Peace Comes Only When Men Lead Lives of Merry Christmas

Jesus replied, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength; The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."
-- Mark 12: 29-31

Every year, near Christmas, atheists sue across the country to force removal of creche displays from the public lands. But what if the atheists are right? What if there is no God? How does one love a God who doesn't exit?

And if there is no God, how can there be divine law? (By definition, divine law is the law made by God and revealed to mankind). If God has never existed, how could he make law? And if there is no God, how could Moses, Christ, Mohammed have spoken in God's name? Were they charlatans? Delusional?

Then, too, if there is no God, then the command that we "love our neighbor as ourselves," cannot come from God. If there is no God, if there is good, it must be good for reason other than God having declared it so. Without a God, how can there be objective right and wrong? But, if there is no God, no divine lawgiver, and no divine law, what's left?

Who gets to specify what is good in His place? Imagine the dire consequences for society. Social justice -- premised on the belief that God has mandated that "we love our neighbors as ourselves" -- loses its divine underpinning. What is good, then, is determined only by one or more human beings.

Then too, associated with the concept of divine law is the corollary that God, in the after-life, rewards those who obey his laws, and punishes those who disregard them. If God doesn't exist, he can do neither (even if there is some sort of after-life)! Without an after-life, and rewards and punishments in that after-life, justice must take place before death -- or not at all. The gangster who murders and escapes prosecution during his lifetime, beats the rap -- if after death there is no God to punish his wrongdoings in the after-life.

In the Gospel of Luke (ch. 16) we find the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.

"There was a rich man who ... dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus ... When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died ... and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he ... cried out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me. ... I am suffering torment in these flames.'
Abraham replied, 'My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.'"

Without God, without divine law, and without reward and punishment in the after-life, the Lazarus story is just an uplifting tale.

Of course, apart from divine law, there are the "laws" of nature and of physics. But they do not speak to morality or ethics.

They say nothing about that "thou shall not murder, steal or commit adultery." Further, if there is no God, even the Ten Commandments are of human origin.

The stark fact is that if God doesn't exit, then all laws have their origin in human invention, superstition or in naked power.

History has shown that the lawmaker is most often the person (or cabal) that has the army or the mob at his back. That power can reside in a religious leader, a king, nobles, the people or a portion of the people -- whoever has and is willing to use power. At that point, as there is no God, the emperor, the dictator, majority or the mob gets to say what is good, evil, fair, unfair, just, or unjust. And of course, as we see so vividly in the middle east, might appears to make right.

If the atheists are right, might makes right, and the ends justify the means. And even if they are wrong, if all men operate as if there is no God, the world becomes a jungle where the ruthless rule. It will be a world that even the most decent of atheists dread.

Religion, given its human component, comes with faults. And scientists tell us that God's existence cannot be proved empirically. But I choose to believe He exists.

I think the world is a better place because so many others also believe He exists, and, more importantly, live out their beliefs. If this Christmas, there is no "peace (on earth) to men of good will," it will not be the fault of those who love God and love their neighbors as they do themselves. You cannot love your neighbor as yourself and murder him, steal from him, or sell his children cocaine.

Peace comes only when men live lives of "Merry Christmas!" That is the benign message of the creche.

Posted Online: : Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2012, 10:54 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2012
John Donald O'Shea

Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2012, 10:54 am

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If the Presidents Wants to Run off the Cliff, then Let Him

If  the Presidents Wants to Run off the Cliff, then Let Him

We are fast approaching the "fiscal cliff."

The president is playing hardball.

It is time for the House to play hardball, and to save the country. Here is the simple advice I would give Congressman Paul Ryan:

Dear Congressman Ryan:

Here is my plan to save the country by ending deficit spending.

1. Let President Obama "drive the bus" off the "fiscal cliff."
2. Then pass separate appropriation bills for only the things the House wants; e.g.:

a. A Social Security appropriation;
b. A Medicare appropriation;
c. A military appropriation;
d. An FBI appropriation.
e. Etc.

3. Make no appropriation for anything the House opposes. Agree to nothing else.

4. Force the president to accept or veto the things the country really needs.

The principle involved is simple. It can be found in the U.S. Constitution.

Article I, provides, "No money shall be drawn from the treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law." And before any bill (appropriation or otherwise) can become law, it must be passed by both the House and Senate. "

The principle, therefore, is that the president and the Senate cannot spend one penny, unless the House agrees to appropriate the money.

If the House decides to take control of the "purse" as it did in the early days of the republic, and as it did after the Civil War, all the president's grand schemes are checkmated. There may be adverse consequences. But the deficit problem won't be one of them. Nor will deficit spending.

And until we eliminate trillion dollar deficits, all other fixes are phony.

Posted Online: : Dec. 11, 2012, 1:41 pm - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2012
John Donald O'Shea

What are Privileges and Immunities of U.S. Citizens?

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." -- 14th Amendment, U. S. Constitution

U.S. Supreme Court justices Felix Frankfurter and Hugo Black fought a running battle from 1947-1962 over the meaning of "the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" provision of the 14th Amendment.

The battle lines were first drawn in the 1947 case of Adamson v. California. Adamson had been convicted of murder, and sentenced to death. He did not testify at trial. The prosecutor, as permitted by California law, commented on his failure to testify.

On appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court, Adamson argued "that the provision of the Fifth Amendment that no person 'shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself' is a (1) fundamental national privilege or immunity protected against state abridgment by the Fourteenth Amendment or (2) a privilege or immunity secured, through the Fourteenth Amendment, against deprivation by state action because it is a personal right, enumerated in the federal Bill of Rights."

California argued that that portion of the Fifth Amendment had no application to the states. The Supreme Court agreed.

Justice Black, in a strong dissent, argued that the 14th Amendment was intended to make the entire Bill of Rights applicable to the states. He believed they were the "privileges and immunities" in question.

"The first 10 amendments were ... adopted largely because of fear that (Federal) Government might unduly interfere with prized individual liberties.
"The people ... demanded a Bill of Rights written into their Constitution. The amendments embodying the Bill of Rights were intended to curb all branches of the Federal Government in the fields touched by the amendments-Legislative, Executive, and Judicial.

"The Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments were pointedly aimed at confining exercise of power by courts and judges. .... (Y)ears of arbitrary court action sprang largely from the past use of courts in the imposition of criminal punishments to suppress speech, press, and religion. Hence the constitutional limitations of courts' powers were, in the view of the Founders, essential supplements to the First Amendment, which was itself designed to protect the widest scope for all people to believe and to express the most divergent political, religious, and other views.

"But ...(i)n 1833, Barron v. Baltimore, ... this Court ... specifically held inapplicable to the states that provision of the Fifth Amendment which declares: 'nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.' ... (T)he Court there said that it could not hold that the first eight amendments applied to the states. This was the controlling constitutional rule when the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed in 1866.

"My study of the historical events that culminated in the Fourteenth Amendment, and the expressions of those who sponsored and favored, as well as those who opposed its submission and passage, persuades me that one of the chief objects ... was to make the Bill of Rights, applicable to the states. With full knowledge of the import of the Barron decision, the framers and backers of the Fourteenth Amendment proclaimed its purpose to be to overturn the constitutional rule that case had announced."

In a concurring opinion, Justice Frankfurter, took dead aim at his views:

"(Since) the incorporation of the Fourteenth Amendment into the Constitution ... a period of 70 years, the scope of that Amendment was passed upon by 43 judges. ... (O)nly one ... (The first Justice Harlan, now considered one of the Court's greatest members) ever indicated the belief that the Fourteenth Amendment was a shorthand summary of the first eight Amendments ... as restrictions upon the powers of the States. Among these (the other 42) judges were not only those who would have to be included among the greatest in the history of the Court ... judges who were alert in safeguarding ... the interests of liberty and human dignity through law. But they were also ... mindful of ... of our federal system ... and therefore ... regardful of... the authority that was left to the States even after the Civil War. (T)hey did not find that the Fourteenth Amendment ... fastened upon the States procedural arrangements which, ... only those who are 'narrow or provincial' would deem essential to 'a fair and enlightened system of justice.' Palko v. Connecticut."

In subsequent cases, Justice Frankfurter took the approach that where state action "shocks the conscience, it violates due process," and no further provision of the Bill of Rights need be cited.

Frankfurter's test shocked Justice Black's conscience. Black argued that Frankfurter's test was "too vague," and substituted judicial whim for written constitution. Black also took dead aim at the danger to constitutional government inherent in Frankfurter's formula:

"Since Marbury v. Madison, was decided, the practice has been firmly established ... that courts can strike down legislative enactments which violate the Constitution. This process ... involves interpretation ... [I]nterpretation obviously may result in contraction or extension of the original purpose of a constitutional provision thereby affecting policy. But to pass upon the constitutionality of statutes by looking to the particular standards enumerated in the Bill of Rights ... is one thing; to invalidate statutes because of application of 'natural law' ... undefined by the Constitution is another. 'In the one instance, courts proceeding within clearly marked constitutional boundaries; in the other they roam at will in the limitless area of their own beliefs as to reasonableness and actually select policies, a responsibility which the Constitution entrusts to the legislative representatives of the people."

My next op-ed will deal with the collateral damage caused by Frankfurter's "selective incorporation" process.

Posted Online: : Dec. 05, 2012, 11:40 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea


Copyright 2012
John Donald O'Shea