As two days of national commemoration approach, Religious Freedom Day (Saturday) and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (Monday), Americans would do well to consider the unbreakable link between the two and the lesson available in their chronological observance. The Latin phrase, post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning “after this, therefore because of this,” is often derided as a logical fallacy. However, celebrating Dr. King’s life and legacy after honoring religious freedom’s contribution to American civil society may be the exception which proves the rule.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) recently made headlines that may follow him for the rest of his political career. As Cleaver ended the traditional invocation before the commencement of the 117th Congress, he proffered a neologism that made satirists everywhere rejoice. In addition to ending his prayer with the ecclesiastical “amen,” the congressman added “awoman” in an apparent effort to appear gender-neutral.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision (8-0) concluding that federal officials can be held personally accountable for knowingly violating clearly established religious liberty rights. The primary result of the Court’s opinion is that people of faith who prove in court that their religious liberty rights have been harmed may be able to receive monetary compensation from federal employees.
In a 2011 sermon, Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock, who serves as senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, boldly proclaimed, “America, nobody can serve God and the military.” Warnock’s breathtaking rhetoric is not only wrong, but it only serves to weaken our military and our nation.
The fact that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito gave the keynote address to the Federalist Society in and of itself should be neither surprising nor controversial.
In the summer of 1787, 55 delegates from throughout the United States gathered in Philadelphia to sign the greatest document in American history, the U.S. Constitution. Now, 233 years later, the Constitution remains the bedrock of our system of government, protecting the people from tyranny and entrenching America as the freest society in the world.
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