Monument to constitution should honor document

Letter written January 4, 2010 to Allegany County Commissioners. Published January 10 in Cumberland Times-News.

Dear Sirs:

Thank you for (assistant county attorney) Barry Lavine’s prompt response to my December 21 letter to you. I appreciate the chance to see the proposed Constitution monument inscription in full, and to read Mr. Lavine’s rationale for its acceptance.

Sadly, Mr. Lavine overlooks the obvious: “The meaning conveyed by a monument is generally not a simple one like ‘Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner,’” writes Justice Samuel Alito in the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum (February 25, 2009).

The proposed inscription, innocuous as it may seem to Mr. Lavine (and it contains two typos in the Preamble), is a commentary, a viewpoint, an interpretation by one group that has a right, under the Constitution, to take a slant on that document. However, as ruled by the Supreme Court, one group does not have the right to present their slant, as a foregone conclusion for everyone, on a public monument.

Our society’s Judeo-Christian grounding is the philosophical “backbone of our country.” God endows the rights and dignities ensured by the Constitution. The Constitution generated from our forefathers’ gratitude for God’s graces, to establish a framework to order our society toward a balance that keeps the people free from tyranny.

A monument is a sort of fine art object, intended to inspire us and bring us to pause and reflect, in a personal or communal way, on matters of individual or social significance. A monument to the Constitution, then, should lift viewers’ minds and hearts to ponder the document’s significance, not draw us into one viewpoint.

Therefore, I urge you to reconsider the inscription for a monument to the Constitution. I ask you to choose one that presents facts about the document’s genesis, rather than a viewpoint, along with the Preamble:

The United States Constitution

“We the People of the United States,
in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare,
and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Drafted by Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, the United States Constitution joined thirteen states under one government and established a framework for the nation’s growth and stability.

At Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, after a summer of study and debate in a convention presided by General George Washington, and eleven years after the Revolution won under General Washington’s leadership, fifty-five delegates signed the United States Constitution.

“Having conducted these states to independence and peace,
he now appears to assist in framing a Government to make the People happy.”
-- William Pierce of Georgia, about General George Washington,
from Character Sketches of Delegates to the Federal Convention

A committee is in place to review proposals. The board of commissioners has final say on how such a project should take form. Please consider my proposal.

I hope this note finds you well and in agreement, that such an important project as a monument to the Constitution on the courthouse lawn deserves great deliberation.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Nancy E. Thoerig

Secular monument not needed

Published in Cumberland Times-News Letters Tuesday, March 10, 2009.

“[A]lthough a park is a traditional public forum for speeches and
(events)…the placement of a permanent monument…is best viewed as a form of government speech and is therefore not subject to scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause.” -- Supreme Court decision, February 25, 2009, Pleasant Grove City, Urah v. Summum

Just because Allegany County commissioners approve display of the Ten Commandments monument (donated by the local Fraternal Order of Eagles in the 1950s) on the courthouse lawn, they are not obliged (under pressure from Jeffrey Davis, founder of the local Citizens for a Secular Government) to put up a companion monument to secularism.

A unanimous Supreme Court decision on February 25, 2009, ruled so in the case of Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum.

Summum sued when Pleasant Grove City officials determined that the group’s proposal for a monument to its Seven Aphorisms didn’t fit the city’s guidelines for displaying monuments on public land, though a Ten Commandments monument (donated by the local Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1971) stood.

Justice Samuel Alito writes in the court opinion that the city “explained that it limited Park monuments to those either directly related to the City’s history or donated by groups with longstanding community ties.”

Alito summarizes: “This case presents the question whether the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment entitles a private group to insist that a municipality permit it to place a permanent monument in a city park....”

The opinion concludes that “although a park is a traditional public forum for speeches and (events)…the placement of a permanent monument…is best viewed as a form of government speech and is therefore not subject to scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause.”

The court considers that since public monuments “commonly play an important role in defining the identity that a city projects to its own residents and to the outside world, entities rightly exercise discretion when accepting donated monuments to be placed on public property….”

Alito reflects on Summum’s notion of entitlement: “[W]hen France presented the Statue of Liberty to the United States in 1884, this country (would have) had the option of either (a) declining France’s offer or (b) accepting the gift, but providing a comparable location in the harbor of New York for other statues of a similar size and nature (e.g., a Statue of Autocracy, if one had been offered by, say, the German Empire or Imperial Russia).”

He continues, in the same vein: “Every jurisdiction that has accepted a donated war memorial (could) be asked to provide equal treatment for a donated monument questioning the cause for which the veterans fought.”

Our county commissioners consented recently to consider guidelines for constructing a monument, to stand on the courthouse lawn, ostensibly to honor the U.S. Constitution, at the insistence of Davis and his irreligious group.

Davis threatened the county commissioners with a law suit in 2004 that resulted in the commissioners removing the Ten Commandments monument. In response to public outcry, they moved it back.

According to a Times-News article of Jan. 27, 2009 (“County OKs study into U.S. Constitution monument idea”), Davis has advocated for the secular monument since November 2007. He apparently threatened to sue the commissioners if they wouldn’t give him a go-ahead.

It seems, as reported in the Times-News article, that Davis proposes a 138-word inscription to include his own viewpoint that the U.S. Constitution is “a secular document that was intended to form a more perfect union and to protect the liberties of all its people.”

“Legally, he’s got the right to do it,” Commissioner Jim Stakem says in the Times-News article. Davis also is quoted in that article: “My preference…is, (that) they would not keep the Ten Commandments on the courthouse lawn. I don’t think...it belongs there.”

The Supreme Court disagrees.

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage