Trump is a Threat to Religious Liberty

Donald Trump is many things, but a defender of the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment protecting freedom of religion, he is not.  Indeed, he is a threat to constitutional government and the religious freedom of except strident, far right Christian extremists who seek to totally subvert the concept as laid down by the Founding Fathers. Indeed, they want a de facto established religion that only upholds their own toxic and perverted version of Christianity.  Playing on the self-centered hypocrisy of the Christofascists and "Christian leaders" like Jerry Falwell, Jr., Pat Robertson and a host of similar scam artists, Trump has set about depriving others of their religious freedom and, hopefully in time, a major backlash against right wing Christians where their nonsensical claims of persecution might become a reality as they find themselves being treated as they have treated others for so much of history. A piece in New York Magazine looks at Trump and the Christofascists destruction of true religious freedom.  Here are highlights:

A central pillar of Donald Trump’s compact with conservative Christians, which has been immensely useful for him and is critical to his reelection prospects, is his much-professed concern for “religious liberty.” There’s a whole fact sheet about the topic on the White House website. It was the alleged subject of a major executive order early in his presidency.

But as Steven Waldman (founder of Beliefnet, a web portal for all things religious) observes in Sacred Liberty, his recently published comprehensive history of America’s tradition of religious freedom, Trump’s actual record is not so positive:

Donald Trump’s legacy on this issue can seem confusing. He talks about defending religious freedom more than almost any other president. His administration has taken a few positive steps, such as deciding that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could give disaster relief to houses of worship and raising concerns about persecution of Christians overseas. . . . But much of his religious liberty agenda involves efforts, focused largely on helping conservative Christians, that are minor, symbolic, or actually damaging.

Most obvious, Trump is the first president since the virulently anti-Mormon Rutherford B. Hayes to publicly single out a religious community for opprobrium and (attempted) discrimination. . . . . he has violated most of the principles that have sustained religious freedom by favoring one religion over another; ignoring First Amendment protections; blurring the distinctions between Americans practicing their faith and extremists overseas; and proposing that practitioners of one faith should have second-class citizenship. He has made the concept of religious freedom partisan instead of universal, a way to divide rather than unite.

Trump is a friend to religion only if your religion happens to be the same as that of his conservative Evangelical and traditionalist Catholic allies, who have a mutually exploitative and very transactional relationship with the 45th president.

[M]uch of Trump’s talk about religious liberty involves reinforcing the fatuous paranoia of some conservative Christians who believe state neutrality toward their faith, as well as the spread of nonbelief or religious heterodoxy, actually represents persecution.

The many thousands of Christian martyrs over the centuries (and those still suffering in other countries) must be laughing or crying at the idea that being disrespected by retailers and seasonal-card senders is some sort of crucifixion. But it reflects Trump’s close identification with the Christian right’s claim that the liberty to practice one’s faith “in the public square” is so absolute that it excludes counter-concerns ranging from simple courtesy (the main problem with shouting “Merry Christmas” at non-Christians) to anti-discrimination laws. Again, Waldman explains how efforts to accommodate religious practice have degenerated into demands for plenary exemptions from norms the rest of society observes, to the point at which conservative Christians began to distort and politicize their own faith traditions . . . .

Millions of Americans (most notably Catholics, but many Evangelicals, too) go to church regularly without for a moment sharing the hostility to homosexuality (or, for that matter, legalized abortion) that their leaders increasingly treat as fundamental to their beliefs. Such distortion of an ancient faith is a lot more dangerous than any threats to the tender conscience of the occasional aggrieved baker.

Not that long ago, conservative Evangelicals typically regarded church-state separation as the central principle of religious liberty. Most Christian-right leaders have abandoned or even inverted that position. When Thomas Jefferson referred to religious liberty as requiring a “wall of separation” between church and state (a precedent today’s Christian-right leaders either ignore or attack in making the case that the Founders wanted a Christian nation), he was siding with Connecticut Baptists fighting a government that was hostile to minority religious communities. Similarly, James Madison’s commitment to total state neutrality on matters of religion was informed by his relationships with Virginia Evangelicals. . . . All that has changed radically.

In this transformation of conservative Christianity’s political arm from the self-confident advocacy of pluralism in matters of faith to a narrow, sex-obsessed movement fighting to bring back the imagined paradise of the 1950s, Trump was perhaps an inevitable figure. If ever there were a complete product of the most de-Christianized traits of secular culture, it’s Donald Trump. Yet he offers his religious supporters unconditional backing in their wars against abortion, LGBTQ rights, secular public education, and, yes, believers in what they consider false gods.

In 20th-century Europe, authoritarian movements exploited conservative Christians eager to fight socialism and secularism and regain their old power over cultural life. These politicized believers were ultimately corrupted and betrayed. Trump may serve the short-term purposes of those who have convinced themselves he is a modern-day Cyrus the Great, a “nonbeliever appointed by God as a vessel for the purposes of the faithful.” But he is no friend of liberty and, in the longer view, represents a threat to America’s great tradition of religious pluralism.

The Rise of "Revisionist" America

One of the numerous things that drives me to distraction is the ignorance of much of the American population when it comes to know accurate and true history, both of America's own past but perhaps even more so of the world at large. Hand in hand with this phenomenon is the inability of a startling number of Americans to identify countries in the world if given a blank map.  This ignorance sets the stage for revisionist ranging from Neo-Confederates who continue the lie that slavery was not the cause of the American Civil War to the Christofascists who push the myth that America was founded as a "Christian nation." If one is utterly ignorant of history - which too often gets short shrift in American public education -  the stage is set for a population easily duped by demagogues and liars  - a description that applies not only to Neo-Confederates, Christofacsist, and much of the Republican Party, but also to the liar-in-chief in the White House.  A piece in The Atlantic  looks at revisionist history being pushed by Trump and his enablers.  Here are highlights:

H. R. McMaster, Donald Trump’s former national-security adviser, used to warn of the dangers of “revisionist powers.” He had in mind countries like China and Russia that are newly ascendant and determined to amend to their advantage the global status quo: a decades-old, U.S.-led international system of free trade, military and diplomatic alliances, and liberal rules and institutions that govern how countries conduct themselves. But [Trump's] the U.S. president’s recent Europe trip, which whisked him from a confrontational breakfast with the secretary general of NATO to a conciliatory lunch with the president of Russia, made one thing clearer than it’s ever been before: The call is also coming from inside the house. Trump is a revisionist, even if many of his advisers may still conceive of the United States as the world’s leading status-quo power.

Trump’s revisionist streak was on display in Belgium when the president reportedly threatened to reconsider America’s involvement in NATO if the military alliance’s members don’t spend far more on their own defense. When Fox News’s Tucker Carlson questioned this week why the United States should be obligated to defend another NATO member if it came under attack—the commitment at the very heart of the alliance—[Trump] the president shook his head in disbelief and responded, “I understand what you’re saying. I’ve asked the same question … That’s the way it was set up. Don’t forget, I just got here a little more than a year and a half ago.” The implication was that he needed more time to shake things up.

The streak was on display in the United Kingdom, when Trump actively encouraged defection from the European Union by offering Britain a trade deal with the United States only on the condition that it make a clean break with the EU.

“We are cracking down right now on the European Union,” he told The Sun, in reference to the raft of tariffs he has imposed or threatened to impose on the bloc. He argued, as he has since the 1980s, that in certain ways traditional U.S. allies pose a greater threat to the country than longtime adversaries because they are essentially friendly pickpockets: exploiting America’s military protection and preferential treatment on trade to get rich at the expense of the United States. 

And it was on display in Finland, . . . At a joint press conference, [Trump] the American president refused to take Russia to task for interfering in democratic elections, or even to call out any specific instance of Russian bad behavior—be it committing and abetting atrocities in Syria or allegedly ordering the poisoning of a former Russian spy with a nerve agent in Britain. . . . Instead, Trump blamed rotten relations with Russia on “many years of U.S. foolishness. 

But whatever you call it—a reset, strategic renovation, or America First revisionism—Trump’s agenda of upending the international status quo is reorienting the United States as an actor in the world, even if [Trump's] the U.S. president’s ambitious plans have often been frustrated by resistance from his own advisers, Congress, and the inertia of a global system that the United States has invested in for decades. 

And if three of the world’s top powers—the United States, China, and Russia—are all acting like revisionists, that suggests the world is poised to change a whole lot, even as U.S. allies such as the European Union, Canada, and Japan strive to uphold the status quo. . . . At the moment, Europe “is not strong enough to uphold this system by itself,” Belin continued. It “still needs big allies like the U.S.”

Be very afraid.  America and the world is rapidly moving towards the same unstable international framework that set the stage for WWI and WWI - not that Trump and his Fox News viewing base have a clue of how dangerous this path will be.  They merely enjoy being the petulant bully that "shakes things up" with no long view of what they are potentially doing to themselves of the nation.  Ignorance is not always bliss. 

The Anti-Gay Bigots Writing the 2016 GOP Platform

If one wants to encounter some of the most extreme homophobes and religious extremists in America, look no farther than the GOP platform committee where individuals like Tony Perkins, head of the hate group Family Research Council, are busy drafting the most anti-LGBT platform in the Republican Party's history.   Also on the committee is discredited crackpot "historian" David Barton whose mythical version of American history utterly ignores the Founders' desire for a secular civil government.  The drafters as a group are so extreme that its akin to having the Spanish Inquisition draft policies toward the Moors that once ruled a significant portion of Spain.    The Daily Beast offers a glimpse of some of these frightening lunatics.  Here are highlights:

The committee writing the [GOP] platform on which he’s [Donald Trump]supposed to run is filled with anti-gay bigots. 

The committee, which is currently meeting in Cleveland, is charged with crafting an overarching document that describes the general principles of the party. Until mid-week, they will be voting on America’s tax policies and the party’s orientation toward LGBT issues—but there are legitimate questions about their previous words and deeds.
 For example, Cynthia Dunbar of Virginia once compared the gay rights movement to efforts “in pre-Holocaust Germany, as far as propaganda and presentation and swaying the whole mindset of a nation.”

Hardy Billington, of Missouri, took out anad in a local paper saying that homosexuality is killing people at “two to three times the rate of smoking.”

The committee also features members such as Mary Forrester, of North Carolina, who wrote an op-ed in 2008 that alleged that the “homosexual agenda is seeking to change the course of Western Civilization” and that “most societies that condoned homosexual behavior did not survive past one generation.”

And David Barton, a committee member from Texas, believes that God is preventing the medical profession from finding a cure for HIV/AIDS, and claimed that gay people die “decades earlier” than others and have more than 500 partners apiece in their lifetimes.

Barton told The Daily Beast that these statements did not represent his views, and this was “an example of something taken out of context and mischaracterized. I’m an advocate for faith-based conservative values, which include love, grace, and truth, focusing on traditional family values.”

The Daily Beast reached out to all the delegates in this article for comment, but many did not immediately respond.

 And this is just the tip of the iceberg.  As for Tony Perkins, do a search of his name on this blog if you want many examples of his anti-LGBT animus and the never ending lies he tells about us. Plus, he's a racist with white supremacist ties for good measure.  These people sadly are the face of today's Republican Party. 

Farewell To Christofascist Tool Randy Forbes

As noted in prior posts, I urged voters to vote against Randy Forbes - a former law school classmate - and then celebrated his primary loss to Scott Taylor.  Forbes' principal "contributions" in Congress were Christofascist backed batshitery.  Americans for the Separation of Church and State has a rundown of the lunacy and in some cases arguably unconstitutional measures that always received Forbes' support.  Here are some highlights:

A staunch Religious Right ally will soon be leaving Congress after he suffered a primary defeat on Tuesday.

After 15 years in office, U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) was defeated 53 percent to 41 percent by a Republican challenger despite outspending his opponent almost 10-1. Forbes is partly the victim of redistricting; he switched to a new district this year after the makeup of his old one changed in favor of Democrats.

We won’t exactly be sorry to see Forbes go. While in office, he regularly did the Religious Right’s bidding.

In 2009, Forbes backed a resolution that outlined “73 milestones of spirituality and faith in the United States.” The measure also recognized what he claimed were “the religious foundations of faith” that “form the inseparable foundation for America’s representative processes, legal systems and societal structures.”

At Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, D.C., in 2010 Forbes peddled bad history. He claimed America was intended to be an officially “Christian nation” as evidenced by instances when our government eroded the church-state wall, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1892 decision in Holy Trinity v. United States. Of course he failed to mention that the Holy Trinity decision is a legal anomaly. It has rarely been cited by other courts, and the “Christian nation” declaration made in the opinion for that case appeared in dicta, which is a legal term meaning writing that reflects a judge’s personal opinion, not a mandate of the law.

In 2011, Forbes sponsored a resolution that reaffirmed “In God We Trust” as the official motto of the United States and encouraged its display in public spaces. 

Forbes is also heavily involved with the Congressional Prayer Caucus.

It’s no wonder, then, that Forbes was endorsed by the anti-gay Family Research Council (FRC) right before his defeat.

Meanwhile, state Del. Scott Taylor (R-Virginia Beach) will face Democrat Shaun Brown, a businesswoman who has not previously held elected office, in the November election. We don’t know what the outcome of that race will be, but the winner would have to work really hard to top Forbes’ record on mixing church and state.  

The Religious Right’s Big Lie About the Founding of America

As regular readers know, I view little or nothing that comes from the lips of the Christofascists as being true.  Seemingly, any and every lie is acceptable as long as it furthers their theocratic agenda and effort to force their views and beliefs on all Americans - an effort that, thankfully, seems to be failing more and more.  In the wake of the Obergefell ruling on Friday, we can expect an increasing number of lies to come from the lips of the "godly folks" as they seek to (i) deny the reality that they are ignorance embracing, hate-filled bigots, and (ii) claim that it is everyone else who has it wrong on social issues and even American history.  One of their favorite lies is that America was founded as a "Christian nation" when the reality is the total opposite.  As they become more and more marginalized in society, its likely that they will go into overtime disseminating such lies.  A piece in Salon looks at their lie about America's founding (and the obvious need to teach more accurate history in our schools).  Here are excerpts:

One of the more popular and enduring accounts of America’s past is that of its religious founding. Belief that the British-American colonies were settled largely by religiously devout people in search of spiritual freedom, that the United States government was founded in part on religious principles, that the Founders intended to create a “Christian nation,” and that America is a specially chosen nation whose success has been directed by divine providence has resonated in the national psyche for generations. 

According to a 2008 study by the First Amendment Center, over 50 percent of Americans believe that the U.S Constitution created a Christian nation, notwithstanding its express prohibitions on religious establishments and religious tests for public office holding.

[N]o modern politician drew more  allusions to the nation’s religious  heritage than did George W. Bush. A conservative evangelical, Bush frequently revealed  his belief in America’s Christian origins,  once affirming  that “[o]ur  country was founded by men and women  who realized their dependence on God and were humbled by His providence and grace.” The Founders did more than simply acknowledge their obligation toward God, however; for Bush, America  was specially chosen, “not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation” but because “God moves and chooses [us] as He wills.”

As historian Richard  T. Hughes has written about Bush, in his embrace of the myth, Bush “thoroughly confused the Christian view of reality with the purposes of the United States.”

Such rhetoric usually receives a pass from the mainstream press, perhaps because of its ubiquity. . . . 

religious declarations by politicians perpetuate the impression that America was specially ordained by God and that the nation’s governing documents and institutions reflect Christian values.

Ever since the nation’s bicentennial, conservatives have raised claims about America’s Christian heritage in their efforts to gain the moral (and political) high ground in the ongoing culture wars. These arguments take on several forms, from asserting that the Founders relied on a pervasive Calvinist ideology when crafting notions of republicanism to claiming that the Founders were devout Christians and were guided in their actions by divine providence.

A plethora of books have been published that attest to the Founders’ religious piety and to their belief about the role of religion in civil government. Although these books are usually weak on historical scholarship, they project a degree of authority by frequently  “disclosing” previously “unknown” historical data, purposely ignored (allegedly) by professional historians. 

Connected to this central theme is a second common claim: that scholars, judges, and the liberal elite have censored America’s Christian past in a conspiracy to install a regime of secularism.

One scholar sums up this overall phenomenon: . . . .  Driven by the belief that separation of church and state is a myth foisted upon the American people by secular courts and scholars, defenders of Christian America historiography claim they are merely recovering accurate American history from revisionist historians conspiring to expunge any remnant of Christianity from America’s past.

[M]ost scholars vigorously dispute religionist claims about the “centrality of religious ideas” behind the Revolution, of the “fact of a substantial spiritual dimension to our founding,” or that “Revolutionary-era political thought was, above all, Protestant inspired.”

This renewed [Christofascists] attention to the nation’s Christian foundings has not gone unnoticed by sympathetic politicians and officials, such as the members of the Texas State Board of Education, and conservative judges such as William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. This narrative has impacted the content of social science curriculum in Texas schools and the judicial interpretation of First Amendment jurisprudence.

The foregoing is excerpted from “Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding” by Steven K. Green. Published by Oxford University Press. Copyright 2015 by Steven K. Green. The take away is that there is an ongoing deliberate, insidious effort to subvert accurate history to further the Christofacists' agenda and to give special deference to their warped and toxic form of Christianity.  This effort needs to be combated and the lies confronted head on.  When you hear someone parroting Christofascist  lies, challenge them and use the writings of Jefferson and others to show the lie that they are promoting.  

How Corporate America Invented "Christian America"

I often blame the so-called GOP establishment for empowering the Christofascists who have become a metastasizing cancer in the GOP and society as a whole, but a piece in Politico places some of the blame for this toxic influence on corporate America.  The piece traces the begins of this sickness in American society back to the 1940's and corporate America's desire to role back and/or restrain New Deal policies and regulations, something we see Republicans and vulture capitalists like the Koch brothers still doing today.  When looked st from this perspective, by allowing the Christofascists - who place greed and a desire for special rights over the Gospel message - the corporate America found an ally in the worship of self-interest over the common good.  Here are article excerpts:

In December 1940, as America was emerging from the Great Depression, more than 5,000 industrialists from across the nation made their yearly pilgrimage to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, convening for the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. The program promised an impressive slate of speakers . . . Tucked away near the end of the program was a name few knew initially, but one everyone would be talking about by the convention’s end: Reverend James W. Fifield Jr.

Handsome, tall, and somewhat gangly, the 41-year-old Congregationalist minister bore more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart. Addressing the crowd of business leaders, Fifield delivered a passionate defense of the American system of free enterprise and a withering assault on its perceived enemies in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Decrying the New Deal’s “encroachment upon our American freedoms,” the minister listed a litany of sins committed by the Democratic government

It all sounds familiar enough today, but Fifield’s audience of executives was stunned. Over the preceding decade, as America first descended into and then crawled its way out of the Great Depression, the these titans of industry had been told, time and time again, that they were to blame for the nation’s downfall. Fifield, in contrast, insisted that they were the source of its salvation.  They just needed to do one thing: Get religion.

Fifield told the industrialists that clergymen would be crucial in regaining the upper hand in their war with Roosevelt. As men of God, ministers could voice the same conservative complaints as business leaders, but without any suspicion that they were motivated solely by self-interest. 

It was a watershed moment—the beginning of a movement that would advance over the 1940s and early 1950s a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Fifield and like-minded ministers saw Christianity and capitalism as inextricably intertwined, and argued that spreading the gospel of one required spreading the gospel of the other. The two systems had been linked before, of course, but always in terms of their shared social characteristics. Fifield’s innovation was his insistence that Christianity and capitalism were political soul mates, first and foremost.

Before the New Deal, the government had never loomed quite so large over business and, as a result, it had never loomed large in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism.

[Fifield] and his colleagues devoted themselves to fighting the government forces they believed were threatening capitalism and, by extension, Christianity. And their activities helped build a foundation for a new vision of America in which businessmen would no longer suffer under the rule of Roosevelt but instead thrive—in a phrase they popularized—in a nation “under God.” In many ways, the marriage of corporate and Christian interests that has recently dominated the news—from the Hobby Lobby case to controversies over state-level versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—is not that new at all.

For much of the 1930s, organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) had been searching in vain for ways to rehabilitate a public image that had been destroyed in the Great Depression and defamed by the New Deal. In 1934, a new generation of conservative industrialists took over NAM with a promise to “serve the purposes of business salvation.”

Ultimately, though, industry’s self-promotion was seen as precisely that.  . . . . Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt took his shots. “It has been said that there are two great Commandments—one is to love God, and the other to love your neighbor,” he noted soon after the Liberty League’s creation. “The two particular tenets of this new organization say you shall love God and then forget your neighbor.”

When Roosevelt launched the New Deal, politically liberal clergymen echoed his arguments, championing his proposal for a vast welfare state as simply the Christian thing to do. The head of the Federal Council of Churches, for instance, claimed the New Deal embodied basic Christian principles such as the “significance of daily bread, shelter, and security.” When businessmen realized their economic arguments were no match for Roosevelt’s religious ones, they decided to beat him at his own game.

It all fits the picture we see today and perhaps the hijacking of the GOP wasn't based on short term cynicism after all, but rather was a piece of a longer term plan that commenced decades ago.  Now, however, the GOP seems to have lost control of the Frankenstein monster it created.

Why theGOP/Christofascists Hates American History

As noted repeatedly on this blog, to be a Republican nowadays - or a Christofascist - one must consciously embrace ignorance and/or seek to erase facts and history that do not support your limited agenda or "world view."  Modern knowledge and an accurate knowledge of history work against the GOP's talking points and the Christofascists claims that the Bible is inerrant and/or that America was founded as a Christian nation.  Salon has two separate posts that underscore why the far right hate true and accurate American history and education.  Here are highlights from the first piece:

Sure, the war on education helps Republican lawmakers destroy unions and slash government spending, but it’s our history of progressive change that makes Conservatives hate accurate depictions of our past.

Just think about Social Security, The New Deal, freeing the slaves, or child labor laws… all represent great turning points in our nation that progressives made possible. The fact is, our entire history – from our revolution to healthcare reform – is filled with progressive accomplishments, and it’s hard to sell the Conservative brand to people who know that history.

Many of the today’s biggest political issues, like our privacy rights, would not even be up for debate today had it not been for the attack on education. If more Americans had had a strong understanding of our history, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would have never been able to pull off the Patriot Act. And, we wouldn’t be discussing the Orwellian government spy agencies like the NSA in this day and age.

Thomas Jefferson recognized that education is vital to a functioning Democratic Republic.  In a letter to James Madison, Jefferson wrote: “And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain, and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them…. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”

In light of Oklahoma’s recent attack on AP History, it would be easy to argue that today’s Republicans don’t recognize the value of a good education. However, the reality is that they do, and that the spreading attack on public education is far more sinister.

When the Patriot Act was signed, Bush and his ilk claimed the power to violate citizens’ private lives because, they said, there is no “right to privacy” in the United States. 

[I]n the minds of the Founders, human rights are inalienable—inseparable—from humans themselves. We are born with rights by simple fact of existence, as defined by John Locke and written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the Founders wrote.

Jefferson’s insistence on a bill of rights exemplifies the progressive thoughts and actions that fill our rich history, and provide a perfect example of why education is vital to our democratic republic.

Jefferson was in France when Madison sent him the first draft of the new Constitution, and he wrote back on December 20, 1787, that, “I will now tell you what I do not like [about the new constitution]. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land….”

Although the purpose of the Constitution wasn’t to grant rights to people, as kings and popes and feudal lords had done in the past, Jefferson felt it was necessary to be absolutely unambiguous about the solid reality that humans are holders of rights, and that in no way was the Constitution or the new government of the United States to ever be allowed to infringe on those rights.

The Constitution’s authors well understood this, Jefferson noted, having just fought a revolutionary war to gain their “self-evident” and “inalienable” rights from King George, but he also felt strongly that both the common person of the day and future generations must be reminded of this reality.

Jefferson is stating openly that the purpose of the Constitution—and even the Bill of Rights—is not to grant rights to the people, but to restrain government. It doesn’t grant, it limits.  And, Jefferson said, his proposed Bill of Rights was only a beginning and imperfect; it would be nearly impossible to list in detail all the rights humans have. But a start, a try, is better than nothing—at least it will make clear that the purpose of the constitution is to limit government:

[N]ow, thanks to the war on education that began with Ronald Reagan, we have come to that remote period in time Jefferson was concerned about. Our leaders, ignorant of or ignoring the history of this nation’s founding, make a parody of liberty and flaunt their challenges even to those rights explicitly defined in the Constitution. And, perhaps worse, they allow monopolistic corporations to do the same.

Our best defense against today’s pervasive ignorance about American history and human rights is education, a task that Jefferson undertook in starting the University of Virginia to provide a comprehensive and free public education to all capable students.

Nothing makes it easier for the Christofascists to promote the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation than the ignorance of far too many America's as to true founding principles.  As the piece above notes, education is the main protection of civil rights and liberties.  The second piece is indirectly related and focuses on the GOP/Christofascist war on education.    Here are highlights:

Modern conservative politics push the notion that people who flip switches, burgers or bedpans don’t need “education.”  They instead need “job training.”  In Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s budget, someone crossed out this phrase: “to extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses and to serve and stimulate society.”  And added this instead: “to meet the state’s workforce needs.”  Walker backed down on the language change when it was exposed, claiming it was a “mistake.”  Really it was just one more tired attack on the idea of education as a public good, one that helps people find fulfillment and meaning.

Before college, I voted conservative, hated gay people, loved America and served my country in the armed services.  I’ve changed because of many factors, but I know that college and graduate school made a difference. I met people unlike myself and was forced to defend sometimes ugly political positions.  The Tea Party thrives on blue-collar “common sense” that is composed of a combination of ignorance, superstition and fear. A literate and educated populace is an existential threat to the kind of thoughtless rage that has consumed the right over the past few years.

Modern politics is drawing bizarre new battle lines between “family values” and a halfway decent education.  American Christians may dislike “Islam,” but they share a lot of opinions with the radical Islamic group “Boko Haram,” a name that itself translates into “education is forbidden.” In our own country, we have a massive and growing group of people who would rather have illiterate children than let their kids learn anything that contradicts their most extreme 

religious views.

Anti-intellectualism may be an American tradition, but when “mainstream” politicians embrace ignorance, education ends up as collateral damage.“Serious” presidential candidate Scott Walker seems to have a problem with evolution, sounding like an idiot, most recently while in England. Unlike Rick Santorum who is an overeducated hypocrite, Walker lives the life of a true education hater. 

[S]ensible people need to stand up against the vilification of education. A good start is to support Barack Obama’s free community college initiative. 

[T]here is inherent value to education even if someone isn’t paying you for it. I know my life would be less satisfying without it. For instance, if I had turned my back on education, I could have ended up as an ignorant asshole trying to turn back the very hands of human progress, much like the party to which I once belonged.

Christian Nationalism - The Force Behind Gay Marriage Bans?

Besides holding deep seated anti-gay animus, most opponents of same sex marriage likewise hold animus towards non-Christians, foreigners, and, in the case of white evangelicals, non-whites.  This mindset is part and parcel of the far right's belief that white, Christian America is God's chosen land.  Some call this Christian nationalism.  It ties in with the erroneous belief in what these self-anointed "godly folks" refer to "American exceptionalism."  A piece in Religion News Service looks at the ties between Christian nationalism and opposition to gay marriage.  Here are some highlights:

Public support for same-sex marriage has inched past the symbolic fifty-percent mark in most polls. This means that a sizeable segment of society still opposes same-sex marriage. . . . What is it that makes people link their religious beliefs to this public policy?

I found an answer to this question last weekend while I was on a panel at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Clemson University, and Samuel Perry of the University of Chicago presented new research on what really drives opposition to same-sex marriage in the United States.

Whitehead and Perry find that the key is a person’s embrace of Christian nationalism. This is the notion that God has chosen the U.S. and that the nation must follow God’s commands to flourish. People who embrace this view are much more likely to oppose same-sex marriage. Those who don’t believe in it are more open to supporting same-sex marriage.

Whitehead and Perry draw on several questions to capture this notion of Christian nationalism. These questions measured beliefs that the federal government should:

• not enforce a strict separation of church and state,
• allow prayer in public schools
• allow religious symbols to be displayed in public spaces,
• declare the U.S. a Christian nation, and
• advocate Christian values.

In addition, they also used a question asking about the belief that the U.S. has received special blessings from God. The stronger one’s responses on these questions, the higher one’s support for Christian nationalism.

The effect of Christian nationalism in this study was substantial. Nearly 90 percent of people with the lowest support for Christian nationalism support same-sex marriage, compared to just six percent of people with the highest levels.

If you support teacher-led prayer in schools and believe American success is part of God’s plan, you are also likely to oppose same-sex marriage. But even if you’re a conservative, you likely support same-sex marriage if you view the government as a secular institution that should stay away from religious expression.

So, same-sex marriage is about more than morality or ideology. It is about how people view the United States of America.