Hot off a controversial Supreme Court case that predictably infuriated the anti-Christian ACLU, someone has taken it upon themselves to make exactly what the ACLU wanted to happen come true. The Mojave Desert cross was stolen.
The removal of a cross-shaped veterans’ memorial from the Mojave Desert has angered veterans’ groups and spurred calls for its immediate restoration.
The cross, first constructed at the remote site in 1934 as a memorial to WWI veterans, has been the subject of a nearly decade-long legal fight over the constitutionality of a religious symbol on public lands, and had just two weeks ago been cleared to stand by the US Supreme Court.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the US (VFW) has vowed to catch the people who stole the cross, offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of those behind the cross’s removal.
“This was a legal fight that a vandal just made personal to 50 million veterans, military personnel and their families,” said VFW National Commander Thomas J. Tradewell, Sr. in a statement. In a 5 to 4 ruling, the US Supreme Court on April 28, overturned an earlier federal court ruling that “the government may not promote or affiliate itself with any religious doctrine or organization.” The court battle had gone on for several years as the memorial had remained covered, first with brown canvas, then with plywood.
The high court’s decision was applauded by the Liberty Counsel, an advocacy group representing VFW and other military service organizations and the American Center for Law and Justice. Opponents, including the ACLU, pledged to keep fighting for the removal of the cross.
“To think anyone can rationalize the desecration of a war memorial is sickening, and for them to believe they won’t be apprehended is very naïve,” said Mr. Tradewell, a combat-wounded Vietnam veteran from Sussex, Wis.
The cross’s removal leaves veterans’ groups hunting for clues. Looking at the pictures of the site where the cross once was, VFW chief spokesperson Joe Davis says he is amazed at the serious planning and execution that went into the theft. The cutting of the thick, metal pipes in concrete was a serious undertaking, he says.
The eight-foot-high cross had been perched on a wind-swept rock jutting 30 feet above the Mojave National Preserve 76 years ago by a group of World War 1 veterans. Situated in a wide expanse of arid desert, the cross was about 20 feet off a two-lane highway where perhaps 20 cars pass a day.
It later sparked a First Amendment court battle when the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the National Park Service in March, 2001, saying the cross violated the First Amendment because it was a “religious fixture” on federal land. A federal judge at first agreed, crushing local veterans who claimed that the cross was a historic monument, not an ecclesiastical object. The judge had ruled that the US Supreme Court’s interpretation of the US Constitution’s “establishment clause” meant “the government may not promote or affiliate itself with any religious doctrine or organization.”
This is what the Mojave Desert cross looked like:
This is all that is left.
Big Journalism points out the absurd theory that the AP is passing around right now: scrap metal scavengers.
Scrap metal scavengers?!? Of course! Imagine the confused, head-scratching scene in the Associated Press newsroom when this story broke. Why? Why would anyone steal this cross, they puzzled? On the one hand, you have embittered anti-religious zealots who just lost a years’ long battle costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
On the other hand, you have a 7 foot tall cross with a scrap value of maybe $100, which would take at least two men most of a day, a pickup truck, and probably 20 gallons of gas, for the 250 mile round trip, not to mention the long hike to access, cut and remove the cross, leaving a net profit of perhaps $20 each for a day’s work. So, who could it have been – bitterly aggrieved anti-religion zealots? Or economically suicidal scrap metal scavengers? Why, scrap metal scavengers!
The court case itself is ludicrous. The argument of the separation of church and state is idiotic in and of itself, because there is no constitutional separation of church and state, and even if there was, it wouldn’t apply here. Congress transferred the land to private owners in 2004. It seems obvious exactly the type of people who would be responsible for this, and it isn’t scrap metal scavengers. It isn’t a random crime.
But the biased mainstream media would never admit that, would they?
The argument of the separation of church and state is idiotic in and of itself, because there is no constitutional separation of church and state, and even if there was, it wouldn’t apply here.
I agree that the constitutional separation of church and state does not apply here, given that the land is no longer public, but to argue that there IS no constitutional separation of church and state is absurd. If a constitutional bar on any “law respecting an establishment of religion” doesn’t separate the church from the state, then what on earth does it do?
I’m kinda surprised that the media didn’t blame it on radical tea-party elements or something…
rwm says: Oh, sure, and they just now removed that “scrap metal”, after it had been out there for 70-odd years. Yup, surely must be scavengers… Right.
One of the things they taught us in graduate school is that proper grammar is necessary in order to communicate correctly and any research paper submitted must be accurate in its use of words and grammar:
1. Public property belongs to government, whether city, county, state, or national, and each respective government will control its use according to the law.
2. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and all levels of government are subject to the same Constitution. Art. 6, of the Constitution applies to every level of government. The Founding Fathers wrote it, the states ratified it, and the Supreme Court has ruled it so. The First Amendment applied initially only to Congress, but the Fourteenth Amendment applied the First Amendment to all the states, as the Supreme Court has ruled. Now, since the Fourteenth Amendment, no state, no county, and no city shall make any “law respecting an establishment of religion.”
The First Amendment constitutionally does apply to every level of government. Establishing “religion” in any way whatsoever on public property at any level of government is unconstitutional. America is a nation in which citizens of all religions and of none are welcome, but the religion of no one will be established by law.
Displaying a Christian cross on public (government) property, as with the case at hand, was a deliberate act by Americans who do not comprehend the constitutional principle of “separation between religion and government,” James Madison, W&MQ 3:555. The American Legion, the VFW, and the majority on the Supreme Court are wrong. What private organizations want to display on their own private property is their business, but they have no right to use public property for promotion of their favorite religion belief.
Government is to establish “no” religion, no “test,” and no “law” even respecting an establishment of religion. Religion is to be established solely by individuals, voluntarily, as every church group in the nation does. Finally, it is absurd to suggest religion is not allowed to flourish in the USA. Nearly any city we enter proves otherwise, because churches are obvious everywhere.
If anyone wants further documentation, read my book, The Religion Commandments in the Constitution: A Primer.
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