Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the likely next Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: Antonin Scalia. His statements at a Manhattan synagogue on November 22nd supported the view that he wants to infuse - or, to his mind, re-infuse - the US government with more religion, indicating that the Jews would be safer in a Christian nation one with an agnostic government. His view that European nations, where "God" supposedly wasn't referenced in government, proved unsafe for Jews while the US didn't ignores many things, not the least of which is that Hitler and the Nazi Party ended up referencing God quite a bit. As Thom Hartman notes at some length (more than what I have below):
Scalia has an extraordinary way of not letting facts confound his arguments, but this time he's gone completely over the top by suggesting that a separation of church and state facilitated the Holocaust. If his comments had gotten wider coverage (they were only noted in one small AP article, and one in the Jerusalem Post), they may have brought America's largest religious communities - both Christian and Jewish - into the streets.
Born in 1936, Scalia is old enough to remember the photographs that came out of Germany when he was a boy - they were all over the newspapers and news magazines at war's end. It's difficult to believe he wasn't exposed to them as a teenager, particularly having been raised Catholic. And if he missed all that, one would think that his son the priest would have told him about them.
The photos that can be seen, for instance, at www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm of the Catholic Bishops giving the collective Nazi salute. The annual April 20th celebration, declared by Pope Pius XII, of Hitler's birthday. The belt buckles of the German army, which declared "Gott Mit Uns" ("God is with us"). The pictures of the 1933 investiture of Bishop Ludwig Müller, the official Bishop of the 1000-Years-Of-Peace Nazi Reich.
That last photo should be the most problematic for Scalia, because Hitler had done exactly what Scalia is recommending - he merged church and state.
Article 1 of the "Decree concerning the Constitution of the German Protestant Church, of 14 July 1933," signed by Adolf Hitler himself, merged the German Protestant Church into the Reich, and gave the Reich the legal authority to ordain Priests.
Article Three provides absolute assurance to the new state church that the Reich will fund it, even if that requires going to Hitler's cabinet. It opens: "Should the competent agencies of a State Church refuse to include assessments of the German Protestant Church in their budget, the appropriate State Government will cause the expenditures to be included in the budget upon request of the Reich Cabinet."
That new state-sponsored German church's constitution opens: "At a time in which our German people are experiencing a great historical new era through the grace of God," the new German state church "federates into a solemn league all denominations that stem from the Reformation and stand equally legitimately side by side, and thereby bears witness to: 'One Body and One Spirit, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One God and Father of All of Us, who is Above All, and Through All, and In All.'"
Section Four, Article Five of he new constitution further established a head for the new German state-church with the title of Reich Bishop. Hitler quickly filled the job with a Lutheran pastor, Ludwig Müller, who held the position until he committed suicide at the end of the war. Which brings up one of the main reasons - almost always overlooked by modern-day commentators, both left and right - that the Founders and Framers were so careful to separate church and state: They didn't want religion to be corrupted by government.
Scalia also appears to be confusing a Red-baiting, running scared Congress of the 1950s with the Founding Fathers as he cites the inclusion of "God" on both the currency and in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I also wish Scalia and his ilk would read this piece on Thomas Jefferson's views regarding the dangers of keeping church and state separate.
It's becoming clear, once more, why Scalia was a Reagan appointee.
And, as a final item of amusement, he's still pulling the same trick that politically active conservative Christians have been pulling for a long time: Wanting to be able to lay claim to being both an ideological majority and an oppressed minority.
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