Maggie's Farm

Since the Giants use to play in NYC I can sqeek this in...Barry Bonds sucks.

My favorite season in New York is September. many of the tourist have returned to Iowa or Arkansas, along with the kids who have to be in school, or in Arkansas maybe not.

Strolling Washington Square,and wading throughthe street vendors, hitting Litttle Italy for some great food, not to mention the San Gennaro Festival (featured in the Godfather trilogy) and then making it up to Central park with stops at the many many famous buildings is electric.
A quiet Sunday brunch at the Tavern on the Green, and the touch of autumn in the air is my idea of NYC.

Barry Bonds still sucks.

Imperium and Sacerdotalism

In 1802 the great writers Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo were born, and Martha Washington died.
The first leopard was exhibited in the United States, in Boston and West Point Military Academy was established.
Napoleon, later to make the worst land deal in history with Thomas jefferson was named "Councel for Life"

Also in 1802 Thomas Jefferson penned an innocuous letter in response to a query from The Danbury Baptist Association in the state of Connecticut regarding religious freedom in American and his thoughts on the subject.

In his response he wrote, in part:

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State

Thus came to be the inviolate "wall of separation" between church and state that was never codified in any of the establishing documents of this country. This "opinion" of Mr. Jefferson, variously a Protestant, Episcopalian, and later a Diest described himself in these words ""I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know." He followed this in later years with,
“The care of every man’s soul belongs to himself. No man has the power to let another prescribe his faith ... History, I
believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.”
From this contradiction of true Christian teaching in the Roman Catholic Church flow all the other
contradictions and spiritual poverty so evident in every phase of its beliefs and practices. The Bible at once
became a danger to its over-weighted law structure and had to be denied to the people. On the other hand,
the Bible had to be preserved as a mere reference book for the theologians and priests to sustain the power
of the priesthood by plausible, elastic interpretation of certain texts. But as far as the people are concerned,
the existence of God’s autobiography is best forgotten."

These few points I raise fill only a tiny dot in the universe of theological and political writings throughout the Enlightenment and prior to it about the imperium and sacerdotalism we argue but I believe it is vastly important in todays world. Why? The wall has grown too high so that only shade and darkness lay behind it. This was never meant to be.

We are now challenged by a philosophy masquerading as a religion that would not only cut off the final rays of light to our heritage as Christians but replace the oxygen of Christianity with a killing miasma of total intolerance, Islam.

It is my belief that Christmas displays in public areas do not constitute an establishment of a state religion, nor any number of other testiments to our Christian heritage. However the public at large has been lead to believe that the "wall" is Constitutionally graced and thus displays of Christianity are "illegal". This as we move in a multicultural world that IS allowing Islam a latitude it denies our own heritage.
We cannot win this contest of ideology/religion unless we are allowed to celebrate our own faith, in public, on public land, and in public places that present no bar to those who chose to walk away and not listen or look upon it's sight. It infringes as much on prohibiting the free exercise thereof of freedom of religion than does any measure I can contemplate. It is not enough for a man to war only for an ideology, he must have a faith to add fortitude to it's ideas.

Jefferson at 32 years old wrote a magnificent work in the Declaration of Independence but he did as much harm in later years by advertising his belief that man's soul is his own.

Bring down the phantom wall.