Dana Mathewson

Here's one reason I like Mike Huckabee -- articles like this one, and the thinking behind it. A few years ago he ran for the presidency. I'm rather glad he didn't get it, because he wouldn't be available to write articles like these.

Few politicians in Washington, even Republicans, have ever defended our Christian heritage on the national stage as fiercely as President Trump. His executive order affirming the religious liberty of public school students is just the latest example.

For the first time in nearly two decades, the order updates federal guidance to better protect students’ rights to engage in prayer and other forms of religious expression. Under the new rules, schools must certify every year that they do not have policies that restrict constitutionally-protected religious rights, such as the freedom to pray or read religious texts on school grounds. Schools that maintain non-compliant policies would lose their federal funding.

This is a big win for religious freedom advocates, who have found their rights and beliefs under increasingly withering assault from the left for decades. In the 1990s, when the campaign against public religiosity began to spiral out of control, both the federal government and more than 20 states passed Religious Freedom Restoration Acts to restore strict constitutional scrutiny for policies that restrict citizens’ exercise of religion. With those laws continually weakened and challenged in the courts, Trump’s executive order provides a new and effective remedy to the excesses of the secular left.

But it’s also a big win for everyone who cherishes the freedoms laid out in the U.S. Constitution because imposing any restrictions on those freedoms, whether in a broad or targeted fashion, endangers every right enjoyed by every American citizen. And the efforts to restrict religious liberty in public schools have clearly gotten out of hand, as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently pointed out.

Just last year, for instance, a Utah teacher made a 9-year-old Catholic student remove the ashes from his forehead on Ash Wednesday. In Kentucky, a school made a student take down a "prayer locker” she had set up so that classmates could submit anonymous prayer requests. In Washington, a high school football coach was suspended for praying — silently and by himself — after games.

None of these behaviors even came close to infringing on the rights of others, yet overzealous teachers and administrators punished them anyway. It’s the predictable result of a sustained campaign to drive religion from the public square, led by militant atheists who have spent decades convincing parents and teachers that any form of religious expression in any public place is a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.

As the president's executive order explains, that’s exactly the opposite of what the Founders intended. The First Amendment is very explicit about the government’s responsibility to respect individual rights, which is why it prohibits Congress from making laws that would restrict free expression, such as establishing a state religion. What the "freedom from religion” crowd wants, however, amounts to the establishment of atheism as America’s official religion, with all the restrictions on free expression that entails.

[...]

This country was founded by pilgrims who sought to escape religious persecution and that heritage is an essential aspect of our character as a nation. Thanks to President Trump’s efforts, we will be able to pass that heritage on to another generation.

Or so we can hope, if we work hard enough to keep Trump and his successors in the White House! Here's the entire article: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-religious-liberty-atheists-mike-huckabee

Posted by: buy cannabis at March 19, 2020 09:23 AM (bx9LS)

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