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Jewish World Review Oct. 7, 2010/ 29 Tishrei, 5771 Hypersensitive Hogwash By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Call me skeptical, but I suspect the elitist defenders of the mosque near Ground Zero will be missing in action when it comes to defending the religious freedom of a bunch of Christian "nobodies" in an obscure Florida town. A dad whose son belongs to a team in the Holmes County Pee Wee Football Association has filed a formal request with the Vernon, FL City Council to end the traditional--and voluntary--practice of saying a pre-game prayer at the 50-yard line. Unsurprisingly, Louis Fromm, who also coaches in the same association, claims the First Amendment rights of he and his son are being violated.
"We have been saying prayers for four years and [Fromm] started complaining last year," league president Debbie Gunter told Fox News. "He has a problem with prayer, but while I don't have a problem with his non-beliefs, he shouldn't have a problem with ours." Gunter also mentioned that a petition supporting the prayer ritual has been circulating, and five hundred people have already signed it.
Fromm is undeterred. Despite the fact that the league is a private organization which receives no government funding, he insists that because the field on which the games are played is public property, the prayers must be stopped. He made his position clear at a meeting with the City Council:
"This reference is in formal protest to the manner and method in which the Bonifay PeeWee Association dictates prayer that is in question strictly based upon the establishment clause. So those of you here tonight to hear the terms and conditions required to appease a single upset individual, I say to you that you have been grossly misinformed and blinded by a small group of religious fundamentalists who would like to convince you that a single individual is attempting to take away, of all phrases, your 1st Amendment rights, when I am in fact here to make you aware that yours and your children's rights to religious freedom under the US constitution have already been hijacked by that very same group already."
Got that? Voluntary prayer is a "hijacking" of Fromm's Constitutional rights.
This is not the first, nor is it likely to be the last case in which freedom from is confused with freedom of religion. Considering the multi-decade success of Secular Humanists and their anti-religious leanings, such a profound misunderstanding of the First Amendment has become both widespread, and sadly, acceptable in many manifestations.
The issue can be reduced to a simple question: is the Holmes County Pee Wee Football Association guilty of "making a law respecting the establishment of religion," or is it engaging in the "free exercise thereof?" The issue is being handled by an attorney for the city.
Perhaps it is my suspicious nature, but I can't help feeling that if these peewee players and their families were setting up prayer rugs on the 50-yard line and bowing to Mecca, two things would happen: one, this story would get national media attention, and the virtues of community tolerance and enlightenment would be extolled; and two, Louis Fromm would be dismissed as an intolerant bigot.
I don't think Fromm is a bigot. Judging by his actions and his statement before the City Council, Fromm is a typical member of the American Whiner Class. These are people who believe anything which "offends" their oh-so delicate sensibilities must be prohibited. They are the same folks who recoil in disgust at the sight of a Christmas creche in the town square, and who doggedly insist that "Happy Holidays" is the only appropriate greeting for expressing good will in a "multicultural" society.
They are the same folks who believe other peoples' religious expression equals their persecution and/or stigmatization. They are tiresome self-righteous types who insist that the essence of the First Amendment's religious clause--live and let live--only applies when it aligns with their worldview.
Why do progressives disdain religion? Because it is antithetical to everything they believe in. A progressive utopia is one in which the state replaces God as the bestower of goodness and abundance. It is one in which individual morality in all its relativist glory replaces religiously-codified limitations on questionable behavior. It is a world where faith is considered organized ignorance which can only be countered by progressive intellectualism, and its attempt to save us from our "clingy" natures.
Yet historical attempts to achieve religion-free utopias demonstrate the complete bankruptcy of progressive ambitions. Take every despicable act committed in the name of every religion over the course of mankind's entire history and all of them combined don't even approach the one hundred million deaths attributed to the "workers' paradises" of Stalin's Russia and Mao's China.
Reasonable people might conclude that atheism isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Not progressives. Those who worship at the altar of "do your own thing" recoil from the idea that there is something bigger than themselves and that the universe might be something more than a series of scientific accidents. Better to believe that those who humble themselves before a "higher power" are ignorant fools. Better to whine when they display that "ignorance" on the 50-yard line, lest one's rights be violated by such an "outburst."
Mr. Fromm claims he and his son have been "stigmatized" as a result of his complaint. Good. This is one American who believes the hyper-sensitive among us shouldn't be immune from the consequences of their attitudes. Such consequences were once referred to as "shame."
Here's hoping it's poised for a big comeback.
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© 2010, Arnold Ahlert |
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