On the whole, conservatives tend to reject chaos in favor of order and deference to properly constituted authorities.
Nonetheless, as Marxists and cowards proliferate in public offices nationwide, we will need some good old-fashioned civil disobedience.
According to WPDE-TV in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Mayor Miko Pickett of Mullins, South Carolina, ordered the removal of a Nativity scene on public property, only to have the chair of the committee responsible for the display refuse to remove it.
Kimberly Byrd, chair of the Mullins Beautification Committee, defended the display and her decision to ignore the mayor.
“It makes us feel bad,” Byrd said. “It makes us feel upset because we didn’t mean any harm by it and I don’t think we have to apologize for putting up a manger scene because without the manger there is no Christmas.”
“Because I stand for Jesus and if he says in the Bible that if you deny me, he will deny me when I get to Heaven and I’m not taking my it down,” she added. “If they want to take it down, they can take it down but if they take it down we’ll take all of our decorations down because that’s just how strongly I’m convicted about this.”
Byrd and other committee members paid out-of-pocket for the Nativity scene and other decorations.
Meanwhile, late last month on the social media platform Facebook, Pickett explained that she “requested” the Nativity’s removal because “the separation of Church and State applies to muncipalities as well, regarding religous symbols on public property and parks.”
The Nativity, according to Pickett, made the city appear “not neutral” on religion, per WPDE.
Alas, if only Americans understood the separation of church and state, they would not make such statements as Pickett did.
The most famous expression of that vaunted principle came from then-President Thomas Jefferson. In an 1802 letter, Jefferson touted the First Amendment’s “wall of separation between Church & State.”
As anyone who has spent time studying early American history can attest, however, that principle had nothing to do with barring Christian imagery from public grounds. Proponents of the 18th-century Enlightenment, including Jefferson, denounced church establishment, which meant tax-supported Christian denominations.
Furthermore, neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights holds governments to a strict standard of religious neutrality. The latter merely prohibits establishment.
Since a Nativity on public grounds does not establish a tax-supported church, it cannot violate the separation principle.
Moreover, no court, including the Supreme Court, has the authority to declare that it does. Never mind the larger principle that the Constitution itself never authorized SCOTUS to act as its exclusive expositor. The immediate problem is that no fair reading of either the Founding documents or the broader history of the United States would allow for the interpretation that a Nativity on public grounds runs counter to the People’s will, which, after all, constitutes the only true source of sovereignty in a republic.
If it takes a bit of civil disobedience to remind government officials of that fact, then so be it.
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