Wednesday, August 28, 2013

The Least of Us

With the First Amendment, the Framers of the Constitution bridled Congress from making legislation which gives preferential treatment to any religious establishment; Likewise, Congress shall make no law which prohibits the free exercise of a religious faith or establishment-- for free exercise of one faith demands on some level the rejection of another.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .
From the First Amendment of the United States Constitution

For if Congress introduces legislation that gives any religious establishment power over the people, then Congress by default places prohibitions upon any other group which differs from the religious establishment in question.

What better barometer do we have for measuring the true level of our freedom as a nation than to investigate how minority groups are treated? Often the minority is the least popular, least powerful group whose rights are rarely realized to the same, full extent as the majority.

On that premise, I submit the idea that the treatment of the agnostic and the atheist in the United States is a gauge of our true state of liberty concerning matters of religious freedom. If the non-religious don't have freedom from religion in the same way that believers may embrace their faith, then I dare say only the members of the most popular religions truly have the right to enjoy their own religious beliefs to the fullest.

Whenever society decides that liberty and justice is not for all, the treatment that befalls the least of us will eventually become everyone's lot in the end.

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