BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label American history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American history. Show all posts
27 August 2025
18 July 2025
OMG: Trump HUMILIATES himself in confused Oval Office rant 18JUN25
FROM Brian Tyler Cohen this is a "collage" of unbelievably stupid and ignorant remarks by NOT MY pres drumpf / trump about American History. What is really frightening is there is no doubt he actually believes what he is saying is true. I think my favorite examples of his ignorance are Revolutionary War General George Washington and the Continental Army, after wintering at Valley Forge, crossed the Delaware River, attacked and defeated the British troops in New York City after capturing the AIRPORTS! Then there's drumpf / trump 'quoting' Andrew Jackson discussing how he could have ended the Civil War after seeing what was happening and saying 'There's no reason for this', disregarding the FACT Andrew Jackson died 16 years before the Civil War. These and everything else in this video proves drumpf / trump is an idiot, a moron, is stupid and ignorant and this video also proves he is a drippings ( meaning the best part of him ran down something's leg ).
26 July 2021
09 June 2011
Palin: ‘We Must Never Forget the Wisdom of Jefferson, and his Wife, Weezy’ 6JUN11
Former Gov. Gives History Lesson
MONTICELLO (The Borowitz Report) – Visiting Thomas Jefferson’s historic home, Monticello, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin today paid tribute to the nation’s third President, telling an audience of supporters, “We must never forget the wisdom of Jefferson, and his wife, Weezy.”Gov. Palin said that “at a time of our history when the American people needed leadership, it was Jefferson who said the immortal words, ‘We’re movin’ on up.’”
The former Alaska Governor, criticized in recent days over her grasp of American history, used the Monticello speech to demonstrate her knowledge of the country’s founding fathers.
“Let us have the ingenuity of Benjamin Franklin, who invented the electric chair,” she said.
“Let us have the honesty of George Washington, who told his father that he chopped down a cherry tree because it was blocking his view of Russia,” she added. “And let us have Washington’s perseverance, which he demonstrated during that harsh winter at Sweet Valley High.”
But she saved her most fulsome praise for her favorite American hero, Paul Revere: “In his famous cry, ‘One if by land, two if by sea,’ Paul Revere proved that you don’t have to know how to count higher than two to be a great American.”
At the end of her speech in Monticello, Gov. Palin said that she was looking forward to the next stop on her bus tour, Philadelphia, “the home of the Taco Bell.”
15 October 2010
11 Freedoms That Drunks, Slackers, Prostitutes And Pirates Pioneered And The Founding Fathers Opposed (PHOTOS) 13OKT10
CLICK the header to go to the article on HuffPost....it is pretty interesting. Benjamin Rush and John Adams were NO FUN AT ALL!!!!!!
During the War of Independence a culture of pleasure and freedom blossomed in American cities. Non-marital sex, including adultery and relations between whites and blacks, was ubiquitous and rarely punished. Because divorce was unregulated, it was easily and frequently obtained, often by women. Brothels were legal and abundant and prostitutes were rarely prosecuted. Black slaves, Irish indentured servants, Native Americans, and free whites of all classes commingled extensively in saloons and in the streets. Pirates who settled in the port cities brought with them a way of life that embraced both general revelry and homosexuality. On nearly every block in every 18th-century American city, there was a public place where one could drink, sing, dance, have sex, argue politics, gamble, play games, or generally carouse with men, women, children, whites, blacks, Indians, the rich, the poor, and the middling. Rarely have Americans had more fun. And never have America's leaders been less pleased by it.
To the Founding Fathers the culture of personal liberty was a more serious threat to their project of creating an independent republic than the British Army.
Here are "11 Freedoms That Drunks, Slackers, Prostitutes and Pirates Pioneered And The Founding Fathers Opposed," a sample of the fresh take on American history found in "A Renegade History of the United States."
During the War of Independence a culture of pleasure and freedom blossomed in American cities. Non-marital sex, including adultery and relations between whites and blacks, was ubiquitous and rarely punished. Because divorce was unregulated, it was easily and frequently obtained, often by women. Brothels were legal and abundant and prostitutes were rarely prosecuted. Black slaves, Irish indentured servants, Native Americans, and free whites of all classes commingled extensively in saloons and in the streets. Pirates who settled in the port cities brought with them a way of life that embraced both general revelry and homosexuality. On nearly every block in every 18th-century American city, there was a public place where one could drink, sing, dance, have sex, argue politics, gamble, play games, or generally carouse with men, women, children, whites, blacks, Indians, the rich, the poor, and the middling. Rarely have Americans had more fun. And never have America's leaders been less pleased by it.
To the Founding Fathers the culture of personal liberty was a more serious threat to their project of creating an independent republic than the British Army.
"Indeed, there is one enemy, who is more formidable than famine, pestilence and the sword," John Adams wrote. "I mean the corruption which is prevalent in so many American hearts, a depravity that is more inconsistent with our republican governments than light is with darkness."The Founding Fathers hoped that self-rule would cure Americans of their love of frivolities. A government of the people, John Adams argued, would make the people disciplined, stern, hard-working, and joyless -- the qualities he most admired. It would "produce Strength, Hardiness Activity, Courage, Fortitude and Enterprise; the manly noble and Sublime Qualities in human Nature, in Abundance." Adams understood that democracy forced the people to shed their pleasures and surrender their personal freedom, because they alone would shoulder the responsibility of managing society.
"Under a well regulated Commonwealth, the People must be wise, virtuous and cannot be otherwise. Under a Monarchy they may be as vicious and foolish as they please, nay, they cannot but be vicious and foolish. ... Virtue and Simplicity of Manners are indispensably necessary in a Republic among all orders and Degrees of Men. But there is so much Rascallity, so much Venality and Corruption, so much Avarice and Ambition such a Rage for Profit and Commerce among all Ranks and Degrees of Men even in America, that I sometimes doubt whether there is public Virtue enough to Support a Republic."But what the Founding Fathers called corruption, depravity, venality, and vice, many of us would call freedom ...
Here are "11 Freedoms That Drunks, Slackers, Prostitutes and Pirates Pioneered And The Founding Fathers Opposed," a sample of the fresh take on American history found in "A Renegade History of the United States."
02 September 2010
The Awful Price for Teaching Less Than We Know 31AUG10
THIS is the perfect companion piece to the post on this blog 'IS THE GOP LOOKING OUT FOR YOU?'
Watching Glenn Beck's performance Saturday at his "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, DC, I thought of the novelist Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry, the charlatan evangelist who seduces most of those around him with his hearty backslapping and false piety.
Then I realized it wasn't Gantry of whom I was reminded so much as another Lewis character, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, the politician who poses as a populist, then once elected president turns the United States into a fascist dictatorship, aided by an angry, unknowing electorate and a paramilitary group called the Minute Men.
Read how Sinclair Lewis described Windrip seventy-five years ago in his novel It Can't Happen Here and think Beck: "He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts -- figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect."
Entirely incorrect. In its despair and confusion, a large segment of the American populace is prepared to believe anything it's told, in part because we are a country less and less educated, increasingly unable to tell fact from fiction because we are so unschooled in basic essential knowledge about America and the world.
I remembered a conversation my friend and colleague Bill Moyers had with journalist and author Susan Jacoby on Bill Moyers Journal in 2008, just after the publication of her book, The Age of American Unreason.
She cited a 2006 National Geographic-Roper Survey: "Only 23 percent of college-educated young people could find Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Israel, four countries of ultimate importance to American policy on the map -- a map, by the way, that had the countries lettered on it. So in other words, it wasn't a blank map, [which] meant they didn't really know where the Middle East was either... If only 23 percent of people with some college can find those countries on a map that is nothing to be bragging about. And that has to have something to do with why, as a country, we have such shallow political discussions."
It's not much of a leap from there to the Pew Research Center survey earlier this month reporting "nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009."
The jump in the "Obama is a Muslim" numbers is sharpest among Republicans (and a new Newsweek poll finds a majority of Republicans also believe that it's "definitely" or "probably" true that "Barack Obama sympathizes with Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world"). But as New York Times blogger Timothy Egan noted in an entry headlined, "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings," it's "not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush."
Back when Moyers spoke with Susan Jacoby about "the ignorance and erosion of historical memory that makes serious deceptions possible and plausible," she cited as an example that, "If we don't know what our Constitution says about the separation of powers then it certainly affects the way we decide all kinds of public issues."
According to a survey conducted last year by The American Revolution Center, a non-partisan, educational group, more than half of American adults "mistakenly believe the Constitution established a government of direct democracy, rather than a democratic republic," a third don't know that the right to trial-by-jury is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and "many more Americans remember that Michael Jackson sang 'Beat It' than know that the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution." (Sixty percent knew that reality TV's Jon and Kate Gosselin had eight kids but more than a third did not know that the American Revolution took place in the 18th century.)
So is it any wonder that many Tea Partiers are equally unknowing of the fact that much of their grass roots movement is bankrolled by fat cats with ulterior motives like billionaire libertarians David Koch and his brother Charles, who, as a former associate told The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, seems to have "confused making money with freedom?" Or that continuing tax cuts for the rich while supporting deficit reduction are inherently incompatible concepts? Or that raging Islamophobia plays right into the hands of radical terrorists who use our bigotry to incite and recruit? Or that Glenn Beck just says whatever craziness pops into his head?
"It's one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes," Timothy Egan wrote on the Times website. "But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?"
Years ago, I attended a rally protesting government cuts in funding for education and the arts. One of the speakers suggested that we boomers may be the first generation to teach the next generation less than we know. That often-willful ignorance may turn out to be our final, fatal mistake, the greatest American tragedy of all.
Watching Glenn Beck's performance Saturday at his "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, DC, I thought of the novelist Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry, the charlatan evangelist who seduces most of those around him with his hearty backslapping and false piety.
Then I realized it wasn't Gantry of whom I was reminded so much as another Lewis character, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, the politician who poses as a populist, then once elected president turns the United States into a fascist dictatorship, aided by an angry, unknowing electorate and a paramilitary group called the Minute Men.
Read how Sinclair Lewis described Windrip seventy-five years ago in his novel It Can't Happen Here and think Beck: "He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts -- figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect."
Entirely incorrect. In its despair and confusion, a large segment of the American populace is prepared to believe anything it's told, in part because we are a country less and less educated, increasingly unable to tell fact from fiction because we are so unschooled in basic essential knowledge about America and the world.
I remembered a conversation my friend and colleague Bill Moyers had with journalist and author Susan Jacoby on Bill Moyers Journal in 2008, just after the publication of her book, The Age of American Unreason.
She cited a 2006 National Geographic-Roper Survey: "Only 23 percent of college-educated young people could find Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Israel, four countries of ultimate importance to American policy on the map -- a map, by the way, that had the countries lettered on it. So in other words, it wasn't a blank map, [which] meant they didn't really know where the Middle East was either... If only 23 percent of people with some college can find those countries on a map that is nothing to be bragging about. And that has to have something to do with why, as a country, we have such shallow political discussions."
It's not much of a leap from there to the Pew Research Center survey earlier this month reporting "nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009."
The jump in the "Obama is a Muslim" numbers is sharpest among Republicans (and a new Newsweek poll finds a majority of Republicans also believe that it's "definitely" or "probably" true that "Barack Obama sympathizes with Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world"). But as New York Times blogger Timothy Egan noted in an entry headlined, "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings," it's "not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush."
Back when Moyers spoke with Susan Jacoby about "the ignorance and erosion of historical memory that makes serious deceptions possible and plausible," she cited as an example that, "If we don't know what our Constitution says about the separation of powers then it certainly affects the way we decide all kinds of public issues."
According to a survey conducted last year by The American Revolution Center, a non-partisan, educational group, more than half of American adults "mistakenly believe the Constitution established a government of direct democracy, rather than a democratic republic," a third don't know that the right to trial-by-jury is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and "many more Americans remember that Michael Jackson sang 'Beat It' than know that the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution." (Sixty percent knew that reality TV's Jon and Kate Gosselin had eight kids but more than a third did not know that the American Revolution took place in the 18th century.)
So is it any wonder that many Tea Partiers are equally unknowing of the fact that much of their grass roots movement is bankrolled by fat cats with ulterior motives like billionaire libertarians David Koch and his brother Charles, who, as a former associate told The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, seems to have "confused making money with freedom?" Or that continuing tax cuts for the rich while supporting deficit reduction are inherently incompatible concepts? Or that raging Islamophobia plays right into the hands of radical terrorists who use our bigotry to incite and recruit? Or that Glenn Beck just says whatever craziness pops into his head?
"It's one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes," Timothy Egan wrote on the Times website. "But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?"
Years ago, I attended a rally protesting government cuts in funding for education and the arts. One of the speakers suggested that we boomers may be the first generation to teach the next generation less than we know. That often-willful ignorance may turn out to be our final, fatal mistake, the greatest American tragedy of all.
23 May 2010
ACLU ONLINE NEWSLETTER 21MAI10
 Tell Attorney General Holder to Keep His Hands Off the Miranda Rule Arizona: We're Going to Court Request For Amazon User Records Unconstitutional Texas School Board Puts on a Show Potty-Mouths: Steer Clear of Pennsylvania Defending Twitter Users' Privacy  Potty-Mouths: Steer Clear of Pennsylvania If you have a potty-mouth, stay away from the Keystone State. A recent ACLU of Pennsylvania Right to Know Law request revealed that in a one-year period, the Pennsylvania State Police issued over 770 disorderly conduct citations for profanity or profane gestures. That's two citations a day—citations which are illegal—as the courts have made it very clear that profanity, unlike obscenity, is constitutionally-protected speech. On Wednesday, the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed two lawsuits against the Pennsylvania State Police and the Mahanoy City Police of Schuylkill County for issuing disorderly conduct citations to two Pennsylvania residents for using profanity. Our lawsuits argue that profanity and profane gestures are constitutionally-protected speech. While many people find this case understandably humorous, the consequences of these citations are not so funny. In one case, our client called a passing motorcyclist she knew an "asshole" after he deliberately swerved as if to hit her and shouted an insult at her. That same day, she reported the incident to the state police, who proceeded to mail her a disorderly conduct citation for swearing. The citation noted that she could face as much as a 90-day jail sentence and a fine up to $300. She was eventually found not guilty—after hiring a lawyer to defend her. In the months leading up to her hearing, our client, a mother of three young children, constantly worried that she might be separated from her family because of the citation. Unfortunately, the zeal for citing people for profanity isn't limited to the state police. In the past few years, the ACLU of Pennsylvania has successfully defended about a dozen individuals against similar charges—most recently including a Scranton woman, Dawn Herb, who swore at her clogged toilet in her home and a Pittsburgh man, David Hackbart, who flipped off a police officer in a dispute over a parking space. Is it poor manners to swear like a sailor? Definitely. Is it a crime? Definitely not. back to top Defending Twitter Users' Privacy The ACLU of Pennsylvania announced that it will represent two people who anonymously criticized State Attorney General Tom Corbett on Twitter. (As of Tuesday's primary, Corbett is also the GOP candidate for governor.) Corbett's office has asked a grand jury to issue a subpoena to Twitter demanding the company reveal the identities of Twitter users @bfbarbie and @CasaBlancaPA. Twitter told the ACLU of Pennsylvania that it has not disclosed either user's identity. Timothy Yip, Twitter's legal counsel, told TechCrunch: "We protect and do not disclose user information except in limited circumstances. We notify a user, if we believe we are allowed to by law, when we receive any request for their information that we may be required to comply with. This policy is designed for maximum transparency and gives users an opportunity to object." The ACLU has entered discussions with Corbett's office, asking them to withdraw the subpoenas. If the attorney general's office refuses, the ACLU expects to file a motion to quash the subpoenas. Using a grand jury to reveal the identities of political critics is "unconstitutional retaliation that violates the First Amendment," said Witold "Vic" Walczak, legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania. back to top  Do you know somebody who would be interested in getting news about the ACLU and what we're doing to protect civil liberties? Help us spread the word about ACLU Online — forward this newsletter to a friend. | May 21, 2010 Tell Attorney General Holder to Keep His Hands Off the Miranda RuleIn the wake of the attempted bombing in Times Square in May 2010—as after other terrorism attempts—there have been misguided calls to weaken our constitutional rights, including a call to loosen the Miranda rule. Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee that the administration wants to "modernize" and "clarify" Miranda warnings for terrorism suspects. Miranda warnings—ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court to be a constitutional right—are used to inform suspects of their rights during interrogation. There is no evidence that the Miranda requirement has obstructed the government from obtaining valuable information and intelligence from suspected terrorists. Both Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was caught on a Detroit-bound plane with explosives in his underwear, and Faisal Shahzad, arrested for trying to bomb Times Square with a car full of explosives, were caught, questioned, and Mirandized. Crucially, both cooperated with law enforcement authorities both before and after they were read their Miranda rights. The ACLU thinks changes to Miranda are both threatening to our criminal justice system and entirely unnecessary. This week, we sent a letter to Holder asking him to leave Miranda alone. And we're not the only ones who think this is a bad idea; three former FBI agents also sent a letter to Holder, writing: "As professional interrogators who have spent decades questioning accused criminals—including spies and terrorists—we are writing to make clear that interrogators can do their job using the existing Miranda rules. No changes are necessary. In fact, changes might do more harm than good." >> Take action: Send a message to Attorney General Holder. Tell him to keep his hands off the Miranda rule! back to top Arizona: We're Going to Court
Racial profiling is a deeply-offensive affront to the American values of justice and fairness. And using race to demand that people produce "papers" to prove who they are is a police-state tactic that is completely unacceptable in America. If we don't stop this law now, similar ones could spread across the nation. Already, state lawmakers in at least 10 other states have promised to bring similar bills to their legislatures. That's why we're taking Arizona to court, along with our partners the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Immigration Law Center, and a number of other civil rights groups. Can we count you in to fight with us as we take on this dangerous law? Under the new law, Arizona police will be required to ask people they stop for their citizenship papers based on "reasonable suspicion" that they are in the country unlawfully. And by leaving "reasonable suspicion" undefined, the law leaves police officers little choice but to act on appearance and language, inviting a new wave of rampant racial profiling. This week, our lawyers took the first legal step to stop this law. And we'll be organizing on the ground in Arizona, training volunteer lawyers to help people defend themselves against racial profiling. We won't stand by while this law transforms Arizona into a place where anyone can be forced to "show papers" when they are stopped by police just because of how they look or talk or dress. >> Stop the racial profiling law today -- join the fight and get a free bumper sticker. back to top Request For Amazon User Records UnconstitutionalLast month, Amazon.com brought a lawsuit against the State of North Carolina's Department of Revenue (DOR) for demanding the private records of its customers. The Revenue Department has demanded that Amazon hand over individually-identifiable information that could be linked to specific purchases made on the site. Amazon has already provided the DOR with product codes that reveal the exact items purchased—including books on the subjects of mental health, alcoholism and LGBT issues. Amazon has withheld individually-identifiable user information—including names and addresses that could be linked back to the individual purchases—but asserts that the NCDOR continues to insist that such information be disclosed. This week, we sent a letter to North Carolina Secretary of Revenue Kenneth Lay expressing our concern about these unreasonable demands. If the Revenue Department doesn't back away from its demand for the personal information of Amazon customers living in North Carolina, we will join Amazon's lawsuit to stop the DOR from collecting individually-identifiable information that could link specific purchases made on Amazon. The ACLU's problem with this demand for personal information is that it's a violation of North Carolinians' First Amendment right to purchase and read lawful materials of their choice. You should be able to make purchases freely without the government looking over your shoulder. >> Take action: Tell Congress to pass legislation that requires law enforcement to get a warrant before it demands sensitive electronic information, including book records. back to top Texas School Board Puts on a Show By Terri Burke, Executive Director, ACLU of Texas There was a time when many of us thought the cheapest, best live theater in Texas was in the Pink Granite building at the end of Congress Avenue in Austin. No more. It's the State Board of Education. If you're not attending—or at least watching— its hearings on the proposed new social studies curriculum standards, you must already be vacationing in the mountains of Colorado with no internet. The highlight—or should I say lowlight—of Wednesday's 13+ hours of public testimony (I got to speak in hour 12.) was the speaker who told us that Texas history curriculum should teach "that slavery was created by fallen angels." Chairwoman Gail Lowe didn't reprimand the speaker as she had earlier complained about T-shirts worn by a group of students. The fronts of the T-shirts were innocuous enough—"Save our History"—but the wording on the backs offended the Chairwoman: "Students for a smarter state board of education now." Out of the 206 registered speakers, my rough count showed a good 60 percent spoke against the proposed standards or asked the Board to delay the vote to revise them. And that doesn't count the legislators and players from the national stage who showed up. Bush-era Education Secretary and former Houston school superintendent Rod Paige told the board early Wednesday morning: "What students are taught should not be the handmaiden of political ideology." They heard, too, from Benjamin Todd Jealous, the national president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who said that children need to learn the "whole truth, not half truths." He said the standards threaten students' ability to compete on advanced placement tests and SATs. The room had thinned-out dramatically at 9:45 p.m. when finally I was called to speak, and by then, they had changed the rules to strictly limit questioning of speakers. So, I was up and out in the allotted three minutes. I delivered a letter and a copy of our report, "Texas State Board of Education: A Case of Abuse of Power." Part of the timing problem stemmed from the latitude the board granted speakers early in the day. There was an emotional plea for more attention to Davy Crockett, who to my knowledge, is in no danger of being diminished in Texas history texts. Considering this was a discussion of social studies, few of us understood the relevance of a rambling account of a distraught school child who didn't get to sing her favorite song—"Jesus Loves Me"—in her first-grade classroom. Obviously, her teacher had not been educated by the ACLU of Texas about the Constitution's freedom of religious expression clause. We are available to help. The last speaker to really get questioned had come to warn us of the impending Islamic takeover of America—again, not particularly relevant to the issue at hand. When a critic noted the state has few standards for service on the State Board of Education, including no educational requirements for the Commissioner of Education, Board Member David Bradley of Beaumont asked: "So, should the head of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission be a drunk?" My response would have been: "No, but the top educator in our state should be educated." These people have our children's future in their hands. Their final vote is today. back to top Join us on...
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22 April 2010
A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation 7OKT07 & Palin's Christian nation from On Faith / Washington Post 21APR10
A very interesting discussion on Christianity and America, click the header to go to the article. My opinion? All the words about a nation being Christian are just words....proof of faith is not so much in word as in deed, and God will determine if our actions towards the residents of this nation and the rest of the world are Christian or not.
A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07meacham.html?_r=1
By JON MEACHAM
Published: October 7, 2007
Correction Appended
JOHN McCAIN was not on the campus of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last year for very long — the senator, who once referred to Mr. Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” was there to receive an honorary degree — but he seems to have picked up some theology along with his academic hood. In an interview with Beliefnet.com last weekend, Mr. McCain repeated what is an article of faith among many American evangelicals: “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.”
According to Scripture, however, believers are to be wary of all mortal powers. Their home is the kingdom of God, which transcends all earthly things, not any particular nation-state. The Psalmist advises believers to “put not your trust in princes.” The author of Job says that the Lord “shows no partiality to princes nor regards the rich above the poor, for they are all the work of his hands.” Before Pilate, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And if, as Paul writes in Galatians, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” then it is difficult to see how there could be a distinction in God’s eyes between, say, an American and an Australian. In fact, there is no distinction if you believe Peter’s words in the Acts of the Apostles: “I most certainly believe now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears him and does what is right is welcome to him.”
The kingdom Jesus preached was radical. Not only are nations irrelevant, but families are, too: he instructs those who would be his disciples to give up all they have and all those they know to follow him.
The only acknowledgment of God in the original Constitution is a utilitarian one: the document is dated “in the year of our Lord 1787.” Even the religion clause of the First Amendment is framed dryly and without reference to any particular faith. The Connecticut ratifying convention debated rewriting the preamble to take note of God’s authority, but the effort failed.
A pseudonymous opponent of the Connecticut proposal had some fun with the notion of a deity who would, in a sense, be checking the index for his name: “A low mind may imagine that God, like a foolish old man, will think himself slighted and dishonored if he is not complimented with a seat or a prologue of recognition in the Constitution.” Instead, the framers, the opponent wrote in The American Mercury, “come to us in the plain language of common sense and propose to our understanding a system of government as the invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down to dictate it, not a God appears in a dream to propose any part of it.”
While many states maintained established churches and religious tests for office — Massachusetts was the last to disestablish, in 1833 — the federal framers, in their refusal to link civil rights to religious observance or adherence, helped create a culture of religious liberty that ultimately carried the day.
Thomas Jefferson said that his bill for religious liberty in Virginia was “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindu, and infidel of every denomination.” When George Washington was inaugurated in New York in April 1789, Gershom Seixas, the hazan of Shearith Israel, was listed among the city’s clergymen (there were 14 in New York at the time) — a sign of acceptance and respect. The next year, Washington wrote the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I., saying, “happily the government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. ... Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Andrew Jackson resisted bids in the 1820s to form a “Christian party in politics.” Abraham Lincoln buried a proposed “Christian amendment” to the Constitution to declare the nation’s fealty to Jesus. Theodore Roosevelt defended William Howard Taft, a Unitarian, from religious attacks by supporters of William Jennings Bryan.
The founders were not anti-religion. Many of them were faithful in their personal lives, and in their public language they evoked God. They grounded the founding principle of the nation — that all men are created equal — in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry.
In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow, the diplomat-poet, to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty, finished after Washington left office, bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that “as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” there should be no cause for conflict over differences of “religious opinion” between countries.
The treaty passed the Senate unanimously. Mr. McCain is not the only American who would find it useful reading.
Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, is the author of “American Gospel” and “Franklin and Winston.”
Correction: October 13, 2007
An Op-Ed article on Sunday, about the idea of the United States as a Christian nation, incorrectly described the number of the original Constitution’s religious references. Article VI forbids the use of “a religious test” for officeholders; the phrase “the year of our Lord” is not the sole allusion to religion.
In a speech last week, Sarah Palin promoted belief in God as a form of patriotism, dismissed notions that "America isn't a Christian nation," and denounced a federal judge's ruling that it's unconstitutional for government to declare a National Day of Prayer.
"God truly has shed his grace on thee -- on this country. He's blessed us, and we better not blow it. And that's why I talk about politics," Palin told the 16,000-member choir at a Women of Joy conference in Louisville, Ky., last Friday.
"Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our founding fathers, they were believers," she continued. "Hearing any leader declare that America isn't a Christian nation . . . It's mind-boggling to see some of our nation's actions recently, but politics truly is a topic for another day."
Here at Under God, politics is a topic for any day, especially when it's mixed with religion.
Palin's reference to "any leader" was a clear reference to President Obama, who in a 2006 speech said, "Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation -- at least not just -- we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers."
Those comments -- especially the truncated sound bite "We are no longer a Christian nation" -- were deployed across the Web to depict presidential candidate Obama as a non-Christian or an anti-Christian.
Palin isn't the first 21st Century politician to proclaim America a Christian nation. In a 2007 interview with Beliefnet.com, presidential candidate John McCain said: "The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation." (His campaign later clarified the remark.)
Of course, the U.S. Constitution expressly did not establish America as any sort of religious nation.
As Newsweek editor and On Faith co-moderator Jon Meacham (author of "American Gospel") and others have repeatedly pointed out, the Constitution expressly did not establish the U.S. as a Christian nation.
A treaty the U.S. signed in the 1790s declared that "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." Andrew Jackson resisted bids in the 1820s to form a "Christian party in politics." Abraham Lincoln buried a proposed "Christian amendment" to the Constitution to declare the nation's fealty to Jesus.
And so on. And yet the notion persists.
According to a Newsweek Poll last year, 62 percent of Americans consider the U.S. a Christian nation (down from 71 percent in 2005).
Brent Baker, vice president for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center, says the media is making too much of Palin's comments. "(She) never said anything about an 'official' religion, so (she) could just mean that as a practical matter the nation is Christian since it was founded on Christian principles espoused (by) the majority of the Founding Fathers, that nearly all current elected officials pay homage to Christianity no matter their level of faith, and that the vast majority of Americans who are religious adhere to a Christian faith."
Maybe we're focusing on the wrong question. If a majority of Americans believe this is a Christian nation, maybe the more relevant question -- and a good question to begin the 2012 presidential debates -- for Palin or Obama or any other politician is this:
What do you mean when you say that America is (or is not) a Christian nation?
Do you mean that a majority of Americans claim to be Christians? Do you mean that America is a Christian nation in the way that Iran is an Islamic nation? Do you mean that the primary purpose of America is evangelical, that the primary allegiance of every American is to Jesus? Or do you mean something else entirely?
A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07meacham.html?_r=1
By JON MEACHAM
Published: October 7, 2007
Correction Appended
JOHN McCAIN was not on the campus of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last year for very long — the senator, who once referred to Mr. Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” was there to receive an honorary degree — but he seems to have picked up some theology along with his academic hood. In an interview with Beliefnet.com last weekend, Mr. McCain repeated what is an article of faith among many American evangelicals: “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.”
According to Scripture, however, believers are to be wary of all mortal powers. Their home is the kingdom of God, which transcends all earthly things, not any particular nation-state. The Psalmist advises believers to “put not your trust in princes.” The author of Job says that the Lord “shows no partiality to princes nor regards the rich above the poor, for they are all the work of his hands.” Before Pilate, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And if, as Paul writes in Galatians, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” then it is difficult to see how there could be a distinction in God’s eyes between, say, an American and an Australian. In fact, there is no distinction if you believe Peter’s words in the Acts of the Apostles: “I most certainly believe now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears him and does what is right is welcome to him.”
The kingdom Jesus preached was radical. Not only are nations irrelevant, but families are, too: he instructs those who would be his disciples to give up all they have and all those they know to follow him.
The only acknowledgment of God in the original Constitution is a utilitarian one: the document is dated “in the year of our Lord 1787.” Even the religion clause of the First Amendment is framed dryly and without reference to any particular faith. The Connecticut ratifying convention debated rewriting the preamble to take note of God’s authority, but the effort failed.
A pseudonymous opponent of the Connecticut proposal had some fun with the notion of a deity who would, in a sense, be checking the index for his name: “A low mind may imagine that God, like a foolish old man, will think himself slighted and dishonored if he is not complimented with a seat or a prologue of recognition in the Constitution.” Instead, the framers, the opponent wrote in The American Mercury, “come to us in the plain language of common sense and propose to our understanding a system of government as the invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down to dictate it, not a God appears in a dream to propose any part of it.”
While many states maintained established churches and religious tests for office — Massachusetts was the last to disestablish, in 1833 — the federal framers, in their refusal to link civil rights to religious observance or adherence, helped create a culture of religious liberty that ultimately carried the day.
Thomas Jefferson said that his bill for religious liberty in Virginia was “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindu, and infidel of every denomination.” When George Washington was inaugurated in New York in April 1789, Gershom Seixas, the hazan of Shearith Israel, was listed among the city’s clergymen (there were 14 in New York at the time) — a sign of acceptance and respect. The next year, Washington wrote the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I., saying, “happily the government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. ... Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Andrew Jackson resisted bids in the 1820s to form a “Christian party in politics.” Abraham Lincoln buried a proposed “Christian amendment” to the Constitution to declare the nation’s fealty to Jesus. Theodore Roosevelt defended William Howard Taft, a Unitarian, from religious attacks by supporters of William Jennings Bryan.
The founders were not anti-religion. Many of them were faithful in their personal lives, and in their public language they evoked God. They grounded the founding principle of the nation — that all men are created equal — in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry.
In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow, the diplomat-poet, to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty, finished after Washington left office, bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that “as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” there should be no cause for conflict over differences of “religious opinion” between countries.
The treaty passed the Senate unanimously. Mr. McCain is not the only American who would find it useful reading.
Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, is the author of “American Gospel” and “Franklin and Winston.”
Correction: October 13, 2007
An Op-Ed article on Sunday, about the idea of the United States as a Christian nation, incorrectly described the number of the original Constitution’s religious references. Article VI forbids the use of “a religious test” for officeholders; the phrase “the year of our Lord” is not the sole allusion to religion.
In a speech last week, Sarah Palin promoted belief in God as a form of patriotism, dismissed notions that "America isn't a Christian nation," and denounced a federal judge's ruling that it's unconstitutional for government to declare a National Day of Prayer.
"God truly has shed his grace on thee -- on this country. He's blessed us, and we better not blow it. And that's why I talk about politics," Palin told the 16,000-member choir at a Women of Joy conference in Louisville, Ky., last Friday.
"Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our founding fathers, they were believers," she continued. "Hearing any leader declare that America isn't a Christian nation . . . It's mind-boggling to see some of our nation's actions recently, but politics truly is a topic for another day."
Here at Under God, politics is a topic for any day, especially when it's mixed with religion.
Palin's reference to "any leader" was a clear reference to President Obama, who in a 2006 speech said, "Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation -- at least not just -- we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers."
Those comments -- especially the truncated sound bite "We are no longer a Christian nation" -- were deployed across the Web to depict presidential candidate Obama as a non-Christian or an anti-Christian.
Palin isn't the first 21st Century politician to proclaim America a Christian nation. In a 2007 interview with Beliefnet.com, presidential candidate John McCain said: "The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation." (His campaign later clarified the remark.)
Of course, the U.S. Constitution expressly did not establish America as any sort of religious nation.
As Newsweek editor and On Faith co-moderator Jon Meacham (author of "American Gospel") and others have repeatedly pointed out, the Constitution expressly did not establish the U.S. as a Christian nation.
A treaty the U.S. signed in the 1790s declared that "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." Andrew Jackson resisted bids in the 1820s to form a "Christian party in politics." Abraham Lincoln buried a proposed "Christian amendment" to the Constitution to declare the nation's fealty to Jesus.
And so on. And yet the notion persists.
According to a Newsweek Poll last year, 62 percent of Americans consider the U.S. a Christian nation (down from 71 percent in 2005).
Brent Baker, vice president for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center, says the media is making too much of Palin's comments. "(She) never said anything about an 'official' religion, so (she) could just mean that as a practical matter the nation is Christian since it was founded on Christian principles espoused (by) the majority of the Founding Fathers, that nearly all current elected officials pay homage to Christianity no matter their level of faith, and that the vast majority of Americans who are religious adhere to a Christian faith."
Maybe we're focusing on the wrong question. If a majority of Americans believe this is a Christian nation, maybe the more relevant question -- and a good question to begin the 2012 presidential debates -- for Palin or Obama or any other politician is this:
What do you mean when you say that America is (or is not) a Christian nation?
Do you mean that a majority of Americans claim to be Christians? Do you mean that America is a Christian nation in the way that Iran is an Islamic nation? Do you mean that the primary purpose of America is evangelical, that the primary allegiance of every American is to Jesus? Or do you mean something else entirely?
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