Kantor

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Liz Kantor
Professor Andrew Jewett/Steven Brown
History 1445
1 October 2014
Paper One
Candidate Description:
Madison Silver is a forty two year old Caucasian woman from New York State. She is of
mixed European descent and is married with three children. Ms. Silver identifies as a democrat.
Liberal in her political views, she is a strong proponent of LGBTQA rights, womens rights, and
equality of any and all sorts. Her most passionate work lies in attaining and maintaining social
justice within America. In the other aspects of her politics, Ms. Silver is a champion of welfare
and universal healthcare, and has been developing a plan to strengthen the current model of
universal coverage. Ms. Silver is, in every sense of the phrase, a peoples politician. She works
actively to achieve the greatest standard of living for the greatest number of people, and works
closely with those she represents to create a better nation.
Growing up, Ms. Silver was exposed to different religions in a mixed household. Her
father was Christian and her mother was Jewish, so she attended weekly Hebrew school, but was
also welcome to attend Christian services or youth group whenever she chose. It was very
important to Ms. Silvers parents that she formed her own ideas about religion, and they
attempted to offer her as much exposure as possible. Now, Ms. Silver does not strictly associate
with one religion, but rather as someone who uses various teachings from various religions to
inform her life. She attempts to pull from various different religious texts about the nature of
morality. She is technically an atheist, but not believing in god has never meant that she does not

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believe in many of the lessons and morals various religions teach. Though she is fervent in her
beliefs, Ms. Silvers personal religious views have never informed her political policy. She
believes that every politician should behave in the same manner, in which they keep their
personal and deep rooted beliefs out of their decisions on policy making.

Speech:
Thank you. Friends, family, citizens, and fellow Americans: I am here with you today to
discuss an issue that has remained polarizing and pertinent since its first introduction to
American politics.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof. Even in the days of highfalutin language and intricate clauses, our
Founding Fathers could not have been more explicit about an effective model for religious
involvement in government. Our Legislative body will never make a law that upholds any sort
of religious establishment, and it will never prevent the practice of any religion.
And yet, we continue to hear debates regarding prayer in schools and the word God in
our Pledge of Allegiance. We continue to hear people justify their political opinions about
human rights with Leviticus 18:22 and the Sixth Commandment.

We continue to see an

involvement of religion in our politics.

For context, let us look at Americas first introduction to the issue of religions place in
American government. Just a few years after America had finished relentlessly fighting for its
freedom and a few years before the Constitution was written, there was an instance of
disagreement that pitted James Madison, future president of the United States of America, and
Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia famous for exclaiming Give me liberty or give me death,

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against one another. In what came to be known as the Virginia Debates, Henry proposed a
provision to be collected as tax that would go to support teachers of the Christian religion, a
provision which Madison fervently opposed.

Henry argued that the general diffusion of

Christian knowledge hath a natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their vices,
and preserve the peace of society, and Christian knowledge could not be appropriately spread
without governmental support of ministers and teachers of the faith.
What Henry neglected to acknowledge was that while America is an unbelievable place
for religion, American politics is not. The fact of the matter is that there is no place for religion
in our government. There is a place for religion, however, in our mosques and our temples and
our churches and our shrines and our synagogues.

There is a place for religion in our

communities and a there is a place in our private homes. There is a place for those who choose
to believe in the most fundamental forms of religion, there is a place for those who choose not to
believe in religion and all, and there is a place for those who lie somewhere in between.
America, the land of the free, must remain as such. We are a country established on what
Madison described as offering an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and
Religion. We cannot allow our offering of unsurpassed freedom to falter.
Madison states that ignoring our freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe
whichever religion we choose is an affront not just to man, but to God. But Madisons argument
can be interpreted in a much broader scope ignoring the freedom to embrace, to profess, and
to observe whichever religion we choose is an affront to whatever we believe to be the highest
on the hierarchical scale of the universe.

Whether that position is filled by God or by

fundamental laws or by something else, it is part of our freedom. Allowing religion to infiltrate
politics infringes upon that freedom.

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Upholding religion in our governing body creates a play of superiority that implicitly
deems one religion as better than the others As Madison so eloquently put, It degrades from
the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the
legislative authority. But it is impossible to regard one belief as better than another. To do so
contradicts one of the fundamental principals of free thought that exists so beautifully within our
country.
Belief is a personal being. It varies from denomination to denomination, from place of
worship to place of worship, from person to person. In his pivotal argument, Madison affirms
that, The religion [then] of every man must be left to the conviction of conscience of every man
and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an
unalienable right. It is unfair unjust to streamline religion into one body when there is such an
ornate and colorful tapestry of belief that exists in our country.
We cannot let that tapestry revert to greyscale.
America is a country built upon a great diversity. In his book On the Origin of Species,
Charles Darwin discusses the necessity of diversity to the perpetuation of a species. Genetic
diversity within a population guards against extinction - there is a famous example of this
known in the scientific community in which a disease from another continent spread to America
and wiped out mass numbers of American elm trees because there was no genetic variation in the
population. Diversity of genes and traits would have prevented such a problem. American
diversity is the same. Our fantastic diversity of beliefs, opinions, and cultures allow us to defend
against the disease of stagnation. The constant debate and push and pull that arises out of our
freedom to believe what we choose synthesizes to move us forward.

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The First Amendment allows for this constant debate and push and pull and ebb and flow.
It creates for us a nation in which we are free to think and believe whatever we choose, and more
than two hundred years after its initial inception, it is still entirely relevant. As a whole, The
Constitution is a document that often does not fully align with contemporary America. There is
an elastic clause for a reason, allowing us to slightly alter the principles of The Constitution to
suit the times and to suit our needs. But the First Amendments relevancy is unwavering.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof. The message is clear and the message is concise. It outlines for us a perfect
description of how religion should be involved in American politics it shouldnt. Two hundred
years later, we must continue to heed to these ideals set forth in the First Amendment. We must
regard the idea of religious freedom with the utmost purity. If we are to continue to foster the
qualities of religious liberty and freedom that define America, we must adhere to the conviction
that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof.
Friends, family, citizens, and fellow Americans: we live in a democratically progressive
era. We have seen countless changes and laws enacted that never would have been possible or
even feasible fifty years ago. Do not allow us to move backwards by advocating for the
muddying American politics with religion. Thank you.