Millions of families will visit graves on Monday to pay their respects to relatives who died serving in our military — sons and daughters who died in the deserts of Iraq and mountains of Afghanistan, mothers and fathers killed in the Vietnamese jungle, grandparents who stormed the Normandy beaches, great-grandparents who fell at Belleau Wood, and ancestors who “gave the last full measure of devotion” at Gettysburg.
Three atheist groups are trying to have government memorials scrubbed of religious references, never mind that religious faith and prayer provided solace to those who gave their lives, and still does so to many who survive them. The atheist argument is that the First Amendment mandates the expunging of religion from the public square, and, thanks to Obama-appointed judges, this specious argument is winning. It is now up to the Supreme Court to intervene.
As you drive across the Anacostia River into Bladensburg, Md., you’ll see a large memorial of concrete and pink granite standing 40 feet tall to honor 49 residents of Prince George’s County who died in World War I. Inscribed on the memorial are the apt words, “endurance,” “valor,” “devotion,” and “courage.”
The memorial’s offense, according to busybodies at the American Humanist Association, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and the Center for Inquiry, is that the memorial takes the cruciform shape of Christian symbolism.
The three groups sued, arguing that a cross on government property is unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause. The three non-Christian residents they filed on behalf of said they “have faced multiple instances of unwelcome contact with the Cross,” which is to say that they saw it, noticed it, took offense, and “wish to have no further contact with it.” One suspects that the majority of their neighbors, being decent and sensible people, wish to have no further contact with them!
The atheists lost in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland but won in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which Obama stacked during his eight years in office. A three-judge panel ruled for the ungodly, and the circuit court denied a rehearing.
The American Legion and First Liberty Institute say they will appeal to the Supreme Court. It is to be hoped that they win, preferably in a decision that contains a stinging and appropriately withering rebuke for anti-theists.
The constitutional prohibition on the federal government establishing a religion does not and never has required that public areas be vandalized in the cause of atheism. A multitude of national symbols, from the Declaration of Independence to the dollar bill, proclaim the U.S. to be traditionally a nation of religious people. The gravestones in Arlington Cemetery are engraved with Christian crosses, Stars of David, and the crescent moon of Islam. The attempt by militant anti-theists to expunge evidence of religion is itself the imposition and establishment of a set of beliefs.
The American Humanist Association successfully sued against a cross in Pensacola, Fla., while their allies at the ACLU — the “L” used to stand unironically for liberties — sued to destroy cross memorials in San Diego, Calif., and the Mojave Desert. They were thwarted, but the means by which this was done — selling the land to private organizations — was unfortunate, because it could be taken as implicit agreement with the anti-theist case.
But back to the Bladensburg memorial. The atheists complain that cross memorials “unconstitutionally endorse Christianity and favors Christian soldiers to exclusion of all others.” Who endorses Christianity? Perhaps that could be said of the 10 mothers who raised money for the cross to memorialize their sons in 1919. That their heart-rent memorial should now be traduced by a conclave of atheist malcontents is sickening. (The 49 men memorialized could not be reached for comment on whether they’d be offended or feel excluded if the memorial were removed.)
Shall Moses and the Ten Commandments be hacked from the face of the Supreme Court? What about the painting of the Baptism of Pocahontas at the Capitol? The statue of Father Damien? Should the Holy Bible be ejected from the cornerstone of the Washington Monument? The scripture inscribed on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial?
Come to think of it, the National Mall is cross-shaped. Should it be plowed under and sown with salt, or built over as a supreme act symbolizing the willful, deracinated, and arrogant (not to mention ignorant) destruction of American liberties?
This Memorial Day, let us stand up for what is right, and fight to demolish what is left.
