Is the Bill of Rights in danger?

A pulpit editorial delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship ofthe New River Valley, 8 Decmeber 2002,by Morton Nadler, a member of the UUFNRV.

Friends, The Bill of Rights may be in danger.

For years now the religious right has been on a rampage against the teaching of evolution in the public schools.

Until shut down by a RICO judgment, they had engaged in violent acts against family planning clinics. Now the Supreme Court will review that decision. In the meantime our Bush government stops all American contributions for international family planning.

Congress jumped to condemn the Federal court ruling that the phrase “under god” in the Pledge of Allegiance violates the establishment clause when public school children have to recite it.

Here is Agnes, in a “comic strip,” declaring: “Oh, No! They canceled the nativity play! The A.C.L.U. has shut it down! They claim it’s overtly nonsecular!” And in the next panel she rants on: “Holy Moly! Can they cancel Christmas as well?!” She reads that in place of the nativity play: “they will have a songfest to celebrate all the diversities of faith.” You don’t have to be a “dogmatic atheist” to get the message. Well, I guess they need a counterweight to Doonesbury.

Today it is not a fringe religious right, but the government itself, armed with the USA Patriot Act, that is violating the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Critics of government policies have been labeled abettors of terrorism by the Attorney General. The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments are openly violated, while the NRA’s pet, the Second Amendment, is protected by the Attorney General even when serial killers and, yes, terrorists, can buy guns without fear of surveillance.

For the moment lower courts have been a bulwark against some of the worst excesses, but how long can they withstand?

When he was freed from concentration camp at the end of World War II Pastor Niemo›ller is reported to have said:

“First they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Finally, they came for me and there was no one left to speak out.”

William Raspberry, the conservative African American columnist paraphrases this for today: “Will some latter-day Pastor Niemo›ller have to record that they came first for the terrorists…the sympathizers…the looney liberals…while good people did nothing?”

I wish I were wrong to believe that American democracy is under siege…from within. On the eve of his first nomination for president Abraham Lincoln declared:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

Will you?

The 2002 General Assembly in Quebec has proposed Civil Liberties as a study and action issue for the next two years. Let us send delegates to Long Beach, CA, ready to address and vote our position on this momentous issue.

UUC Home Page

sermons, articles,etc.