The Constitution Party Seeks to Dismantle Our Form of Government

AlterNet

Ousted Alabama judge Roy Moore is waging war on church-state separation -- and you won't believe the far-out folks who are helping him.


Most lawyers and other Americans, says Roy Moore, don't understand the First Amendment's church-state provisions because they've "been indoctrinated in something that is not true."


Speaking at a "God & Country Patriotic Celebration & Conference" in Maryland in July, Moore claimed law professors and judges are leading people astray.


[...]Just before the Fourth of July, he wound up as the main attraction at a Religious Right gathering in Severn, Md., where he and a string of far-right activists peddled "Christian nation" rhetoric, bashed Islam, belittled American culture and the federal government and displayed an alarming affinity for the neo-Confederate states' rights cause.


On the conference's first day during a panel discussion dubbed "The Myth of Separation of Church and State," Moore said, "I didn't come to my understanding of separation of church and state out of study or my intellectual ability, which is limited. I came through it out of experience."


Moore then elaborated on the lengthy court battles over his efforts to display the Ten Commandments in government buildings. He is best known -- and loved by the Religious Right -- for his defense of a large granite Commandments monument he placed in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building.


Americans United for Separation of Church and State and its allies challenged the religious display in federal court. Moore lost at all levels of the federal judiciary, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his case. Moore defied court orders to remove the 2.5-ton monument, and in 2003 he was ejected from the state supreme court.


The "God & Country" conferees in Severn celebrated Moore's actions as heroic. The other speakers, including a fiery Maryland state legislator, a disgraced former military chaplain and a law professor dressed as a Christian crusader knight, argued that the nation's founders were deeply religious men who did not intend for church and state to be separate. America, they said, is morally bankrupt thanks to a list of usual suspects, such as gays, secularists, Hollywood and liberal politicians.


One of the conference's primary sponsors was Michael Peroutka, a Pasadena, Md., attorney who ran for president on the U.S. Constitution Party ticket in 2004. The party advocates for an extremely weak central government and a society governed by biblical law. So, beyond celebrating Moore as a Christian martyr of sorts, an anti-government sentiment was also easily discernable among the speakers and audience.


[...]"We have a republic, and the source of authority in that republic is God," said Peroutka. "A revolution has happened in America. It has happened over the past 150 years. Evolution is at the bottom of it, and some very un-American people have been and are behind it. The purpose of the revolution," he continued, "is to stop you from being able to think and believe like an American any more .... It's been a calculated and evil anti-God, anti-Christian revolution."


[...]Islam is a threat to Christianity, according to conference speaker John Eidsmoe. Eidsmoe, a retired Montgomery, Ala., law professor, spoke while dressed in a medieval crusader get-up, including chain mail and a sword. He lauded the Crusades as effectively ensuring that not all Europe would today be Muslim.


[...]"In the 20th century, I believe God used the American empire to defeat Nazism and then to defeat Communism," Eidsmoe claimed. "And in the 21st century, maybe He will use the American empire to defeat Islam."


[...]For all the talk of patriotism -- indeed, the conference was touted as a "patriotic celebration" -- the American flag was not visible on Gladway Farm during the tribute to Moore. Instead, the ceremony took place under three flags -- Maryland's, the Alabama state flag and a Confederate flag. (It was the Confederate national flag, not the more familiar Confederate battle flag.)


The display isn't surprising. According to the Web site of Jews on First, Peroutka has links to the neo-Confederate League of the South. The League, a secessionist group that seeks a "free and independent Southern republic," endorsed Peroutka's presidential candidacy, and he was a keynote speaker at the organization's 2006 convention in Chattanooga.


Church-state separationists say the radical views promulgated by Moore, Peroutka and other Religious Right activists must be closely monitored and countered by those who value religious liberty.


Said Americans United's Lynn, "If these folks had their way, the Bill of Rights would be a thing of the past. We must make sure that Americans are aware of their extreme agenda and see to it that they don't succeed."