For those who miss the Dubya administration, Thomas Kidd of Baylor University is here to reimpose Texas values on us.  Kidd’s invasion from the Lone Star State comes in the form of an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post, “McDonnell’s Jeffersonian decision on public prayer”.

The Texan writes in praise of McDonnell’s action allowing Virginia state police chaplains in public, state-sponsored ceremonies to invoke the name of Jesus Christ – in direct violation of a 2008 US Court of Appeals court order banning this practice.  And Kidd has the nerve to make his case in the name of our favorite son, Thomas Jefferson.  He writes:

The court’s ruling was an unwarranted intrusion into Americans’ religious freedom, and it certainly was not the kind of restriction that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he drafted Virginia’s Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), or even when he wrote of a “wall of separation” between church and state. Jefferson and the other Founders meant to keep the government out of religion’s business, not to drive specific, “sectarian” religion out of the public sphere.

Since conservatives believe religiously in the “Original Intent” of the Founders, the fact that Jefferson didn’t mention police chaplains in the Statute “proves”, I guess, that this wasn’t what he had in mind.  While it is true, as Kidd writes, that Jefferson was trying to avoid having a state-funded and favored church, it is absurd to claim, as he does, that Jefferson thereby would have approved of all state-sponsored religious activity that falls short of such an establishment.  And Kidd provides no evidence whatsoever to back up this claim.

The fact is, though, that you don’t have to dig too far into the Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom in order to find language that could be used to argue vigorously against McDonnell’s decision.  In the preamble, the Statute talks of:

…the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others…

Sorry, but for a Jewish American like me, having my tax dollars pay for a state chaplain to ramble on about Jesus at a public ceremony is having someone else’s religion imposed on me – at my expense.  And, as Jefferson continues, “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.”  Amen, Brother TJ!

Kidd complains that avoiding sectarian religious references in public speech leads to a “kind of vacuous civil religion.”  Yes, but this misses the point that we have the entirety of our private lives to add the color to whatever religious paths we choose to follow.  The government is just an empty vessel to help establish a safe, healthy, open and free public space within which we have the opportunity to make a multitude of choices with others or on our own.  Why do we need the state taking sides and choosing theological winners and losers?  

The remarkable thing about the McDonnell/Cuccinelli Administration is how hard it is working to stick its nose in the places where government least belongs.  While General Cooch tries to impose his climate change conspiracy theories on our academic community, Governor Bob works to impose evangelical Christianity on the rest of us.  I can only respond by again quoting that great (not Texan but) Virginian:

Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. […] If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves.

Pay attention, Virginians, before these wolves gobble up any more of our freedoms.

Del. David Englin (D-45) has some thoughts on Bob McDonnell’s appointment of Fred Malek (aka, “Sarah Palin’s leading defender”) to chair his new budget/government “reform” commission.

While I support the effort to create a top-level commission to recommend policies to reform government, it is deeply disturbing that Governor McDonnell would appoint as its chair Fred Malek, whose history in “reforming” government includes creating lists of Jews serving in government to track and remove from government service. Was there really no more qualified individual in Virginia to lead this panel? Has he done anything to disavow and make amends for his previous anti-Semitism? Otherwise, it’s one more slap in the face from McDonnell to Jewish state employees, coming right on the heels of allowing uniformed state police chaplains to proselytize to Jewish troopers and their families. These continued missteps from the McDonnell Administration are distractions from the competent and effective governing Virginians expect and deserve.

See NLS for more on this disturbing appointment.

UPDATE: Del. Adam Ebbin chimes in.

It is cause for profound concern that Governor McDonnell would appoint Fred Malek to head his Commission on Government Reform. Malek’s Nixon administration record of creating a list of Jews–with an eye towards removing them from public service–is still alarming today. There are certainly many capable Virginians who could assume this important position.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day.  

This video only speaks of a woman who widened the celebration of mothers.  But before Julia Ward Howe, there was Anne Reeves Jarvis.  In 1858 Anne Reeves Jarvis of Culpepper Virginia founded Mother’s Day to honor her own mother.  But Jarvis was no traditional woman (not that there’s anything wrong with that–I honor, today and always, all women’s choices). But while Jarvis did found Mother’s Day to honor her own mother, she had the country and the larger world in mind. Jarvis was, sorry, Glenn Beck, a community organizer and social activist.  In what is now West Virginia, she created Mother’s Day Work Clubs to work toward clean water and the reduction of infant mortality.  

Perhaps you’ll be surprised that what is now West Virginia became the first state to celebrate Mother’s Day.  In 1868 Anne Reeves Jarvis created a post-Civil War reconciliation event called Mother’s Friendship Day for those who fought on both sides of the Civil War. She wanted to “reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War.” Grown men and women were said to have wept as those who had not spoken for years joined hands.  Family and friends who sometimes had been on opposite sides now had to find ways to move on.    

When Anne Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter carried on her effort.  Both women came to oppose the increasing commercialization of their movement. But it was for Julia Ward Howe to make Mother’s Day a more national celebration of what the real founder of mother’s day movement dreamed of.

1870 Julia Ward Howe founded Women’s Peace Day events . And in 1873 Howe’s conception of Mother’s Day took root.  Few today realize how women’s movement fore-mothers created this day with earnest hopes of peace.  I urge you to read Julia War Howe’s proclamation:

Mothers Day Proclamation – 1870

by Julia Ward Howe  

Arise then…women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with

Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe our dishonor,

Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil

At the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace…

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

But of God –

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,

May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient

And the earliest period consistent with its objects,

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

More information may be found at Julia’s Voice.

To the mothers out there, whether Democrat, Republican, Green, Independent, or Libertarian, in the spirit of our fore-mothers, I say: Happy Mother’s Day and …Peace.