Says who?

Though I've been thinking (and sharing!!) a lot the past few days about the influence that parents have on their children, I've always enjoyed the potential for influencing the "next generation."

One exercise that has occurred to me lately and one that I intend to drill into my children is to simply ask the question, "Who says?" Requesting the authority for another person's assertion or argument can sure make discussions more efficient.

I was reminded of this great tool for decision-making and reasoning when I read (over at Mark Rose's Right Minded) this exchange between Larry King and James Dobson--bogeyman of the Left:

". . . when the discussion turned to attempts to redefine marriage -- [Larry King] made it an issue of separation of church and state.

KING: Why is [marriage] a state institution rather than a religious institution? Why is the state involved?

DOBSON: Well, it's both. It is both.

KING: But we have a separation of church and state.

DOBSON: Beg your pardon?

KING: We have a separation of church and state.

DOBSON: Who says?

KING: You don't believe in separation of church and state?

DOBSON: Not the way you mean it. The separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. No, it's not. That is not in the Constitution.

KING: It's in the Bill of Rights.

DOBSON: It's not in the Bill of Rights. It's not anywhere in a foundational document. The only place where the so-called "wall of separation" was mentioned was in a letter written by (Thomas) Jefferson to a friend. That's the only place. It has been picked up and made to be something it was never intended to be.

What it has become is that the government is protected from the church, instead of the other way around, which is that church was designed to be protected from the government.

KING: I'm going to check my history.

Knowing King's interviewing style, it's hard to discern whether he meant the actual phrase "separation of church and state" or the mere concept, passed down from the gods of democracy through the pen of our dear judicial activists, but it is interesting to see the power of the simple question, "says who?"