinion has the Ten Commandments upon their very doors! How can any reasonable person conclude that reading, meditating upon, venerating and obeying the Ten Commandments, the foundational basis of all law within the States and the United States, to be unconstitutional?

 

This sampling of decisions demonstrates how far the Court has strayed from its mandate contained in the Constitution. In doing this they have assisted rather than hindered our national self-destruction and the purposes and intent of the Founding Fathers. This tool of separating the “spirit” from the “letter” of the law has now become a useful tool to twist application of the Constitution in any area through judicial arguments. They won’t allow teaching morality from the Bible in the schools, but they will encourage the reading of the Bible and other “Holy Books” in the prisons. I would think that an once of prevention, in this matter, is worth more than the pound of cure.

 

This assault by the "guardians" of our divinely inspired Constitution is contrary to the First Amendment which states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .” The spirit of the Constitution as established by our Founding Fathers was that there would be no “state” religion other than Christianity. Their concern was that no particular denomination would become the “state” religion. They had just escaped the tyranny of “state denominational religions” when they fled Europe to this New World. For this reason they were opposed to Lutheranism, Methodism, Catholicism, or any other denomination becoming the “state” religion. They wanted ALL Christian denominations to be on an equal footing one with the other. A position held by the Court for 186 years from 1776 until 1962.

 

Now because our "guardians," the Justices of the Supreme Court, have forgotten the spirit of the Constitution and "Constitutional Supremacy," they, by their "Judicial Supremacy," have replaced Christianity and established Atheism and Secular Humanism as the “state” religion of our Constitutional Republic. In so doing they have destroyed the ability to teach morality and virtue and undermined the “golden triangle of freedom!” How the Founding Fathers must weep over this usurpation of power by the Justices of the Supreme Court who were set up as We the People’s, “guardians” of our Constitution.

 

In the coming weeks and months, no one will point to the political and judicial activism of the latter part of the twentieth century which has destroyed our nation’s ability to deal with this senseless slaughter. No one will suggest that any of the following are contributors to our present series of mass murders or try to mediate their effect. None of the following will be part of the civil discourse in trying to establish the cause of the senseless slaughter of innocence!

 

1. Don’t the ACLU and “bleeding heart liberals” bear responsibility? It is they who have made it virtually impossible for medical professional to commit some one to a mental health facility who is a danger to society because these individuals have rights.

 

2. Don’t the movie moguls of the “silver screen” and the television or those who develop and sell computer and video games of ever increasing violence bear responsibility? They are the ones who have cried for their right to free expression. Even though the effects of that expression unbridled by moral training are tantamount to shouting “FIRE” in a crowded theater when there is no fire.

 

3. Don’t the Atheists and Secular Humanists bear responsibility? It was and is their intolerance to the majority Christian view and their fight to ELIMINATE any vestige of teaching of faith and morality in the schools or any expression of faith in civil society in the name of minority rights that contributes to this evil.

 

All of these views began in the 1960s. All of these have contributed to an environment and the society we now have versus the society we had as a nation prior to then. The environment and society of my youth and the youth of our ancestors. Was there violence before them? Yes, there was but the nation was not shackled by “political correctness.” For 185 years, the citizens of our Constitutional Republic were raise on the interdependent “golden triangle of freedom – faith, virtue and freedom” The majority of families owned firearms by necessity, soldiers went to many wars and returned without any issue with the Second Amendment or mass murders.

 

It wasn’t until the latter end of the twentieth century, after 1965, and the Progressives and Liberals assault on faith and virtue that we had Columbine, Virginia Tech and now Sandy Hook Elementary. But don’t hold your breath that the Progressives and Liberals will accept any responsibility for the senseless slaughter of the innocents yesterday. It could NOT possibly be that their ideology is flawed. History aside, it must be those evil conservatives and the gun lobby that cling to their guns and religion and support our Constitution and the Republic it established!

 

But then everybody knows that guns kill people just like pens, pencils and keyboards misspell words. Political Correctness aside, the evil perpetrated yesterday is firstly the responsibility of Adam Lanza and not the instruments of his senseless slaughter of the innocent! Secondly, there is more than enough fault to go around for the reasons cited above!

 

How our Founding Fathers must weep over the loss of Liberty in the Constitutional Republic they established by their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. A Republic they based upon Judeo-Christian principles. Principles that allowed for Majority Rule and Minority Rights tolerance for nearly 190 years. Since then, We the People are left because of “Political Correctness” with Minority Rule and Majority Rights intolerance!