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SCALIA THINKS JEWS GET BURIED UNDER CROSSES
Wall Street Journal - The Supreme Court seemed inclined Wednesday to permit a five-foot-tall cross to remain standing in California's Mojave National Preserve, while avoiding a broader ruling that could affect religious symbols on government property. . .
Federal courts in California found that the cross, erected on Sunrise Rock, a remote outcropping in the 1.6 million-acre desert preserve, violated the Constitution's ban on a congressional "establishment of religion." Congress then declared the cross a "national memorial" and voted to transfer an acre around it to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, whose local post first built a cross there in 1934 as a memorial to fallen soldiers. Lower courts found the arrangement effectively was a sham, though the government received property in return, because the one-acre parcel reverts to the government if the VFW fails to maintain the memorial. . .
Justice Antonin Scalia disputed the premise behind the lawsuit, telling Mr. Eliasberg that it was unfair to view the cross merely as a Christian symbol.
"The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead," he said. "What would you have them erect? Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star?"
"I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew," Mr. Eliasberg said. "So it is the most common symbol to honor Christians."
"I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead," Justice Scalia said. "I think that's an outrageous conclusion."
Federal courts in California found that the cross, erected on Sunrise Rock, a remote outcropping in the 1.6 million-acre desert preserve, violated the Constitution's ban on a congressional "establishment of religion." Congress then declared the cross a "national memorial" and voted to transfer an acre around it to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, whose local post first built a cross there in 1934 as a memorial to fallen soldiers. Lower courts found the arrangement effectively was a sham, though the government received property in return, because the one-acre parcel reverts to the government if the VFW fails to maintain the memorial. . .
Justice Antonin Scalia disputed the premise behind the lawsuit, telling Mr. Eliasberg that it was unfair to view the cross merely as a Christian symbol.
"The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead," he said. "What would you have them erect? Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star?"
"I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew," Mr. Eliasberg said. "So it is the most common symbol to honor Christians."
"I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead," Justice Scalia said. "I think that's an outrageous conclusion."
9 Comments:
Whether the Christians who put up the cross intended it to honor the dead of other religions or not is irrelevant. (And I think Justice Scalia is being more than a little disingenuous on that point.) The presence of a cross over the grave of a Jew, Muslim, Wiccan, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Hindu or atheist is likely to be very offensive to their relatives.
“When justices on the Court discovered that they could decide cases "according to their own personal prejudices and foibles," the Court became the de facto totalitarian oligarchic government of the nation from which there is no appeal. The Court's decisions override the Constitution, turn democracy into a mere formal exercise, and betray the people. The Constitution never really had a chance.” The Constitution Never Had a Chance
by John Kozy
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15525
I never knew Scalia to be a Straussian. You learn something new about fascists every day.
I would say that Scalia is beyond belief, but his behavior has proved that there is little if anything too outre for his beliefs.
Being neither a Usanian nor a monotheist of any sort I think I am fairly neutral here. The US constitution says only (Amendment I): "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." You have to understand what "establishment" meant to your 18th-century forebears. The Church of England was the official religion in the country of the same name. One could not hold public office without being Anglican; the 26 senior Anglican bishops sat automatically in the legislature; the monarch had to be Anglican by law (and still does). That was "establishment" in the vocabulary of the American revolutionaries. Compared to that the planting of the odd cross here and there is so trivial - and so irrelevant to the rights of free speech, free assembly, and security from unreasonable police action - that one has to wonder if the mass reaction against religious symbols isn't a way (engineered by some, unconscious in others) to avoid important issues. Why does a crucifix raise more protest than the tasering of harmless people?
2:47, I don't think it does except in your mind.
I think the true problem is that more and more people are realizing that there is no god. It is embarrassing that our government, the USA, has so many references to the imaginary god. There should be no reference to religion anywhere in our government.
Well, Axel... I think you got us South O' the Border types pretty well pegged.
Your insight about our preference for engaging in loud and less important arguments even as we're getting hammered into submission by the nouveau goose-steppers and their Homeland Security goons is perfectly valid. But it is upsetting for us to think too much about something like that down here. Thanks for the tip.
We seem to be in the stage of hoping the Gestapo gets the neighbors down the street and maybe leaves us alone. Ya' know... buy extra tickets to the Policemen's Ball , keep your fingers crossed and your mouth shut.
It's all good. Not.
- John A. Joslin ( Detroit)
Thank you John. After my last sentence I meant to add, "To give a relatively mild example."
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