According to the Supreme Court in 1962, the free exercise of religion in school somehow violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The founding fathers would be up in arms to hear that free speech was now censored in the name of protecting the establishment clause.

While it is true that American students who do not want to pray in school should not be forced to do so, it also true that those who do desire to pray should not be denied their First Amendment right to do so. There is a balance in the First Amendment between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. It must be upheld in order for liberty to abound.

Where do these liberal judicial activist judges get this bizarre and erroneous interpretation of the First Amendment and the separation of church state in the first place? Looking back in American history, we find that this same misguided interpretation of the First Amendment was actually the vision of Roger Baldwin, the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920. Baldwin, it is important to mention, was a member of the Communist Party of the USA.

It was Baldwin’s vision to remove all references to God and religion from the public square, even though the free expression clause of the First Amendment is clear as day. Starting around the 1920’s, a major reinterpretation of the meaning of the First Amendment and the Constitution itself began to make its way into the colleges and universities of the USA. It is this time in history that colleges and universities begin to teach that the Constitution is a “living document;” one that changes with the times.

Regardless of the opinion of radicals like Baldwin, it is important to remember that all Americans do have the Constitutional right of religious expression in the public square as long as the federal government does not coerce that expression. Ironically, what the Supreme Court did in 1947 and 1962 was coerce the limiting of religious expression, in keeping with Roger Baldwin’s dream. As such, the First Amendment rights of all Americans have been threatened and even violated in some cases, because the Supreme Court embraced the opinion of a man who was a member of the Communist Party of the USA, not the Constitution of the United States.

Finally, after more than forty years of cognitive dissonance concerning the free exercise of religion, the Supreme Court re-established the true nature of the First Amendment in Board of Education of Westside Community Schools vs. Mergens (1990). In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the rights of all students to voluntarily pray in school, form Bible study groups and express their religious beliefs provided the government, including government paid officials (i.e. teachers, counselors), do not coerce that religious expression. Yet, even with the Mergens case re-establishing the balance between the establishment clause and the free exercised clause, the damage of the 1947 and 1962 cases still lives on.

Let’s consider the 2002 case of Kala Brotos, a five-year old kindergarten student from Saratoga Springs, NY. Before eating her lunch, little Kala simply prayed out loud and gave thanks for her meal. Her teacher then scolded her before the entire the class, claiming that Kala violated the separation of church and state – Roger Baldwin’s version, that is. The teacher even claimed that Kala committed a “crime against humanity.”

Well, a crime against humanity was indeed committed -- against a little five year-old girl -- who simply gave thanks before her lunch. If this is not tyranny, I don’t know what is.

Take a closer look at our culture today. The propaganda concerning the First Amendment is staggering. Each year thousands of students are suspended, harassed, receive lower grades on their term papers, or even arrested for simply expressing their deeply held religious beliefs in the public forum. I know this personally having endured the discrimination and bigotry of liberal professors during college and graduate school. Such behavior is against federal law. It is called belief discrimination and it occurs more often than you think.

If we take a closer look at just what the Constitution really says, we will see that the religious practice of Americans is the choice of each citizen and cannot be censored even in public. The government cannot mandate religious practice, nor can the government deny that same practice. That is the balance of powers spelled out in the First Amendment. If we fail to maintain that balance then we as a nation are no longer truly free.

When we give thanks this Thanksgiving, let us remember the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.”