alt.education

http://media.www.easttennessean.com/media/storage/paper203/news/2008/03/31/News/e.Pluribus.Unum.Sought.By.Thomas-3293082.shtml



'E pluribus unum' sought by Thomas
Eileen Rush
Issue date: 3/31/08 Section: News


Media Credit: Travis Brown/East Tennessean


America is the first nation founded on principles rather than kinship
relations, and the key to protecting America's diversity lies in the First
Amendment, Oliver "Buzz" Thomas told a crowd of students, faculty and
community members Thursday night.

Thomas said that our First Amendment rights are under attack, and echoed
our founding fathers in the call for "constant vigilance."
"The story of America is the story of a nation struggling to live up to its
own ideals," Thomas said.

America, he said, is an experiment in liberty. "It is the nature of
experiments that they can fail," Thomas said. "America is never finished."
The unfinished work that Thomas, a minister and a lawyer, referred to is
the need for a separation of church and state in the United States. His
speech, a part of the Dr. Roy S. Nicks Distinguished Lecture Series,
focused on the importance of the separation of church and state as well as
"freedoms at risk" within the United States and abroad.

One of the major issues facing the world is "how to live together with our
deepest differences - that is, our religious differences," he said.
As an example of the separation of church and state, Thomas asked the
audience what the United States' mottos were. Audience members answered "In
God We Trust" quickly, but hesitated to find the second.

"E pluribus unum," Thomas said. "Out of many, one. As I travel around the
country I see plenty of plurals, but very little unum."

The glue that holds our nation together is not our religious consensus, but
our civil consensus.

"Gone are the days when diversity meant Baptist, Methodist and
Presbyterian," he said. Some scholars identify as many as 2,000 religious
groups in the country, according to Thomas.

"There is no religious consensus in America," he sad. "There never was …
The only common ground we are able to form our 'unum' from is civic."
The series is co-sponsored by the Claudius G. Clemmer College of Education
and the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. Staying
true to those educational roots, Thomas took a moment to tell the audience
that a teacher's job is not only to educate their students, but to equip
them for citizenship. One way to equip students for citizenship is to make
sure they know that the American arrangement is still a minority view, he
said.

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You are invited to check out the following:

The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm

American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]

HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/

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. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote

"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"

That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.

It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.

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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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