Our form of government is about give and take. If you want a different form of government don’t pretend to love a Democracy. The Republicans are pushing for their ideas. They don’t want to compromise. That’s either a dictatorship or a monarchy.
Indiana Republican Mike Pence says that if Democrats don’t accept every single Republican demand for spending cuts, then he supports shutting down the federal government—and believes the Democrats will be blamed.
Yesterday afternoon, Pence appeared at a tea party rally and joined in the crowd’s chants to “shut it down.” And last night, he made quite the Freudian slip on Fox, accidentally saying he wanted a victory for “the Republican people” before correcting himself.
Pence’s attitude is reflective of tea party Republicans, whose support for a federal shutdown has been revealed in poll after poll after poll. It’s yet another reminder that to avert a shutdown, John Boehner must not give his tea party flank veto powerover a budget compromise, even if that means he must rely on Democratic votes to get the final deal passed.
Update: I just kept thinking about this post. It needed something. How about something from Mel Brooks’ great movie – History of the World, Part 1? Now, that’s better.
To be honest, I have no problem with a prayer to start a Board of Education meeting. I think that’s fine. But listen to the partisan and misguided prayer that whe delivers. Cynthia Dunbar, who delivers the invocation, ends her prayer with a very partisan statement that we are a “Christian land governed by Christian principles.” The whole thing is so disappointing.
I have no idea who Cynthia Dunbar is or what she does for a living. I don’t know if she’s an ordained minister or simply a well-connected zealot. If you’re just a little bit thoughtful about what you say before you say it, you would do little bit of research. Within the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence there is a reference to God.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Well, this must be evidence that our forefathers thought we should be a Christian nation. Well, I’m not sure that is direct evidence. The Declaration of Independence is really a letter from the colonists to the King of England. So this letter is basically telling King George that we’re not going to live under his rule anymore.
Our first governing structure was the Articles of Confederation, constructed in 1776. Although the Articles of Confederation did not mention God, it did mention “the Great Governor of the World.” Even early drafts of the Constitution refer to God and to Christianity. I’m not sure if Ms. Cynthia Dunbar has actually read our Constitution. I have. And when you read the Constitution you notice that there is no mention of God, the Creator, the Great Governor or anything like that in its final version. Why? Again, if you study American history and not just the blatherings of Newt Gingrich and Focus on the Family (“…the Constitution was designed to perpetuate a Christian order..”) you recognize that this was not an oversight. Instead, it was a deliberate attempt by our forefathers to remove God and religion from the document. This is why Article VI declares that there be “no religious test” to hold office in the United States government. This language was inserted not by Thomas Jefferson or John Adams, but by Charles Pinckney, governor of South Carolina. The measure was adopted without much discussion and, according to a Maryland delegate, it passed by an overwhelming majority. Again, if Ms. Dunbar had truly studied her history she would’ve noticed that in several of the states there was a heated debate over this clause. Reverend David Cantwell, a Protestant minister from North Carolina, was fearful that “Jews and pagans” would be able to govern. There were similar arguments in multiple states. There was a general worry that a Quaker might get into the White House and his pacifism cause us to be overrun by anyone or some foreign power. Virginia went so far as to suggest changes in language in Article VI so that it read “no other religious test shall ever be required then I believe in the one and only true God, who is the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the evil.” James Madison defended the idea that there be no religious test to hold public office in the Federalist Papers number 51 and 56.
We really and truly do have a remarkable document in the US Constitution. Many states, including Massachusetts and Virginia, had language in their state constitutions which included actual religious tests for office holders. They had to be Christians. Over the years this language was dropped. This shows us how remarkable it was that we were able to get a Constitution that was as liberal as it was.
Finally, Ms. Dunbar has proven that she does not belong on the Board of Education of any state. Before giving her prayer, she did not do her homework. She instead resorted to the common wisdom of people like Jerry Falwell and Newt Gingrich. If you want to teach your children common wisdom just remember that’s not the same thing as teaching them facts. The fact is we have a Godless Constitution, which was written by Christian men who feared tyranny of all kinds. Our forefathers purposely omitted God so that we could truly have freedom of religion or the freedom not to have any religion if we wanted. That’s the beauty of our Constitution.
Sections of this post were taken from the fabulous book, The Godless Constitution by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore.
By ecthompsonmd|2010-05-21T23:16:40-04:00May 21st, 2010|Books, Legal|Comments Off on So, let's start with a partisan prayer
