Very OT - Fahrenheit 9/11

What happen
to the separation of state and church.

This is what our country is BASED UPON. The religious right seems to forget
that there are other religions here in the USA....Hindus, Pagans, Muslims,
Jews, Buddhists, and many more. They still insist on pushing Christianity into
lawmaking. Our forefathers would be horrified.

We had a taxi driver on our recent vacation who insisted that this country was
based on Judeo-Christianity. He thought teaching anything about other
religions was sick. This guy wasn't part of the religious right -- so you can
see how it infiltrates the (great unwashed and ignorant) masses.......It's
dangerous.

Separation of church and state should apply to abortion rights as well. But
not for religious rightist lobbyists, oh no.......
~~
Sooz

Hopefully this will be evident
in the upcoming election.

I wish MORE WOMEN WOULD VOTE! They vote more humanely and reasonably than men
do across the board.
~~
Sooz

This is what our country is BASED UPON. The religious right seems to
forget
that there are other religions here in the USA....Hindus, Pagans, Muslims,
Jews, Buddhists, and many more. They still insist on pushing Christianity
into
lawmaking. Our forefathers would be horrified.

People tend to trot out the fact that our founding fathers were Christian.
However there's some pretty strong documentation that Jefferson was agnostic
if not atheist. And if you read much of anything by the Adams brothers or
Franklin, you'll get a strong sense of mistrust in organized religion, to
put it mildly. It WAS the age of enlightenment, after all, and trying to
look above religious "compulsion" was downright fashionable.

KarenK

Actually Jefferson, Franklin, Thomas Paine and John Adams were Deists.
They were definitely not Christian. Washington went to church, but there
are no reports of him taking communion, so it looks like it may have been
more of an appearance thing. There were strong Christians in the
Continental Congress, but not fundamentalists or evangelicals as we think of
since those churches had not been founded yet.
Vicki mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli: "As the Government of the United
States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as
it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or
tranquility, of Musselmen (sic - Muslim)..."; ratified and signed in 1797.
Abraham Lincoln said some unkind things about Christianity as well.
The religious right (which IMHO is neither) take the story of the Puritans
and Plymouth rock and extrapolate it into an idea everyone that came to
America did so for Christian religious conviction. Revisionist history at
its worst. I can't trace it to a primary source, but I have read that only
7% of the population in the colonies belonged to a church at the time of the
revolution.
The original motto of the USA was "E Pluribus Unum" (out of many - one),
it was changed in 1956 (48 years ago) to "In God we trust". Until then it
did not appear on currency or anything like that. The same with the pledge
of allegiance (which was written by a Baptist minister in 1892) and was
without mention of religion until the phrase "under God" was added in 1954.
Which means it went longer without "under God" in it than it has since that
was added.
The Presidential oath of office (the only oath defined by the Constitution
Art. II, sec 1, clause 8) does not require a bible or the phrase "so help me
God". Those things have become part of custom, but are not required.
I am not hostile to Christianity, but there are those that want to
distort the facts to make their version the accepted one regardless of its
validity.
--
There are no mistakes, only unexplored techniques

"Karen_AZ" wrote in message
news:0OhEc.3169$nc.1864@fed1read03...
This is what our country is BASED UPON. The religious right seems to
forget
that there are other religions here in the USA....Hindus, Pagans, Muslims,
Jews, Buddhists, and many more. They still insist on pushing Christianity
into
lawmaking. Our forefathers would be horrified.

People tend to trot out the fact that our founding fathers were Christian.
However there's some pretty strong documentation that Jefferson was
agnostic
if not atheist. And if you read much of anything by the Adams brothers or
Franklin, you'll get a strong sense of mistrust in organized religion, to
put it mildly. It WAS the age of enlightenment, after all, and trying to
look above religious "compulsion" was downright fashionable.

KarenK

Oh, so you are all about abortion.
Without getting into a long and fruitless debate (it's a subject where I
have rarely met anyone who changed their mind on it, although I personally
did), let me recommend a book I read in an ethics class in college: "The
Rights and Wrongs of Abortion" by John Finnis; Marshall Cohen; Thomas Nagel;
Thomas Scanlon 1974 Princeton Press. It is a thin book with a collection of
four essays, two pro-life and two pro-choice, each selected by their
particular groups. It really gets into the nitty gritty of some of the
issues and cuts through the emotional stuff. A good read regardless of
which side of the fence you are on. It lets you see both sides complete
argument devoid of slogans and sensationalist pictures or statistics.


--
There are no mistakes, only unexplored techniques

"Karleen/Vibrant Jewels" wrote in
message . net...
"Lisa" wrote in message
news:bN0Ec.194535$Ly.156855@attbi_s01...

]I'm much more alarmed at activist judges that are creating
legislation
]instead of judging based on law. Many people applaud when they think
that
]the "right" is losing religious ground, they won't be so happy when
the
same
]standard is applied to them.

Newbie here, I really hate to introduce myself on a
controversial thread, but I can't help it. From what
I've seen, an "activist judge" is a judge who makes a
decision that those on the right don't like.

I think the problem is more far reaching than that. Consider this quote:

"Legislative enactments, presidential actions, and amendments to the
Constitution are all things which publically announce changes in the law
of
the land, providing foreknowledge of changes in the legal framework within
which free people may plan and act. Moreover, all the processes are
ultimately responsible to the people themselves and can be reversed if the
peole find them onerous. Judge-made innovations are, in effect, expost
facto
laws, which are expressly forbidden by the Constitution and abhorrent to
the
rule of law. For courts to strike like a bolt from the blue hitting an
unsuspecting citizen, who was disobeying no law that he could have known
beforehand, is the essence of judicial tyranny, however moral or just the
judges may imagine their innovation to be. The harm is not limited to the
particular damage this may do in a particular case, great as that may
sometimes be, but makes all other laws into murky storm clouds, potential
sources of other bolts from the blue, contrary to the whole notion of "a
government of laws and not of men."
***
The quest for cosmic justice via the judiciary--law as an "agent of
change",
as it is often phrased--quietly repeals the foundations of the American
revolution. It reduces a free people to a subject people, subject now to
the
edicts of unelected judges enforcing "evolving standards" and made more
heedless by their exhalted sense of moral superiority. It is one of the
most
dangerous of many ways in which towering presumptions are a threat to the
freedom of America."

This is exerpted from Thomas Sowell's "The Quest for Cosmic Justice" (page
167) on this site
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-.../posts?page=85

My hubby and I watched a grand old b/w movie recently about the Nuremberg
Trials. Spencer Tracy was the judge. It was a fascinating look at the
ideas
that shaped the Nazi movement and how they were implemented. The judges
began to use the Nazi ideology to shape their decisions, in which innocent
people were convicted of spurious allegations simply because they were
Jews.
In a final scene, one of the judges who was on trial and convicted made
the
statement that he never realized how far it would go and never meant for
the
slaughter of millions of Jews to take place. Spencer Tracy said that it
went
too far when the first innocent person was convicted.

I've read many books about the Holocaust. My father was wounded two times
in
WWII seeking to help liberate France and the concentration camps. I've
tried
very hard to understand how and why 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews
could be sacrificed to such a brittle philosophy. The Nazis cared very
passionately about their national identity, and more so about their
supposed
Aryan supremacy. They were certainly exercising their "right" of free
speech, weren't they? And their ideas were so powerful that they swept
everyone with them in a tidal flood of destruction. Beyond that, they
influenced a whole generation to their way of thinking, including
"activist
judges" who handed out the sentences that helped make being a Jew
criminal.

11 million people sacrificed to an ideal.

Since 1971, 3,000 Americans per day, 1.5 million Americans per year, about
50 million Americans to date, have been sacrificed to an ideal... almost 5
times the toll of the Nazi Holocaust. It started with activist justices
and
their sympathy for the plight of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy. It
was
fueled by a symbol - remember the ubiquitous coat hanger with a slash
through it? It has been continued by the cry for reproductive rights -
although how destroying a fetus is "reproductive" is beyond me. It is
certinally politically incorrect to dispute such a feminist dogma,
probably
even financially suicidal to even bring it up here....

50 million people ... and counting... sacrificed to an ideal.

I'm wondering, was it worth it?

The Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court subjugated the rights of the
slave to the slave owner. The disastrous effects of this nonsense is still
being felt today. To relegate one "type" of human being to subhuman status
for the benefit of another has been shown to be bad law, as well as
morally
wrong. Yet the "type" of human being known as a "fetus" has had subhuman
status since 1971, thanks to activist justices.

Euthanasia is next on the list, let's see who'll be relegatred to subhuman
status now. Who decides who is no longer useful or necessary? Will it be
the
person's family, perhaps eager to collect an inheritance? Will it be the
HMO, who will not find it profitable to continue a person's existance?
Will
it be some court, deciding when to "pull the plug"? (Wait, they do this
already...) Statistics from countries who already practice euthanasia show
that it is often the primary physician, the person's own doctor whom they
have trusted with their very life, who decides, without any input from any
one, including the patient, that their life span is over. Many of these
patients did NOT have a terminal illness, just chronic conditions that
were
expensive to treat.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... basic rights out of which
all
the others flow. But activist justices in 1971 decided that the most
innocent and defenseless of all our citizens didn't have any basic rights,
no rights at all. Slave=Jew=Fetus, it's all the same thing. And Euthanasia
will add to the list: the Aged, the Infirm, the Mentally Unfit, the
Unwanted, the Chronically Ill .... You?

As Thomas Sowell was quoted above:
"The quest for cosmic justice via the judiciary--law as an "agent of
change", as it is often phrased--quietly repeals the foundations of the
American revolution. It reduces a free people to a subject people, subject
now to the edicts of unelected judges enforcing "evolving standards" and
made more heedless by their exhalted sense of moral superiority. It is one
of the most dangerous of many ways in which towering presumptions are a
threat to the freedom of America."

How quick we forget the real history of our nation. Thanks so much for
posting this. Thank God our fore fathers knew what we really needed to build
a nation where everyone can live with what ever belief they want.
Roxan
"Louis Cage" wrote in message
...
Actually Jefferson, Franklin, Thomas Paine and John Adams were Deists.
They were definitely not Christian. Washington went to church, but there
are no reports of him taking communion, so it looks like it may have been
more of an appearance thing. There were strong Christians in the
Continental Congress, but not fundamentalists or evangelicals as we think
of
since those churches had not been founded yet.
Vicki mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli: "As the Government of the United
States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion;
as
it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or
tranquility, of Musselmen (sic - Muslim)..."; ratified and signed in 1797.
Abraham Lincoln said some unkind things about Christianity as well.
The religious right (which IMHO is neither) take the story of the
Puritans
and Plymouth rock and extrapolate it into an idea everyone that came to
America did so for Christian religious conviction. Revisionist history at
its worst. I can't trace it to a primary source, but I have read that
only
7% of the population in the colonies belonged to a church at the time of
the
revolution.
The original motto of the USA was "E Pluribus Unum" (out of many -
one),
it was changed in 1956 (48 years ago) to "In God we trust". Until then it
did not appear on currency or anything like that. The same with the
pledge
of allegiance (which was written by a Baptist minister in 1892) and was
without mention of religion until the phrase "under God" was added in
1954.
Which means it went longer without "under God" in it than it has since
that
was added.
The Presidential oath of office (the only oath defined by the
Constitution
Art. II, sec 1, clause 8) does not require a bible or the phrase "so help
me
God". Those things have become part of custom, but are not required.
I am not hostile to Christianity, but there are those that want to
distort the facts to make their version the accepted one regardless of its
validity.
--
There are no mistakes, only unexplored techniques

"Karen_AZ" wrote in message
news:0OhEc.3169$nc.1864@fed1read03...
This is what our country is BASED UPON. The religious right seems to
forget
that there are other religions here in the USA....Hindus, Pagans,
Muslims,
Jews, Buddhists, and many more. They still insist on pushing
Christianity
into
lawmaking. Our forefathers would be horrified.

People tend to trot out the fact that our founding fathers were
Christian.
However there's some pretty strong documentation that Jefferson was
agnostic
if not atheist. And if you read much of anything by the Adams brothers
or
Franklin, you'll get a strong sense of mistrust in organized religion,
to
put it mildly. It WAS the age of enlightenment, after all, and trying to
look above religious "compulsion" was downright fashionable.

KarenK

"vj" wrote in message
...

then i sit down and start filling out forms, and she's part of the
"Feather River Adventist Health Network". Strike two.

Actually Adventists are some of the best doctors in the nation, they've
pioneered a lot of good health practices, and are the "original" vegetarians
in the US [not my particular group though]. Loma Linda University is a
premier research facility.
--
Karleen Page/Vibrant Jewels
Vibrant Jewels Online Bead & Jewelry Store
http://www.vibrantjewels.com/jewelry/welcome.htm
JustBead Auctions
http://www.justbeads.com/search/ql.cfm?s=21770

"Louis Cage" wrote in message
...
Actually Jefferson, Franklin, Thomas Paine and John Adams were Deists.
They were definitely not Christian. Washington went to church, but there
are no reports of him taking communion, so it looks like it may have been
more of an appearance thing. There were strong Christians in the
Continental Congress, but not fundamentalists or evangelicals as we think
of
since those churches had not been founded yet.

I'm not sure what definition you're giving to "Christian"... it seems pretty
narrow. All of the above considered themselves believers.... all you need to
do is read anything they wrote and you'll see frequent and often impassioned
references to the God of the Bible. And actually there is no church called
the Fundamentalist Church or even the Evangelical Church.... so I'm not sure
what you mean by "had not been founded yet".

The early settlers of the US had diverse practices and interpretations to be
sure, as is true of the church today, but they were all based on the Bible,
even the Deists, who believed God made things as reported in the Bible and
pretty much left us to our own devices. They certainly could not be
classified as buddhists, hindus, or pagans!

I don't understand why there is so much bias against Christians in our
culture, especially on this board. The very root of Christianity is free
choice... God is not going to force anyone to serve Him or believe in Him,
and any Christian who tries to coerce belief has no basic understanding of
scripture. Christians are no threat to anyone. What harm is there in
following the teachings of Jesus and trying to live a loving, moral life?

It really bothers me that revisionist history is insisting that the founders
of our country were not Christians. Please read the actual things that they
wrote, not somebody's opinion of what they wrote! They all agreed that they
did not want or need a NATIONAL church or one promoted by the government.
But they never advocated that religion should be absent from public or
private life.

Here is an exerpt from Washington's 1st Thanksgiving address:

"And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and
supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to
pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in
public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties
properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all
the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just and
constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to
protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown
kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and
concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue,
and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto
all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be
best."
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/.../~ammem_czp3::

Washington also made a very interesting comment in his charge to the now
infamous Benedict Arnold who was on a mission to Canada in 1775: "I also
give it in Charge to you to avoid all Disrespect to or Contempt of the
Religion of the Country and its Ceremonies. Prudence, Policy, and a true
Christian Spirit, will lead us to look with Compassion upon their Errors
without insulting them. While we are contending for our own Liberty, we
should be very cautious of violating the Rights of Conscience in others,
ever considering that God alone is the Judge of the Hearts of Men, and to
him only in this Case, they are answerable."
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/.../~ammem_czp3::
If you want to read more of what Washington wrote, the Library of Congress
has 65,000 documents online.

Thomas Jefferson in his 2nd Inaugural Address said this:
"I shall need the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, Who led our for
efathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and planted them in a
country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; Who has
covered our infancy with His providence, and our riper years with His wisdom
and power; and to whose goodness I ask you to join with me in supplications,
that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils,
and prosper their measures, that whatsoever they do shall result in your
good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all
nations."
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin...rowse?id=Deity

Need I go on?
--
Karleen Page/Vibrant Jewels
Vibrant Jewels Online Bead & Jewelry Store
http://www.vibrantjewels.com/jewelry/welcome.htm
JustBead Auctions
http://www.justbeads.com/search/ql.cfm?s=21770

Boy do you miss the point!!! Which is, the courts should never be able to
relegate any type of human to a subclass without equal rights... as they did
in Nazi Germany to the Jews, as they did in the US with the Dred Scott
decisions, and as they did in the US with Roe v. Wade. And as they will if
the trend toward legalized euthanasia continues.

And the courts should not be able to create law or to ignore the state and
federal consitutions, as recently happened in Nevada.

--
Karleen Page/Vibrant Jewels
Vibrant Jewels Online Bead & Jewelry Store
http://www.vibrantjewels.com/jewelry/welcome.htm
JustBead Auctions
http://www.justbeads.com/search/ql.cfm?s=21770
PayPal Merchant Account
https://www.paypal.com/mrb/pal=7XJ98L86Z7S2C
"Louis Cage" wrote in message
...
Oh, so you are all about abortion.
Without getting into a long and fruitless debate (it's a subject where I
have rarely met anyone who changed their mind on it, although I personally
did), let me recommend a book I read in an ethics class in college: "The
Rights and Wrongs of Abortion" by John Finnis; Marshall Cohen; Thomas
Nagel;
Thomas Scanlon 1974 Princeton Press. It is a thin book with a collection
of
four essays, two pro-life and two pro-choice, each selected by their
particular groups. It really gets into the nitty gritty of some of the
issues and cuts through the emotional stuff. A good read regardless of
which side of the fence you are on. It lets you see both sides complete
argument devoid of slogans and sensationalist pictures or statistics.


--
There are no mistakes, only unexplored techniques

"Karleen/Vibrant Jewels" wrote in
message . net...
"Lisa" wrote in message
news:bN0Ec.194535$Ly.156855@attbi_s01...

]I'm much more alarmed at activist judges that are creating
legislation
]instead of judging based on law. Many people applaud when they
think
that
]the "right" is losing religious ground, they won't be so happy when
the
same
]standard is applied to them.

Newbie here, I really hate to introduce myself on a
controversial thread, but I can't help it. From what
I've seen, an "activist judge" is a judge who makes a
decision that those on the right don't like.

I think the problem is more far reaching than that. Consider this quote:

"Legislative enactments, presidential actions, and amendments to the
Constitution are all things which publically announce changes in the law
of
the land, providing foreknowledge of changes in the legal framework
within
which free people may plan and act. Moreover, all the processes are
ultimately responsible to the people themselves and can be reversed if
the
peole find them onerous. Judge-made innovations are, in effect, expost
facto
laws, which are expressly forbidden by the Constitution and abhorrent to
the
rule of law. For courts to strike like a bolt from the blue hitting an
unsuspecting citizen, who was disobeying no law that he could have known
beforehand, is the essence of judicial tyranny, however moral or just
the
judges may imagine their innovation to be. The harm is not limited to
the
particular damage this may do in a particular case, great as that may
sometimes be, but makes all other laws into murky storm clouds,
potential
sources of other bolts from the blue, contrary to the whole notion of "a
government of laws and not of men."
***
The quest for cosmic justice via the judiciary--law as an "agent of
change",
as it is often phrased--quietly repeals the foundations of the American
revolution. It reduces a free people to a subject people, subject now to
the
edicts of unelected judges enforcing "evolving standards" and made more
heedless by their exhalted sense of moral superiority. It is one of the
most
dangerous of many ways in which towering presumptions are a threat to
the
freedom of America."

This is exerpted from Thomas Sowell's "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"
(page
167) on this site
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-.../posts?page=85

My hubby and I watched a grand old b/w movie recently about the
Nuremberg
Trials. Spencer Tracy was the judge. It was a fascinating look at the
ideas
that shaped the Nazi movement and how they were implemented. The judges
began to use the Nazi ideology to shape their decisions, in which
innocent
people were convicted of spurious allegations simply because they were
Jews.
In a final scene, one of the judges who was on trial and convicted made
the
statement that he never realized how far it would go and never meant for
the
slaughter of millions of Jews to take place. Spencer Tracy said that it
went
too far when the first innocent person was convicted.

I've read many books about the Holocaust. My father was wounded two
times
in
WWII seeking to help liberate France and the concentration camps. I've
tried
very hard to understand how and why 6 million Jews and 5 million
non-Jews
could be sacrificed to such a brittle philosophy. The Nazis cared very
passionately about their national identity, and more so about their
supposed
Aryan supremacy. They were certainly exercising their "right" of free
speech, weren't they? And their ideas were so powerful that they swept
everyone with them in a tidal flood of destruction. Beyond that, they
influenced a whole generation to their way of thinking, including
"activist
judges" who handed out the sentences that helped make being a Jew
criminal.

11 million people sacrificed to an ideal.

Since 1971, 3,000 Americans per day, 1.5 million Americans per year,
about
50 million Americans to date, have been sacrificed to an ideal... almost
5
times the toll of the Nazi Holocaust. It started with activist justices
and
their sympathy for the plight of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy. It
was
fueled by a symbol - remember the ubiquitous coat hanger with a slash
through it? It has been continued by the cry for reproductive rights -
although how destroying a fetus is "reproductive" is beyond me. It is
certinally politically incorrect to dispute such a feminist dogma,
probably
even financially suicidal to even bring it up here....

50 million people ... and counting... sacrificed to an ideal.

I'm wondering, was it worth it?

The Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court subjugated the rights of
the
slave to the slave owner. The disastrous effects of this nonsense is
still
being felt today. To relegate one "type" of human being to subhuman
status
for the benefit of another has been shown to be bad law, as well as
morally
wrong. Yet the "type" of human being known as a "fetus" has had subhuman
status since 1971, thanks to activist justices.

Euthanasia is next on the list, let's see who'll be relegatred to
subhuman
status now. Who decides who is no longer useful or necessary? Will it be
the
person's family, perhaps eager to collect an inheritance? Will it be the
HMO, who will not find it profitable to continue a person's existance?
Will
it be some court, deciding when to "pull the plug"? (Wait, they do this
already...) Statistics from countries who already practice euthanasia
show
that it is often the primary physician, the person's own doctor whom
they
have trusted with their very life, who decides, without any input from
any
one, including the patient, that their life span is over. Many of these
patients did NOT have a terminal illness, just chronic conditions that
were
expensive to treat.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... basic rights out of which
all
the others flow. But activist justices in 1971 decided that the most
innocent and defenseless of all our citizens didn't have any basic
rights,
no rights at all. Slave=Jew=Fetus, it's all the same thing. And
Euthanasia
will add to the list: the Aged, the Infirm, the Mentally Unfit, the
Unwanted, the Chronically Ill .... You?

As Thomas Sowell was quoted above:
"The quest for cosmic justice via the judiciary--law as an "agent of
change", as it is often phrased--quietly repeals the foundations of the
American revolution. It reduces a free people to a subject people,
subject
now to the edicts of unelected judges enforcing "evolving standards" and
made more heedless by their exhalted sense of moral superiority. It is
one
of the most dangerous of many ways in which towering presumptions are a
threat to the freedom of America."

Well, US courts never had anything to do with German Nazis. Nor does the
US Constitution, which gives the right of free speech to US citizens, it
never guaranteed it to Germans during the early 20th century (or today for
that matter). I think there have been some rulings regarding allowing the
American Nazi Party to print publications and peaceably assemble, which are
explicitly allowed by the Constitution.
The Dred Scott decision was more about property rights, at that time the
US Constitution allowed the heinous practice of slavery. Which meant the
Constitution defined a group of people as less than others, not the court.
It was more like bringing whiskey into a dry county or state. Whether it
was the correct decision in the context of the times can be debated
(personally I think it was too broad and left a lot of loopholes), but it
still was operating under the established rule of law which still allowed
slavery in a lot of the US. Slavery was an allowed practice when America
was colonized (invaded?). It just was more economically viable in the
south and the northern area abandoned the practice. There is a more
interest in this history since a slave graveyard was unearthed in New York
recently.
So that leaves the abortion / sanctity of life thing, which your whole
mention of Dred Scott and Nazis seemed to be used to only support your
statements regarding fetuses and euthanasia.
Since so far the only people who have requested the courts to view
euthanasia are the terminally ill or their families (under the direction of
the patient before they were incapacitated), they are requesting the "right
to die" for themselves. As far as what is done in other countries, I don't
know and defer to your research on that. But I think if you would look into
it on a case by case basis, rather than some simple statistics, you will
find that in the case of the "chronic conditions" you mention, it was the
request of the patient. There are definitely situations that I believe I
would like to be euthanized rather than just suffer a chronic situation that
would never go away.
Again I have no desire to get into a long debate abut euthanasia either.
I have debated the whole activist judge thing with people and every
decision I check into, Dred Scott, Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board, etc., the
court was basing its findings on the rule of law, generally going beyond
case law and back into legal code and the Constitution. By the time a case
gets to the Supreme Court, generally it is a situation where a good argument
can be made for both sides and someone has to be able to have a final say.
Since the US has no sovereign, the Supreme Court has to do this. And as
someone else pointed out, when it doesn't go their way, the political right
uses the catchphrase "activist judges". The Library of Congress released a
series of courtroom audio tapes of some of the more landmark decision of the
court, along with written commentary and analysis. I have heard a few of
those and they are definitely worth looking into if anyone is really
interested in how the Supreme Court actually works.

--
There are no mistakes, only unexplored techniques

"Karleen/Vibrant Jewels" wrote in
message ink.net...
Boy do you miss the point!!! Which is, the courts should never be able to
relegate any type of human to a subclass without equal rights... as they
did
in Nazi Germany to the Jews, as they did in the US with the Dred Scott
decisions, and as they did in the US with Roe v. Wade. And as they will if
the trend toward legalized euthanasia continues.

And the courts should not be able to create law or to ignore the state and
federal consitutions, as recently happened in Nevada.

--
Karleen Page/Vibrant Jewels
Vibrant Jewels Online Bead & Jewelry Store
http://www.vibrantjewels.com/jewelry/welcome.htm
JustBead Auctions
http://www.justbeads.com/search/ql.cfm?s=21770
PayPal Merchant Account
https://www.paypal.com/mrb/pal=7XJ98L86Z7S2C
"Louis Cage" wrote in message
...
Oh, so you are all about abortion.
Without getting into a long and fruitless debate (it's a subject where
I
have rarely met anyone who changed their mind on it, although I
personally
did), let me recommend a book I read in an ethics class in college:
"The
Rights and Wrongs of Abortion" by John Finnis; Marshall Cohen; Thomas
Nagel;
Thomas Scanlon 1974 Princeton Press. It is a thin book with a
collection
of
four essays, two pro-life and two pro-choice, each selected by their
particular groups. It really gets into the nitty gritty of some of the
issues and cuts through the emotional stuff. A good read regardless of
which side of the fence you are on. It lets you see both sides complete
argument devoid of slogans and sensationalist pictures or statistics.


--
There are no mistakes, only unexplored techniques

"Karleen/Vibrant Jewels" wrote in
message . net...
"Lisa" wrote in message
news:bN0Ec.194535$Ly.156855@attbi_s01...

]I'm much more alarmed at activist judges that are creating
legislation
]instead of judging based on law. Many people applaud when they
think
that
]the "right" is losing religious ground, they won't be so happy
when
the
same
]standard is applied to them.

Newbie here, I really hate to introduce myself on a
controversial thread, but I can't help it. From what
I've seen, an "activist judge" is a judge who makes a
decision that those on the right don't like.

I think the problem is more far reaching than that. Consider this
quote:

"Legislative enactments, presidential actions, and amendments to the
Constitution are all things which publically announce changes in the
law
of
the land, providing foreknowledge of changes in the legal framework
within
which free people may plan and act. Moreover, all the processes are
ultimately responsible to the people themselves and can be reversed if
the
peole find them onerous. Judge-made innovations are, in effect, expost
facto
laws, which are expressly forbidden by the Constitution and abhorrent
to
the
rule of law. For courts to strike like a bolt from the blue hitting an
unsuspecting citizen, who was disobeying no law that he could have
known
beforehand, is the essence of judicial tyranny, however moral or just
the
judges may imagine their innovation to be. The harm is not limited to
the
particular damage this may do in a particular case, great as that may
sometimes be, but makes all other laws into murky storm clouds,
potential
sources of other bolts from the blue, contrary to the whole notion of
"a
government of laws and not of men."
***
The quest for cosmic justice via the judiciary--law as an "agent of
change",
as it is often phrased--quietly repeals the foundations of the
American
revolution. It reduces a free people to a subject people, subject now
to
the
edicts of unelected judges enforcing "evolving standards" and made
more
heedless by their exhalted sense of moral superiority. It is one of
the
most
dangerous of many ways in which towering presumptions are a threat to
the
freedom of America."

This is exerpted from Thomas Sowell's "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"
(page
167) on this site
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-.../posts?page=85

My hubby and I watched a grand old b/w movie recently about the
Nuremberg
Trials. Spencer Tracy was the judge. It was a fascinating look at the
ideas
that shaped the Nazi movement and how they were implemented. The
judges
began to use the Nazi ideology to shape their decisions, in which
innocent
people were convicted of spurious allegations simply because they were
Jews.
In a final scene, one of the judges who was on trial and convicted
made
the
statement that he never realized how far it would go and never meant
for
the
slaughter of millions of Jews to take place. Spencer Tracy said that
it
went
too far when the first innocent person was convicted.

I've read many books about the Holocaust. My father was wounded two
times
in
WWII seeking to help liberate France and the concentration camps. I've
tried
very hard to understand how and why 6 million Jews and 5 million
non-Jews
could be sacrificed to such a brittle philosophy. The Nazis cared very
passionately about their national identity, and more so about their
supposed
Aryan supremacy. They were certainly exercising their "right" of free
speech, weren't they? And their ideas were so powerful that they swept
everyone with them in a tidal flood of destruction. Beyond that, they
influenced a whole generation to their way of thinking, including
"activist
judges" who handed out the sentences that helped make being a Jew
criminal.

11 million people sacrificed to an ideal.

Since 1971, 3,000 Americans per day, 1.5 million Americans per year,
about
50 million Americans to date, have been sacrificed to an ideal...
almost
5
times the toll of the Nazi Holocaust. It started with activist
justices
and
their sympathy for the plight of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.
It
was
fueled by a symbol - remember the ubiquitous coat hanger with a slash
through it? It has been continued by the cry for reproductive rights -
although how destroying a fetus is "reproductive" is beyond me. It is
certinally politically incorrect to dispute such a feminist dogma,
probably
even financially suicidal to even bring it up here....

50 million people ... and counting... sacrificed to an ideal.

I'm wondering, was it worth it?

The Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court subjugated the rights of
the
slave to the slave owner. The disastrous effects of this nonsense is
still
being felt today. To relegate one "type" of human being to subhuman
status
for the benefit of another has been shown to be bad law, as well as
morally
wrong. Yet the "type" of human being known as a "fetus" has had
subhuman
status since 1971, thanks to activist justices.

Euthanasia is next on the list, let's see who'll be relegatred to
subhuman
status now. Who decides who is no longer useful or necessary? Will it
be
the
person's family, perhaps eager to collect an inheritance? Will it be
the
HMO, who will not find it profitable to continue a person's existance?
Will
it be some court, deciding when to "pull the plug"? (Wait, they do
this
already...) Statistics from countries who already practice euthanasia
show
that it is often the primary physician, the person's own doctor whom
they
have trusted with their very life, who decides, without any input from
any
one, including the patient, that their life span is over. Many of
these
patients did NOT have a terminal illness, just chronic conditions that
were
expensive to treat.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... basic rights out of
which
all
the others flow. But activist justices in 1971 decided that the most
innocent and defenseless of all our citizens didn't have any basic
rights,
no rights at all. Slave=Jew=Fetus, it's all the same thing. And
Euthanasia
will add to the list: the Aged, the Infirm, the Mentally Unfit, the
Unwanted, the Chronically Ill .... You?

As Thomas Sowell was quoted above:
"The quest for cosmic justice via the judiciary--law as an "agent of
change", as it is often phrased--quietly repeals the foundations of
the
American revolution. It reduces a free people to a subject people,
subject
now to the edicts of unelected judges enforcing "evolving standards"
and
made more heedless by their exhalted sense of moral superiority. It is
one
of the most dangerous of many ways in which towering presumptions are
a
threat to the freedom of America."