The revenge of the Ku Klux Klan

When I heard the secular jihadists at Americans United for Separation of Church and State had filed a lawsuit trying to block South Carolina from issuing vanity license plates that say "I Believe," it reminded me of the Ku Klux Klan.

Why would the actions of the self-proclaimed "progressives" at Americans United for Separation of Church and State make me think of the racist bigots from a bygone era?

It's very simple, really. You probably don't know that today's radical secular agenda promoting absolute separation of church and state was a movement actually birthed by the Klan.

It's one of many interesting insights I gleaned from reading a new book, "Who Killed the Constitution?" by Thomas E. Woods and Kevin R.C. Gutzman – by the way, perhaps the best book I have ever read on the betrayal of our American heritage.

"The 'Klansman's Creed' included a statement that 'I believe in the eternal Separation of Church and State," write the authors. Between 1915 and 1926, the Klan had a major revival, largely due to increased Irish immigration that the organization exploited into anti-Catholic bigotry and fear-mongering.

It was the Klan that spawned Justice Hugo Black of Alabama. He officially joined the group in 1923 and used his activism in it to launch a successful campaign for the Senate. In 1937, the Senate confirmed his nomination to the Supreme Court.

Throughout his tenure on the Supreme Court, Black pushed the separation of church and state line in his opinions, setting the stage, as the authors put it, for the landmark Engel v Vitale case in 1962.

"The facts of the case were simple: New York state had a policy of encouraging local public school districts to adopt prayers to be recited each morning by those students who chose to participate," they write. "New Hyde Park, New York, had adopted an anodyne prayer: 'Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.' The plaintiffs asserted that this practice violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause – as Justice Black put it in his majority opinion, that it 'breache[d] the wall of separation between Church and State.'"

Might it surprise our friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State to know who made the bed in which they now sleep?

It wasn't Thomas Jefferson.

It was a red-necked bully and coward in a hood and white robes. Later, one of those racist hate mongers traded in his white robes for the black robes of a Supreme Court justice and carried on his bigoted agenda in a powerful new venue.

President Franklin Roosevelt acknowledged in correspondence to a friend that he suspected Black was a Klansman before he named him to the court. And, today, Black's racist roots have been glossed over by historians, largely because of his rulings in cases like Engle v Vitale.

As one biography of Black puts it: "He was often regarded as a member of the liberal wing of the Court, together with (Earl) Warren, William O. Douglas, William Brennan, and Arthur Goldberg."

So, apparently there is little distinction between the Ku Klux Klan and the progressive movement when their agendas overlap.

The movement for so-called "separation of church and state" in America began in earnest as an anti-Catholic extremist effort directed by the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was successful at getting one of its own on the Supreme Court at a critical time in history. It was Hugo Black's important swing vote that established the notion that reciting a simple, inoffensive, non-sectarian prayer in school was tantamount to establishing an official state religion.

That's the ancestry of today's radical secularist jihad to chase any vestige of faith from the public square. Americans United for Separation of Church and State was founded in 1947, right after one of Hugo Black's landmark opinion in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township – a decade after the Klansman made the transition to honored justice.

I don't suggest Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, shares the Klan's racist, hateful ideals. But I do need to point out they represent the heritage of his ideals.

Related special offer:

"Who Killed the Constitution?"

"Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White"