Ernest Istook: “I wanted to take the time this evening to talk about one of the most significant problems that has plagued America…”

“I wanted to take the time this evening to talk about one of the most significant problems that has plagued America because of a multitude of Supreme Court decisions, which the American people have never accepted. You see, there is a problem with lack of respect for our Constitution and for the history and the heritage which brought our Constitution to us. In fact, what brought so many people to America originally was their desire for religious freedom. We look at the stories of the Pilgrims and Puritans, and we recognize that they were motivated by a desire to be in a land where they could be free to worship as they pleased to worship. And that has been so much of the bedrock of American values, but it has been under attack by the United States Supreme Court. In 1962, the Supreme Court said it did not matter if it was voluntary; students could not come together and pray at school the way that they had since the founding of the republic. In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court said the Ten Commandments could not be on the wall of the public school because, and this is what the U.S. Supreme Court said, the students might read and obey the Ten Commandments. So, thanks to the court, of course, our students do not read the Ten Commandments and certainly there is a problem in getting people to obey them. In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court said even a moment of silence was wrong.…”