The Island of Logic

    Lately we have been hearing talk about whether we in fact are a “Judeo-Christian” nation. On may 4th, 2009 Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA), introduced House Resolution (H.RES.397) in the House of Representatives to the 111th  Congress, stating; “ Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as ‘America’s Spiritual Heritage Week’ for the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith. Whereas religious faith was not only important in official American life during the periods of discovery, exploration, colonization, and growth but has also been acknowledged and incorporated into all 3 branches of the Federal Government from their very beginning;”. This got me thinking; Are we or aren’t we a Christian nation?
    Recently, President Barack Obama claimed while in Turkey that “we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation…,” Newsweek stated that this is “The End of Christian America,”. We are constantly hearing of what once were considered religious liberties now being taken away, such as “voluntary” religious activities at public schools, the Gideon’s have lawsuits against them brought on by the ACLU for passing out Bibles to school kids. And the list goes on and on…
    Worse than all of those things is the brazen push by special interest groups in this country to get the government to deem unnecessary or even outlaw some of the things that have made this country great.
    In 2002 a copy of the Ten Commandments was removed from a courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama after the Supreme Court “decided it violated the “Separation of Church and State”, And yet John Jay the first Supreme Court Justice said, “..No human society has ever been able to maintain both order and freedom; both cohesiveness and liberty apart from the moral precepts of the Christian Religion applied and accepted by all classes. Should our Republic ever forget these fundamental principles of governance, men are certain to shed their responsibilities for licentiousness and this great experiment will surely be doomed”.
    When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884 an aluminum capstone was placed on it with the names of the engineers, the Commission, and the words “ Laus Deo (Praise be to God)”, recently however the piece has been rearranged in such a way so as to hide the reference to God. Oddly enough when Washington took the oath of office as our first President, he revealed his reverence for the Bible by kissing it. And, he added to the oath at the end, “So help me God,” establishing a precedent which every subsequent President has, of course, followed.
    Officials at the Veterans Dept. recently put a stop to the “voluntary” flag folding service during military funerals, because they mentioned God. The wording on the “Flag Certificates” was changed to remove the word “God” , and went even further by saying that the text from the “Pledge of  Allegiance” would be censored from it as well because it contained the words “one nation under God”. And yet Alexander Hamilton in a letter to James Baynard in 1802 said “I now offer you the outline of the plan they have suggested. Let an association be formed to be denominated “The Christian Constitution Society” its object to be first: The support of Christian Religion. Second: The support of the United States.”
    The brand new “Capitol Visitors Center” in Washington (which could quite easily be termed a $621 million dollar shrine to politically correctness) has conveniently left the phrase “In God We Trust” out of its depictions of the “House Chamber and Speakers Rostrum”, also in its reference to “article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance” which states “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged”, has decided to leave out any reference to religion and morality stating instead that “..schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged”. And yet one after another our Founding Fathers have stated that if we are to succeed as a nation it will be because of our trust and dependence on God and not in spite of it.
    Benjamin Franklin said “ he who introduces into public affairs principles of primitive Christianity, will change the face of the world”.
    John Jay our first Supreme Court Justice said “Providence has given unto our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers”.
    Charles Carroll one of the signers said this “without morals a public cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion whose morality is so sublime and pure…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, its best security for the duration of free governments”.
    So are we, or aren’t we? The debate will rage on as time passes but one thing is sure: our nation was and still is a Christian nation as far as this writer is concerned. It doesn’t matter what they do they can’t erase history. George Orwell has so correctly said “ He who controls the past, controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past”, it is imperative that we never lose the awareness that we all have a responsibility to God and to this country to uphold the principles on which this nation was founded.
    Samuel Adams in a letter to James Warren in 1779 stated “A general dissolution of these principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America, than the whole forces of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external invader”. Our nation is as Godly as we are, and I for one am not ready to throw in the towel just yet. John Adams in talking about the Constitution said this, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other”. And while the majority of the “people” seem to fall in the latter category, those of us that don’t have a God given responsibility to make sure that America never forgets its rich and Godly heritage, so I salute you Congressman  Forbes, keep up the good work I for one am behind you. GOD BLESS

Related Links:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr111-397

In 1982, Tom Bradley a candidate for governor in the state of California lost by the narrowest of margins after having polled ahead of his opponent. In the 1983 mayoral race in Chicago, Harold Washington polled as high as 14 points a few days before the election, but won the election by only 4 points. In 1989, David Dinkins running for mayor of New York against Rudy Giuliani, polled about 14 points ahead of Rudy a few days before the election, but only prevailed by about 2 points on the day of the election. The thing all of these candidates had in common was they were black and they were running against white opponents. Since that 1982 race this has become known as the Bradley Effect. The Bradley Effect states that for sociological reasons white voters will often tell pollsters that they are for a black candidate, but in the privacy of the voting booth will vote for the white candidate. Now there could be several reasons for this phenomenon. However, I believe that the two primary ones are that either these white voters are actually racist and would never vote black, or they are simply afraid of opening themselves up to criticism even though they prefer the white candidate for policy and ideological reasons. I would call this reverse racism. I believe that the latter is more often true then the former for being the cause of the Bradley Effect. There are more white people today that are trying to overcorrect the past problems of racism then those that are actually racist. White racism against blacks is not dead, but it has by no means the strength that it had in the 50′s and 60′s. Now some studies have shown that since 1996 that the Bradley Effect seems to have faded, and it no longer has an effect on elections. I contend however that it will have an effect on the coming Presidential election and I will tell you why. The University of Washington professor Anthony Greenwald conducted a study that found that the Bradley Effect was at play in the 2008 Democratic primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Greenwald noticed that the margins between the polls and the actual results depended on the number of blacks living in a state. The polls taken in states with a small black population tended to overestimate his performance and states with large black populations actually underestimated his performance. This indicated that there may be a Reverse Bradley Effect in play. The Reverse Bradley Effect would mean that blacks would tell pollsters that they were not voting for the black candidate even though they would pull the lever for the black candidate in the voting booth. The reason for this would not be the same as for the white voters in the Bradley Effect, but the absolute antithesis. The cause of the Reverse Bradley Effect would be that black voters would not want pollsters to think that they are simply voting for a candidate because he or she is black, but because they agree with that particular candidates policies. They want to appear as informed voters to the pollster. Ok, now you’re going to say that won’t the Reverse Bradley Effect and the Bradley Effect simply eliminate each other and create a zero sum game. In the Democratic Primaries that may be true however black voters are a minority so the Reverse Bradley Effect won’t completely eliminate the Bradley Effect, but I don’t think that is going to be the reason that the Bradley Effect will be at play in the General Election. First of all the Reverse Bradley Effect will not apply to the General Election because blacks traditionally vote more than 90% for the Democratic candidate. They will have more social pressure of being called an Uncle Tom if they would say that they are going with the Republican candidate than the pressure of appearing uninformed because they are saying they will vote for the black candidate. The Reverse Bradley Effect did apply to the Democratic primary because all the choices were obviously Democrat. In the General Election however many white independents and moderates will poll that they are voting for Obama even when they agree more with McCain’s policies. When it comes down to actually voting they will vote for policies and ideological beliefs rather than social pressure. I don’t know yet how much this is going to effect the November 4^th election, but I am going to guess that the Bradley Effect is probably giving Obama anywhere from 5-8% in the polls. Heads up Conservatives!! It isn’t over till the fat lady sings.