Politics is not the only place where some pretty brassy statements have been made and repeated so often that some people have accepted these brassy statements as being as good as gold.
One of the brassiest of the brass oldies is the notion that the Constitution creates a “wall of separation” between church and state. This false notion has been so widely accepted that people who tell the truth get laughed at and mocked.
A recent New York Times piece said that it was “a flub of the first order” when Christine O’Donnell, Republican candidate for senator in Delaware, asked a law school audience, “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” According to the New York Times, “The question draw gasps and laughter” from this audience of professors and law students who are elites-in-waiting.
Well, nice try. I won't pretend to know of the case law addressing the establishment clause, but what the Constitution actually provides is that Congress shall not establish a state religion:
The New York Times writer joined in the mocking response to Ms. O’Donnell’s question, though admitting in passing that “in the strictest sense” the “actual words ‘separation of church and state’ do not appear in the text of the Constitution.” Either the separation of church and state is there or it is not there. It is not a question of some “strictest” technicality.
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution about a “wall of separation” between church and state, either directly or indirectly.
It must be so nice to belong to an elite group that doesn't even need to be correct to mock their idiot opponents for having the audacity to accept something the elites don't know. Do read the rest.
And I'll add to that. The First Amendment's provision on not establishing a religion technically applies to the federal government (Congress shall not ...) and not to the states. Many of the early colonies had official state religions established by the state governments, and remnants of this lingered on for quite a bit in, some cases.
