When absorbing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's recent remarks, keep in mind that this is a sitting member of the Supreme Court and one of the nine people in America most capable of enforcing his personal beliefs onto the rest of us through force of law.
[Scalia] told the audience at Archbishop Rummel High School that there is "no place" in the country's constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.
"To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from?" he said. "To be sure, you can't favor one denomination over another but can't favor religion over non-religion?"
The answer to where did that come from is, of course, from the personal musings of a few of our Founding Fathers Theirownselves, who opined that failing to believe in an Almighty Diety neither picked their pocket nor broke their leg and was, therefore, not something government ought to be taking a side in. It is in all the history books, or at least was the last time I checked. The nice man declaring himself baffled as to how such a notion ever appeared has, it seems, not seen the inside of a li'berry since being appointed to Decider of All Things Historical. And why should he? Scalia could declare that the Constitution asserts any American named Antonin can freely murder prostitutes without penalty and, by virtue of his office, there's precious little any Americans not also on the Supreme Court could do about it.
In this instance, though, Scalia seems to be making the more tailored case that public officials ought to be mentioning God—as in the Christian version, of course—much more often, because God—the Christian version, of course, which is coincidentally the one Antonin Scalia knows personally and can offer himself up as personal interpreter for—likes that sort of thing and helps us win key naval battles because of it.
“God has been very good to us. That we won the revolution was extraordinary. The Battle of Midway was extraordinary. I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor. Unlike the other countries of the world that do not even invoke his name we do him honor. In presidential addresses, in Thanksgiving proclamations and in many other ways,” Scalia said.
You may not personally see the link between the Battle of Midway and how often our presidents have invoked God during Thanksgiving addresses, but you are not Antonin Scalia and so your opinion means not a damn thing here. That, too, is one of the perks of being on the Supreme Court.
Just for the record, we are not the only nation on Earth whose top government authorities are constantly making pronouncements about how our nation is uniquely blessed by a God who grants us military victories in exchange for incessant proselytizing. We consider those other countries to be run by lunatics, of course, and spend hundreds of cable television hours wondering what sort of global insanity they might be capable of.