US Politics Thread

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure America was founded on the rejection of the divine right of kings?
And the separation of church and state as expressly specified in the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as follows.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

In simple terms, this means no coercion in religious matters, no expectation to support a religion against one's will, and freedom to embrace all religions.

In reality though...
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure America was founded on the rejection of the divine right of kings?
Not really, just on the basis of oppression and the King's waging war against his own subjects (among 27 grievances).

But the King was the lawful authority so, according to the scripture cited by Johnson, the American Revolution was going against the duty to obey the authorities. (It's still being argued in evangelical circles.)

Of course, once you've had the Revolution then the new authority must be the one that has been raised up by God and is to be obeyed. The issue from the Bible (St Paul and Jesus) is whether Christians should ever be involved in usurping an existing authority - but it's hard sometimes to avoid a choice if you want not to be called a traitor by the new authority. Plenty of God-commanded usurping in the Old Testament, but that's more for the Israel / Palestine thread.

There's lots of historic writing on when it might to right to overthrow a tyrant - and whether neighbouring princes should come to the aid of an oppressed people. (To which the answer is that it usually happens only when the Prince has something to gain for himself.)
 
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And the separation of church and state as expressly specified in the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as follows.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

In simple terms, this means no coercion in religious matters, no expectation to support a religion against one's will, and freedom to embrace all religions.

In reality though...
There is no functioning separation of powers in the US
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure America was founded on the rejection of the divine right of kings?

Perhaps they said that… but the reality is we know how much they hate paying for things over there.

Their two biggest continental wars were fought over not wanting to pay taxes and then not wanting to pay people.

They’ll do anything to save a buck.
 
There is no functioning separation of powers in the US
I’m not sure what you mean by that.
I’m guessing you mean that the church is still very much involved in state policy.
Here in Ireland we lost a good half a century of our Republic, probably through necessity economically speaking, with the church basically running education, hospitals etc. the country hadn’t a pot to piss in.

It definitely held us back and it wasn’t the republic a lot of people fought for in 1916.

However in my lifetime and probably starting with my generation, we have seen the separation of church and state.
And we have seen progress.

Although the UK is a very liberal country, I would say that the unwritten constitution that has the king as head of state and church, was one of the stumbling blocks when it came to Ireland’s original inclusion in the Union.
 

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