But what is different in this case, the Fourth Circuit judges argue, is that Trump’s campaign-trail rhetoric about Islam, his wild promise to keep all Muslims out “until we know what’s going on,” proves that this executive order is really motivated by a religious animus that conflicts with the First Amendment’s religious-freedom guarantee.
.. constitutional guarantees do not normally apply to foreign nationals. But allowing an immigration restriction motivated by religious animus, the opinion argues, would create a strong likelihood that some “constitutional harm will redound to citizens” as well. And this is enough, it concludes, to make an order that only directly affects foreigners a violation of every American Muslim’s First Amendment rights.
.. So it doesn’t matter that Trump has shifted his tone on Islam; it doesn’t matter that he spent the days before the ruling palling around with Saudis like a Bush Republican. Once a deplorable, always a deplorable
.. One of the things that Trump critics fear most is his possible response to a Manchester-type terrorist attack (or something even worse). But rather than providing a check on future anti-terror overreach, the Fourth Circuit’s overreaching opinion is likely to encourage it.
.. it’s easier to imagine the term applying, as it did in the days of Trump’s idol Andrew Jackson, to a direct clash between the White House and the courts.
.. Trump’s flaws of temperament and character make such a clash dangerously likely. But so does a judicial activism that cuts down normal legal precedent in order to go after him, and tries to pre-emptively strip away his powers without any warrant save self-righteousness.
Old Testament Law: The Accuser Christ Defeated on the Cross
he Bible calls the Devil (however one wants to define him/that) as the “accuser.” In this regard, it points to this force of evil as being someone/something that is constantly pointing out our sin and failures, which we all have. In fact, in Revelation 12:10 the accuser is described as one who stands before God and accuses us day and night– constantly.
.. In Romans 7 Paul writes that he wouldn’t have even known he was a sinner apart from the law (7:7), and that the law ended up arousing sin (v5) and death:
“But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of wrong desires. For apart from the law, sin is dead.9 And I was once alive apart from the law, but with the coming of the commandment sin became alive 10 and I died. So I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life brought death! 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it I died.”
When considering what the law does, one could even say that the law itself is our accuser.
.. Thus, a chief work of the cross is that Christ has completely freed us from the oppression of living under OT law, which became the chief barrier between ourselves and God. To this Paul also writes in Ephesians that Christ has “destroyed the barrier” by “ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations” (2:15).
.. showed that one could keep the law perfectly, but still be murdered under the weight of it– even if that person was God in the flesh. I can think of no stronger basis for setting something aside.
Richard Rohr: Law and Grace: Grace Must Win
a match in which grace must win. When it doesn’t, religion becomes moralistic, which is merely the ego’s need for order and control. I am sorry to say, but this is most garden-variety religion. We must recover grace-oriented spirituality if we are to rebuild Christianity from the bottom up.
In Romans and Galatians, Paul gives us sophisticated studies of the meaning, purpose, and limitations of law. He says its function is just to get us started, but legalism too often takes over.
.. Why did they fail? Because they relied on being privately good instead of trusting in God for their goodness!
.. Law is a necessary stage, but if we stay there, Paul believes, it actually becomes a major obstacle to transformation into love and mercy. Law often frustrates the process of transformation by becoming an end in itself. It inoculates us from the real thing, which is always relationship. Paul says that God gave us the law to show us that we can’t obey the law! (See Romans 7:7-13 if you don’t believe me.)
.. We’ve treated Paul as if he were a moralist instead of the first-rate mystic and teacher that he is.
.. Ironically, until people have had some level of inner God experience, there is no point in asking them to follow Jesus’ ethical ideals. It is largely a waste of time. Indeed, they will not be able to even understand the law’s meaning and purpose.
.. Humans quite simply don’t have the power to obey any spiritual law, especially issues like forgiveness of enemies, nonviolence, self-emptying, humble use of power, true justice toward the outsider, and so on, except in and through union with God.
How Mormon Polygamy In The 19th Century Fueled Women’s Activism
Many states still followed the common law Doctrine of Coverture, which declared a woman civilly dead once she married. It’s not just…
GROSS: So she had no legal rights over her money, her property. She had no ownership over them.
ULRICH: Her money, her – her money, her property – she couldn’t sue or take a case to court except under a father or a husband – so dependency. The right to divorce – although divorce laws were greatly liberalized in the 19th century in most parts of the country, it was definitely – you had to prove either adultery – it took a while for physical abuse to be grounds for divorce.
.. Utah had no fault divorce from the beginning. It was very, very open and pretty common. And particularly, I think that made plural marriage workable. If you didn’t like it, you could leave.
.. It’s a very different world than we imagine. And so instead of comparing plural marriage in the 19th century to our notions of women’s rights today, we need to compare plural marriage, monogamy and then other institutions that really distressed people in the 19th century, like prostitution for example, different kinds of bigamous relationships.
So Mormons would argue, many American men have multiple sexual partners. They’re just not responsible. They don’t acknowledge them. They don’t give them dignity. They don’t legitimate their children. So polygamy is a solution to the horrendous licentiousness of other Americans.
.. So one of the things you’re famous for is a phrase that you originated in – I think it was like an academic paper in the 1970s – and the phrase has since shown up on like T-shirts and bumper stickers. I know you’re asked about this all the time, but the phrase is well-behaved women seldom make history.
Now, knowing your work, knowing that you write about, quote, “ordinary women” who kept journals, and you’re trying to understand what the lives of, like, ordinary women were in their time, I interpret that quote as meaning if you’re just looking at history, you won’t understand the lives of ordinary women because ordinary women seldom make history. But I suspect that that has been – that quote has been interpreted as ordinary women seldom make history so women don’t be ordinary, do something special so you can make history. Don’t be ordinary.
.. Yes. It’s been turned upside-down. On the other hand, you know, I was an ordinary girl from Idaho who got involved in the feminist movement and I’ve been on a collective bargaining team, and my former university, you know – I’ve done a lot of not very well-behaved things. And so I guess I embrace both sides. I embrace the contradiction of that crazy accidental slogan.