In his Friday article, Tim Paluch condemned Christians who oppose the idea of separation of church and state as “extreme” and compared them to the leaders of the Taliban. Let’s consider the issue of church-state separation.

Atheist extremists like to cite the First Amendment – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

What the above quote stipulates is that Congress shall not pass a law regarding any religion. It is designed to keep the federal government out of the affairs of citizens to ensure freedom of religion. It requires a great deal of ignorance to suppose that the Bill of Rights was designed to empower the federal government over institutions of the people.

Now indeed, no laws were ever on the books requiring kids to pray in schools. It was just something people did; it required no law. The whole idea of “separation of church and state” did not even exist prior to Engel v. Vitale in 1962.

In Engle v. Vitale, the Supreme Court acted as a legislator. Now if there were regular prayer sessions in public schools, how would that oppress those of other faiths?

It may offend them, but since no action is forced on any student, it can’t be classified as oppressive.

Now surely Paluch and those like him would be greatly offended at the thought of prayer and moral principles such as the Ten Commandments.

However, the Constitution does not protect people from being offended. It’s really a rather common error made by liberals all too accustomed to thinking with their hearts at the expense of their brains.

They tend to think it’s their constitutional right to not be offended by anything, and if they ever are, then the offender is intolerant, oppressive, extreme, has no place in the public arena and need not be refuted.

This is why those who disapprove of homosexuality are condemned as violent bigots. Those with low moral standards are greatly offended by those who hold to higher ones. Anyway, not even the founding fathers advocated any such wall of separation.

“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible” – president George Washington, Sept. 17, 1796

Paul Armstrong

Sophomore

Aerospace Engineering