‎”The future success of America is not in the Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which the Constitution is founded.” – James Madison

My name is Daniel Brannan. I’m the Chairman of the Kootenai County Constitution Party. Earlier today I took part in a small demonstration against the installation of a Hindu idol in the center of town here in Coeur d’Alene.

You’ve heard the Media’s side. Now hear mine.

My first sighting of the statue was four days ago. As I drove past the corner of 6th St. and Sherman ave. I immediately recognized the statue as the visage of a Hindu deity, the name of which escaped me.

At first I was stunned. How could the idol of a foreign god be erected in a place of prominence on public property in the middle of a Christian town in a Republic founded  upon Christian Common Law?

It was too outrageous to be believed.

The next day I returned to take pictures of the nightmarish thing in aims of submitting an article to the local Press about it. But there’s been a lot of road work downtown so I approached a couple of the working men on the scene and asked what they thought of the idol receiving a place of prominence in the middle of our town.

I think they sensed my disapproval of it immediately which put them at ease enough to voice their opinions. Both gentlemen glanced around furtively, making sure that no one else would hear.

“It’s ugly and offensive and it doesn’t represent the people of this area in the least but we can’t say a word about it because, y’know, political correctness and all. But you didn’t hear any of that from us.”

These men were truly scared to even have anyone suspect their true sentiments in the matter. At first I thought this fear stemmed only from what they may have perceived as their duty to support the city government for which they worked. But I was wrong. (more on this shortly)

Then I walked down the avenue a ways and, at random, asked an older gentleman and his wife what they thought of it. They were clearly uncomfortable with the question at first but after a moment the gentleman leaned in a bit and whispered, “Well, you know what son, folks around here are gonna be rightly upset about a thing like that, but most are too intimidated to say anything.”

A pattern was emerging.

As I chatted with others the general sentiment was one and the same with my own — that the statue was, on Christian principle, offensive to the vast majority of Coeur d’Alene residents, an egregious misappropriation of public resources, and in light of the constant and ongoing litigious crusade against any and all Christian symbols all over the country, a gross expression of governmental hypocrisy.

Or as one salty Coeur d’Alene resident put it, “Could you imagine the city erecting a giant cross in the middle of town? No, of course you can’t because the new multi-cult theory of the equality of all religions means the exclusion of Christianity. This ain’t the America that the Founding Fathers envisioned, that’s for sure.”

No sir, it certainly is not, I thought to myself.

Albeit, the thing which most surprised me wasn’t the exaltation of all things alien and ugly over the familiar and the beautiful (such is the liberal prerogative), nor was it the corruption of government, nor even was it the hypocrisy of the thing itself; penultimately, it was the universal fear in the hearts of the Christian majority and beyond that, the offense that such an idol is to the Holy God of Scripture.

God forbids men to have any gods besides Him, precludes the making of graven images in representation of deity (Deut.20:3-4), and, to the extent that men do give deference or veneration to such images, we are to regard said idols as “demons” (Psa.106:36; 1 Cor.10:9; & Rev.9:20).

But the Christians felt themselves under dire threat of various social, financial, and perhaps even legal repercussions for merely giving voice to what most recognized as the American and Christian position on the matter.

So I messaged a fellow officer in the Kootenai County Constitution Party telling him that I intended to go to the commencement ceremony which was scheduled at the feet of the very demon-idol in question in order to prick the consciences of those in attendance, particularly they who regarded themselves Christians.

My fellow officer faithfully relayed my message and invited all other willing Christians of Kootenai County to join me and, despite little more than a day’s notice, a few brave souls would turn out at my side.

In spite of what was written on the KCP website the Press assumed and insisted that the whole thing must have been by the top-down direction and control of the National Constitution Party and that there was to be some massive paramilitary march of Christian Storm-troopers through the town.

So, of course, when I, and those who’d responded to my short notice invitation showed up the Media appeared quite dejected. Where was the army that they’d been anticipating?

Sigh. Chalk it up to government education and too much TV.

We set up shop across the street from the idol and its devotees. With all of the revelers milling in concentric orbits of the idol it was a scene right out of some MGM epic. Where was Charlton Heston when we needed him, eh?

No sooner had we brandished our telltale anti-idolatry picket signs than we were approached by men wielding cameras and microphones. All seemed genial and genuinely desirous of “getting the scoop” but our experience with the Press smear machine the day prior left us nonplussed to say the least. Once bitten, twice shy, as they say.

But the Press and the host of Idolaters huddled about the feet of the bestial thing were not the only people on the street that day.

Far from it.

The average people of Coeur d’Alene, Christians by and large, were there also.

“God bless you, sir. I completely agree with what you’re doing but I just don’t have your courage”, one woman whispered as she hurried past.

“You’re right! You’re absolutely right!”, yelled a quick-paced man from across the boulevard.

And so it went throughout the course of our hour long protest. One after another the common people of Kootenai County continued to encourage our efforts, if somewhat fearfully.

How this suffocating Liberal intimidation has left them reticent to voice their convictions is a subject due its own article but suffice it to say that the majority is nonetheless deeply offended.

… and they will not be intimidated forever.

ANSWERING THE ACCUSATIONS:

The Press’s penchant for the omission of key facts has directly propagated a long train of straw man arguments in the ranks of the easily confused liberal bloggers:

1) “It’s just art. They’re Hypocrites!”

Tell it to the Hindus. They say it’s a god. And the sculptor himself identifies it as Ganesh, the Hindu deity.

If our position that it is a foreign deity were hypocrisy somehow, then it would make the Hindus, the sculptor, and everyone who deigns to call the thing by the name “Ganesh”, hypocrites with us.

Clearly, it isn’t ‘just art’. And clearly, acknowledging it to be precisely what it is cannot be construed as hypocrisy either.

2) “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They’re Hypocrites!”

That is a new age platitude of Humanist-Existentialism, not Christianity.

The truth is that beauty is in the eye of the Creator. If the word beauty has any objective meaning it must have objective parameters above the whim of mere individual appetites.

Truth and beauty do exist though Existential-Humanism cannot account for such things. Discernible and objective laws of beauty presuppose the existence of the absolute and authoritative Law-Giver, the God of scripture.

3) “Why aren’t they offended by the Christian* art such as the statue of  Saint Francis of Assisi? They’re Hypocrites!”

We’ve answered this indictment redundantly that we are in fact opposed to the Saint statue as well. But the Press won’t print it. It would spoil the liberal narrative, after all.

As Christians and Constitutionalists we oppose (to some degree) any and all works erected by the city Art Council because the council is in part funded by confiscatory taxation.

Whether or not the art in question is to be sold is beside the point. The council is an illegitimate and un-American entity by its very nature. Every citizen of Coeur d’Alene, Christian or not, ought to be outraged that they are being forced to subsidize city appointed Culture Czars who use their illegitimate position to offend the majority religion of the populace.

And as for Francis of Assisi — he was an ascetic Universalist who preached to birds and  flowers as his “brothers and sisters”. He is a Saint not so much of Christianity as of Humanism.

And the statue in question is wrought in an industrial post-modern style which has always been understood as an attack upon Christian aesthetics anyway.

4) “Then why protest in front of Ganesh instead of the statue of St. Francis? They’re Hypocrites!”

Francis of Assisi is not, nor has he ever been declared a god by anyone. Not so with Ganesh. And the first two Laws given atop Mount Sinai were that men shall have no other gods beside the one true God, and that they should make no graven image of deity (Deut.20:3-4).

So while all of the other statues erected by the council are an offense to true Law and Religion in varied and lesser degrees, the Ganesh installation is unique. Ganesh makes a claim at deity. Ganesh is an idol; and as such, the scriptures say that it is to be regarded as a demon.

And to top it all the Ganesh idol was given the place of prominence in the center of town. And the Art Council further venerated it by holding their inaugural Arts celebration/ceremony right at the idol’s very feet — one insult to both God and the people heaped upon another.

5) “Don’t they know the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion by an inviolable wall of separation of church and state? They’re Hypocrites!”

Even if the Constitution did set up such a prohibition in the way they construe it (which it doesn’t) it would immediately render the statue of Ganesh unconstitutional anyway. Hello?

No, the real Constitution, rather than the bizarre Leftist bumper-sticker caricature has it that Congress has no power to curtail nor inhibit the free exercise of religion in our churches. This principle presupposes Christianity as it is derived directly from the Christian scripture itself.

After all, the state of the old Israelite Republic was prohibited by God from assuming rule in ecclesiastic affairs. God’s Law governs each sphere of societal sovereignty — Church, State, and Family. And though each sphere overlaps the other to some degree, there are hallowed aspects in the design of each which reserve certain functions to one sphere or the other. But all are subservient to God’s Law.

But let us hear from the record of American Jurisprudence:

“By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.” (Justice Chase, Runkel v Winemiller [1799])

“Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.” (Justice Brewer, Holy Trinity Church v United States [1892])

“The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance [approve of], much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity [secularism], by prostrating [overcoming] Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects [denominations]…” (Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Story)

“[T]he constitutions [of the states] assume Christianity to be the religion of the state and that equality of religions refers to equality between Christian sects. (Justice Brewer, Holy Trinity Church v United States [1892])

“The highest story of the American Revolution is this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” (President John Adams)

“[A]ll of the massive bulk of our English and American law may be reduced to a very few grand principles underlying the whole which were enunciated by Moses, and which Bracton, Blackstone, Kent and the host of our English and American commentators have found a common labor in explaining. And the all but fabulous heaps of our statutes, reports and digests, are but amplifications and applications of these great principles to the various conditions of society.” (Bowman, 10 West Jur. [1876] 91)

6) “Don’t they know the Constitution is a Secular document made by Deists? They’re Hypocrites!”

The Constitution is a procedural document, not unlike other covenant/contracts of its day in many respects. Its form and content did not originate in a void but out of the Christian Common Law tradition of East Anglia. And, according to Blackstone, the foremost historic authority on Common Law, “No human laws should be suffered to contradict” the Law of revelation. That Common Law tradition was thus understood to be the appropriation of God’s revealed Law by general equity to the circumstance of a colonial confederation as it established a Republic for the common defense of its independent states.

While it is true that some of the men directly involved in its drafting at times waxed deistic, even the most notorious (next to Ben Franklin) for it — Thomas Jefferson — was a long time member of the Calvinistical Christian church and regarded himself a devout Christian most of his life.

The Republic which the Constitution instituted presupposed concepts unique to the Christian worldview. The evidence of this is ubiquitous: The Separation of Powers between Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches of government and the express limits upon each were established as checks and balances to restrain man’s sin nature from the potential for damage that its unbridled excesses might otherwise produce.

So too with the separate and equal sovereignties of the various states; they were likewise established to mitigate man’s lust for power and totalitarian ambition.

The Bill of Rights is in its particulars the positive entailment of the second table of God’s Law lain in scripture as derived by what the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) called “good and necessary consequence”.

Though the Constitutional requirement of Natural Born Citizenship in qualification for the office of President (Art.II, Sect.I) had a Common Law history in preceding declarations it ultimately derives from the book of Deuteronomy (17:15) wherein Israel is prohibited from appointing anyone to the office of King other than one of their brethren, arising from among their own tribes.

The Constitution also hallows the Sunday Sabbath (Art.I, Sect.7) as the only day when the President is barred from the general work of his office. This Sunday Sabbatarianism is entirely unique to the Christian religion.

But that is not the only reference to the Christian calendar in the document. It opens with the words, “In the year of our Lord”. And just what Lord do we suppose them to assume there? Ganesh?

Let the Reader bear in mind that this double assertion of continuity with the Christian calendar is the antithesis of the Secular-Humanist French Revolution of the same era which produced a constitution that abolished the Christian calendar, starting over at “Year One”.

The entire notion of limited and representative government to secure the God-given rights of a nation is so inherently Christian as to be found beyond disputation. No other worldview can begin to account for it.

And no other worldview can sustain it.

But even the preamble to the Constitution of the state of Idaho (1890) places “Almighty God” before the state. It begs the question: To which god does our city council believe the state of Idaho beholden? Certainly not Ganesh.

No, the phraseology of ‘Almighty God’ as found in our state constitution is a colloquialism unique to English-speaking Christendom. It comes right from the 1611 King James Bible — the very edition found in every American home in 1890.

It is upon the axioms of Christianity that the Republic and its various states rest. Remove, annul, deny, or supplant these preconditions to American liberty and you invite the curse of living in the sort of civilization produced by demon-gods like Ganesh.

Away with hypocrisy. Heed the Word of the Lord.

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