Suppose you decided to leave your entire (modest) estate to your church,
and stated so in your will. Upon your death, an insolent and greedy
relative, who makes many times more per year than the pastor of the
church you named in your will, challenges your will, asking the court to
ignore your bequest to the church and to direct your estate be used to
supplement this relative's already bloated income. Without any evidence
to back his claim, the greedy relative commits perjury in court by
saying you had a "secret" intention to give all your money to
the greedy relative instead of to your favorite charity. The court
agrees, and gives all your money to the greedy relative, instead of to
the church as you had directed in your last will and testament.
Is this a legitimate way to interpret the provisions of your will?
No, it is not. Ask your lawyer.
Imagine instead that the probate court gave all your estate to your
greedy relative on the grounds that allowing your estate to go to a
church when the court has the power to give it to someone else would be
to "endorse" religion by enforcing a will which
"discriminates" against atheists and thus violates the
"separation of church and state."
Is this a legitimate way to interpret the provisions of your will?
Is this a legitimate way to interpret the constitution?
No. Such a court is not engaging in a legitimate interpretation of
your will, Unless your lawyer is a member of the ACLU.
Neither does the U.S. Supreme Court engage in legitimate
interpretation of the Constitution, because it's in the pocket of the
ACLU.
Interpreting a will or interpreting a constitution is not a matter of
what the ACLU thinks is in the will or the constitution, or what greedy
relatives WANT to be in the will or the Constitution that's important.
What matters is what YOU directed in your will, or what the Framers
of the Constitution themselves said was in the Constitution.
The ACLU would like us to think that the Constitution is "a
living constitution," meaning we can construe its provisions in a
way that suits US. The Founding Fathers denied this idea.
Madison wrote:
I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which
the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that
sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And
if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security
for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful, exercise of its
powers. . . . What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of
law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern
sense.
(to Henry Lee, June 25, 1824 [emphasis added])
Our ideas about "religion" have been brainwashed by Secular
Humanists and the modern Supreme Court.
All of the Founders agreed that "religion is the
duty man owes to his creator" (See Madison's Memorial
and Remonstrance.)
But now the US Supreme Court has said that atheism is a religion, and
non-belief is entitled to the same protection as belief. This is not
what the Founders believed.
We must use their understanding of terms if we are to understand the
Constitution. As Jefferson admonished Supreme Court Justice William
Johnson:
On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time
when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in
the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of
the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which
it was passed.
(June 12, 1823)
US Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, who signed both the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, said:
The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to
discover the meaning of those who made it.
(Works, "Lectures on Law Delivered in the
College of Phila.; Introductory Lecture: Of the Study of the Law in
the United States.")
Sup Ct. Justice Joseph Story, foremost constitutional commentator:
The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all
instruments is to construe them according to the sense of the terms
and the intention of the parties.
Commentaries on the Constitution, (Boston:
Hilliard, 1833) vol III, p. 383, sec. 400
You intended to give your estate to your church. That's how to interpret
your will.
The Founding Fathers did not intend to give us an atheistic God-free
nation. That's how to interpret the Constitution.
If we study the history of America, the acts of the Continental
Congress, the ratifying debates, the Federalist Papers, and other public
writings of the Founders, it becomes obvious that they did not intend to
purge God from the public square. It is clear that the nation they
founded was in turn founded upon God and His Law.
To say that the thoughts and intentions of the men who drafted the
Constitution take second place to the way WE "interpret" the
Constitution is to change our government from one of "laws, not of
men" to one of silly putty based on contemporary views of political
correctness.
Jefferson on Politics & Government: Interpreting the Constitution