Re: Replacing Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia
Reply #137 –
But you've only ever been taught "revisionist" history…
No, I was there to watch them pull some of the crap. I do find your arguments incoherent You choose to underline "No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups, and vice versa." You're in favor of low taxes and smaller government, yet doing those things would require additional taxes to support religion and getting expanding the government into religion.
You also say silly things like " "No tax monies can go to believers…" even though they've paid into themselves?" What about non-believers in a particular denomination or religion having to pay for the activities of a church/Mosque/Synagogue they don't believe in. Why should a Catholic or Protestant have to pay for a Mormon child's religious instruction in a school run by that sect? Or a Jew having to pay for Muslim's religious instruction? Yes, I've seen a Muslim school here, since unlike you, I go out of the house. You can't tell me you want your tax dollars funding a Muslim's religious instruction through additional taxes. But that's what this argument would require. Since you're claiming that it's tax money "they've paid into themselves" , the best thing is for those believers to do would be to donate the money directly to the religious school and cut out the government middle-man. That school in New Jersey could have held a fund raiser and used the proceeds to purchase a van or bus to pick the kids up, and the donors could write it off their taxes and no government aid would be required.
Tell you what. I'll move to California just so I can open a Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster school just so I can replace actual science class with the "theory" that the FSM created the world and make your tax dollars pay for it. This way money will go to believers, just not in the religion that you hoped it would. We'll be sure to claim "sincere belief" and cry "oppression" if the money is denied and then waste plenty of taxpayer money fighting the case up to the SCOTUS, all the while knowing the outcome will be against us. The key will be rising as big of stink as possible about nothing. We'll open a little spaghetti restaurant next to the school just to claim not to cater to Christian weddings, even though we won't cater at all (that's what Memories Pizza did. They said they won't cater to same sex weddings, but they actually didn't even cater... )