A pillar of the contemporary conservative movement is hostility to the separation of church and state. For much of the movement, it’s not just that church and state should be tight partners but also that the United States is and should be a Christian country. Their aims have been achieved to a significant degree with the latest decision from the Supreme Court on public displays of religious symbols, American Legion v. American Humanist Association . While ostensibly a decision limited to the government’s support of an old, overbearing Latin cross at a small traffic intersection, a majority of the Court goes out of its way to chart a new path toward erasing the separation of church and state. Their aim is to turn the Establishment Clause into a prop for religious freedom, which in this era is actually a euphemism for power over the culture. They utterly ignore that the history of the Establishment Clause was to create a bulwark against the tyranny that results from the joinder of government and religious power to rule. A Cross Starts as a Private Memorial and Becomes the Government’s There is no debate that a private entity could have established and maintained […]
