The View From Neverwhere
February 27, 2012 by Blackiswhite, Imperial Consigliere
I wish I could say that the latest bit of Chicken Little Santorum hysteria in the media was amusing, but instead I find it to be another example of the stunning lack of intellectual inquiry by the “guardians of the record” when they have enough to cobble together something commensurate with the narrative they so desperately want to tell. When you add to the formula otherwise intelligent people who are hellbent on not recognizing simple truths, then the agenda becomes toxic.
I woke this morning to headlines stating that Senator Santorum doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state, which of course feeds into the trumped-up paranoia about his obvious desire to bring about a theocracy here on our shores. This can only confirm the worst fears of organizations like Klanned Parenthood, which is fervently pointing to conservatives like Santorum as evidence of a non-existent “War on Women” that is being waged from one end of the country to another. And because the fourth estate can make this the headline, rather than the historical and unprecedented failures of the guy currently putting his feet on the Resolute Desk, the narrative is doubly served: Reinforce the myth that religion, specifically Christianity, was not central and formative to the men who declared us a nation, and formed the Republic, and deflect the well-deserved scrutiny and criticism away from President Downgrade.
However, the truth is a bit more complex than that, which should not be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, and the Senator’s full remarks displayed a greater understanding than his questioner, Democrat operative and pretend journalist George Stephanopoulos, wanted people to grasp. First, the full exchange regarding John F. Kennedy’s Church and State Speech:
STEPHANOPOULOS: You have also spoken out about the issue of religion in politics, and early in the campaign, you talked about John F. Kennedy’s famous speech to the Baptist ministers in Houston back in 1960. Here is what you had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SANTORUM: Earlier (ph) in my political career, I had the opportunity to read the speech, and I almost threw up. You should read the speech.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: That speech has been read, as you know, by millions of Americans. Its themes were echoed in part by Mitt Romney in the last campaign. Why did it make you throw up?
SANTORUM: Because the first line, first substantive line in the speech says, “I believe in America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.
This is the First Amendment. The First Amendment says the free exercise of religion. That means bringing everybody, people of faith and no faith, into the public square. Kennedy for the first time articulated the vision saying, no, faith is not allowed in the public square. I will keep it separate. Go on and read the speech. I will have nothing to do with faith. I won’t consult with people of faith. It was an absolutist doctrine that was abhorrent (ph) at the time of 1960. And I went down to Houston, Texas 50 years almost to the day, and gave a speech and talked about how important it is for everybody to feel welcome in the public square. People of faith, people of no faith, and be able to bring their ideas, to bring their passions into the public square and have it out. James Madison—
STEPHANOPOULOS: You think you wanted to throw up?
(CROSSTALK)
SANTORUM: — the perfect remedy. Well, yes, absolutely, to say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up and it should make every American who is seen from the president, someone who is now trying to tell people of faith that you will do what the government says, we are going to impose our values on you, not that you can’t come to the public square and argue against it, but now we’re going to turn around and say we’re going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square.
Now, to begin with, Kennedy was trying to address a different brand of religious bigotry at the time he made the speech Santorum was talking about. In 1960, we had never had a President who had been Catholic, and there was, predictably, some concern regarding how he would govern as President (Mitt Romney, you have a call on the white courtesy phone). And Kennedy recognized this in the body of the speech that Senator Santorum was talking about:
While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that I believe that we have far more critical issues in the 1960 campaign; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers only 90 miles from the coast of Florida — the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power — the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctors bills, the families forced to give up their farms — an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space. These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues — for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barrier.
But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured — perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again — not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me — but what kind of America I believe in.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President – should he be Catholic — how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been — and may someday be again — a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian, or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril.
Kennedy, then, much like Santorum now, was faced with questions that focused not on the issues he came to address, but on his character, and how some believed it threatened the integrity of the Republic. That said, while he qualified the premise that he set forth, that is that the “separation between church and state should be absolute”, he went on to tell us what that meant, and in his day and age, the militant atheist movement had not yet coalesced into the movement that today expends so much effort to remove the influence of religion (specifically Christianity) from any discussion regarding government, on the basis of that deliberately misconstrued phrase that has no home in the Constitution. Yet this is the phrase seized on by those in today’s society who are determined to ignore the fact that the current understanding would have been completely foreign to those who argued the contents of the Constitution and who signed the finished product, let alone the man who wrote it so long ago to a Christian sect complaining of the favor given to another sect by the state, to their detriment.
But then, there is little reason to believe that then Senator Kennedy would object to a town council opening a meeting with a prayer, when Congress had been doing it pretty much from inception. Or that posting the Ten Commandments in a courthouse would so violate this concept of separation when it is part of the building that houses the Supreme Court. Or that a prayer at a high school football game is contrary to the principle, when Washington and Madison declared days of prayer and thanksgiving when President. Or that it should be impermissible to let a church meet in a public school building when the author of the storied phrase himself attended Sunday worship services on a regular basis in the US Capitol with members of Congress during his Presidency.
The fact is that Senator Santorum was correct. The application of this “wall of separation between church and state” has far advanced any discernible original meaning, and now is a means to delegitimize an entire viewpoint by people who fail to understand that excluding and marginalizing it from the national dialogue has not resulted in a healthier society, but one in which we enjoy fewer freedoms than our parents and grandparents, because of the attempt to replace the restraint and prudence that too many today eschew for instant gratification and selfish pursuits. It is a world where people who can ill-afford them will riot over new tennis shoes, and violence and hypersexualized predators stalk our children wherever they can be found.
Santorum’s crime is not that he tries to “impose” his views on anyone. It is that he tries to reinject a voice that itching ears do not want to heed and consider. I’m sure I could find legitimate reasons for not liking him, and I much prefer that idea than disliking him for being right without understanding that I’m being fed a line by a media that has its own story to tell, and hopes that I’ll be too lazy to suss out the truth.
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Wow did you blow this one!
Let’s keep this simple. Kennedy was saying he would not take orders from the Pope. Plain and simple. He was not saying that people of faith cannot have a voice in the public square. And in 2012 no one with any sense is saying that. A theocracy is a government where religion completely trumps any secular voice. A democracy is where the government is informed by people of many opinions and faiths and non-faiths for that matter.
Rick Santorum should have said “I want to throw up when I see atheists and secularists twist Kennedy’s words to meet their own meaning.” THAT I might have understood.
Kennedy was right. Santorum, not understanding Kennedy’s message, shows himself to be religiously paranoid or just plain stupid.
You can type, but apparently you can’t read.
Let me go get my surprised face.
If you are a man of faith there are many things you’ve already been told things that now run afoul of the secular sharia.
The “reporters” like the integrity challenged George Stephanopoulos are overtly trying to de facto discredit Santorum by declaring that religious beliefs are disqualifying factors not just difference of opinion.
Kennedy was right in this respect the “separation of church and state” is almost absolute(no you can’t hide behind your religion to commit assault, murder and mayhem such as…oh…I don’t know…Islam) but only in the direction that government HAS NO RIGHT to interfere with the churches. That was the assurance in the letter to the Danbury Baptists and was the original intent of 1 st amendment so that government couldn’t co-opt religion.
To the secularist mutawwin any decision that is supported by the clergy that they object to they denounce it as some sort violation to the social compact meanwhile if the clergy agree with they have no trouble trotting out any number of cassock wearing Judas’s to support their case.The fact is we already live in a theocracy of the secular sharia that has been informed by the false doctrine of “Liberation Theology” that the stooge in the White House was marinated in for 20 years and fit perfectly as the religious patina to shield his overtly Marxist world view.
The idea that a church or the religious cannot advocate for their position or that concurrence with those positions is a violation of any constitutional injunction is specious. This,however, is the bigoted and un-constitutional position of the enforcers of the secular sharia like the craven, dishonest and unprincipled Stephanopolous. Meanwhile these toadies run interference for the Whitehouse as they invoke convoluted and depraved interpretation of scriptures to justify the confiscation of property from those who earn it and dishonestly re-frame debates and misrepresent or misinterpret positions and invent risible claims in order to deprive the citizens that disagree with them their God given rights.
What is quite clear here is that anyone who practices the tenets of his religion is summarily declared unfit by the enforcers of the state religion in the state controlled media myrmidons and immediately set upon. It is ugly, It is dishonest. It is indecent.
Santorum may in fact be paranoid(I don’t think that is in evidence in this case) but that doesn’t mean they are not out to get him
Well said, I’ll be stealing “theocracy of the secular sharia” if you don’t mind.
Be my guest.
Good now that you’re done with the insults, address the comment. You agree with the Kennedy speech that made Santorum sick to his stomach. So please tell me again how “Santorum is right”.
With all due respect, you and your readers on this particular thread are a bunch of loons. “Secular sharia” is a nonsense phrase meant to tie legitimate secular interests to radical Muslim savagery. It’s pure melodramatic rhetoric and anyone who co-opts it comes off looking like a lunatic, completely discrediting their point.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. You boys seem awfully caught up on the second clause but want to ignore the first one. You toss around the Danbury Baptist letter like it makes you sound like some sort of smarty pants. The fact that your league of religious paranoids carts this old thing out at every opportunity shows how empty your argument is.
When the government overtly favors the dogma of a particular religion it offends every other religion within its society. The simple beauty of the first amendment is that the first clause and the second are closely tied together. To establish a state religion … to give government preference to one religious view … is to prohibit the free exercise of other religions.
So here’s an admission of my own paranoia. There are many in this country, like me, who fear an American theocracy. Therefore our ears prick up when we hear someone like Santorum. The news media may be at fault for exploiting this.
Santorum’s problem is not separation of church and state. It is separation of a man from his religiously influenced views. No man should have to denounce his religion to hold public office. If Santorum thinks we are asking him to do that, then he has every reason to be outraged. On the other hand if he thinks that every Presidential speech should be a sermon or an exercise in bible study, then I think he needs to do some reevaluation.
Your militant atheism, hatred of Christianity and blind eye to the real threat of the theocracy of sharia (a definite state religion), once again demonstrates what a duplicitous phony you are.
Being that the great majority of our Founders Protestant Christians, you’re undoubtedly a poor student of history with an uncanny ability to reach the stupidest of conclusions.
Since it’s foundings, our Congress has opened with a prayer. Since its foundings, the banner In God We Trust banner has hung over the Congressional chair. If there were to be an establishment of a theocracy, it would have been established long before your sorry ass ever hit the scene.
It’s not paranoia, because even a fool like you must recognize a theocracy completely opposed to Christ’s teachings.
No, your charges, and actions, and propaganda are far more simple than some fictitious threat of theocracy you use as ammunition. If that was your concern, you would be first on board to recognize what sharia really is.
Yours is a hatred of God and HIs people, Rutherford. The fact that you and your family, being of the same mindset as you, would even grace His places of worship is a disgrace. The word obnoxious doesn’t do justice.
Rutherford, his comments demonstrate that he understands, better than you apparently, that the elevation of this phrase to the status of Constitutional canon and its literal application creates a situation that the author and his contemporaries never contemplated, and would not recognize. I simply fleshed out the point by demonstrating that both historical and current fact both demonstrate that this bit of secular scripture is nonsense in the extreme.
And while you say you don’t want Santorum, or anyone else to denounce his religion to hold public office, you also don’t want him to talk about the beliefs that inform everything that he does, either, because you’re terrified that he, just like other men of faith in our past, will establish an “American theocracy”.
The difference between us, Rutherford, is that you don’t know what was, and therefore are incapable of understanding how the current application is wrong, and would view what was as an unforgiveable excess, rather than an expression of the architects’ intent.
Secular Sharia is a term meant to tie the virulent way the secularists impose their noxious world view to the virulence that those who would impose the tenets of Islam engage. No dissent is tolerated to the religion of the state and and all will be derided as you so delicately put it “loons” and not worthy of a reasoned and rational response. As for the rest it is argument by arrogance and presumption. It is you and those like you who try and label arguments as out of bounds or crazy. Fine. I had no real intention of persuading you as I would of anyone else who is so demonstrably invincible in his ignorance.
Make no mistake those who are making a fuss about Santorum are every bit the religious zealots that they claim Santorum is. The only difference is their theocracy is now being imposed under false pretenses.
As for the “American Theocracy” we are now living in it as the state has made no secret that it’s ideology supersedes the law of the land.
Huh? I don’t know what was when?
You might want to stick your head in the sand on this one but society has changed over the 200+ years of this nation. We ARE a more secular society than we once were. That may be a bad thing from your perspective but it is true nonetheless. Government didn’t make it so. It is simple social (d)evolution. I submit the First Amendment has protected those who remain religious and those who are increasingly less involved in formal worship. I think that is a good thing.
FX I think you have that backwards. In the case of the birth control brouhaha, it was a question of whether religious ideology superseded the law of the land. Clearly when faced with the firestorm, Obama decided that it did (at least symbolically … let’s be honest, the “compromise” was really no compromise at all).
Sorry that is just an inversion of the issue. This has been the modus operandus of the left on this since the get go. Obama has violated the 1st amendment rights to conscience. This requires a breath taking amount of intellectual dishonesty to try and perform the ledger de main that a nullifies the right of conscience and elevates the provision of a commodity to lofty status of a right and thus denies the right of conscience even exists even though it is guaranteed in black and parchment. The government is the aggressor here. They are the one violating basic God given rights by trying to erect new rights out of whole cloth.
The 1st amendment prohibits making law respecting an establishment(noun) of religion. This is what Obama has done. The compromise was a farce because he had no right to impose his will in the first place. The religion of the state has been imposed by fiat and misrepresented in mendacious fashion by those who wish to drive a false narrative.
Government didn’t make it so.
You need to learn more about the influence of John Dewey and his fellow travellers on American Education before you say stupid things like that. Your most facetious error is the assumption that “secular” is not religious, rather than a religion on to itself, which has been taught in public schools in a creeping incrementalism for more than 100 years now.
Then you should also consider whether court rulings caused changes in society, or if changes in society caused court rulings. Not that I expect you to get that bit of historical analysis correct…no need to expect you to get it right now. But as a hint, is “society” the one kid whose parents get their undies in a bunch over a prayer before the start of a football game on Friday night, or every other kid and parent who has it taken away from them by someone who decided to be the turd in the punchbowl for fun and profit?
FX I think you have that backwards. In the case of the birth control brouhaha, it was a question of whether religious ideology superseded the law of the land.
I think you need to quit saying “I” and “Think” in any comments you make that touch on religion, because you continually demonstrate an inablity to do so. Your statement above is the perfect example of this.
The First and Ninth Amendments preceed and are superior to this or ANY federal regulation. No one is hiding the ball here. To the extent that there is a “conflict of law”, determining which law wins isn’t difficult. The operation of the Constitution isn’t suspended merely because a cabinet secretary issues a regulation, regardless of what some in Congress fail to understand.
Or for that matter, if it was “society” that was driving that change, why was it the courts that were the cause of this change and not the legislatures?
Seriously, do you even consider this stuff before you say some of the things you do?
Pure paranoia on your part. I’d be the first to agree atheists have their own brand of religion. Secular does not equal atheist.
Our constitution protects the minority in society from an obnoxious majority. No one who goes to a football game should be expected to attend a church service before play begins particularly if that football game is under the auspices of public government (i.e. a public school).
First of all, not every change in society over the past 100 years has been mandated by courts. So I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Gay marriage is a perfect example where change is coming via legislation, referendum or court decisions. It’s been a mix.
For as smart a man as you are, I notice you increasingly rely upon lauding your intellectual superiority over your opponent. It actually detracts from your argument even if it does entertain your readers.
Aside to FX, I apologize for calling you loons. Cheap shot born of frustration.
Naturally, I have to go into a meeting in a few minutes, but I can address this one right now:
Our constitution protects the minority in society from an obnoxious majority. No one who goes to a football game should be expected to attend a church service before play begins particularly if that football game is under the auspices of public government (i.e. a public school).
The Constitution doesn’t prohibit one from being exposed to religion or a religious practice. There is no “Freedom from religion”, only the right to practice (or not) as you see fit. No one makes the one kid at the game pray, nor does a prayer make a football game a church service anymore than the prayer at the commencement of Congressional sessions or saying “God save this honorable court!” at the opening of SCOTUS hearings transmute those events into church services.
I’ll address your “gay marriage” example later, and explain how it misses the mark later. Right now I have to go do evil 1%er stuff with some clients.
Ok, still waiting for one party so….
First of all, not every change in society over the past 100 years has been mandated by courts.
We aren’t talking about every change in society, we are talking about the change in the application and understanding of “separation of church and state”. Focus.
So I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
I’m talking about how a mention of this phrase in Everson grew into a literal guiding principle for an obnoxious minority to use in the courts because they couldn’t bring about that change by any other means other than resort to activist courts.
Gay marriage is a perfect example where change is coming via legislation, referendum or court decisions. It’s been a mix.
This is a lousy example, because in any state where it has been put on the ballot, it has gone down in flames. And legislatures which have enacted it have hardly had the accord of “society” behind them, as the subsequent referendum showed in California. And the court decision which told the voters they were wrong originated from a self interested party, and relied on an absurdist legal rationale, as I have discussed at length here in a post shortly after the decision was published.
I think New Jersey will be an interesting case to watch. From my perspective legislation usually exercises the will of the represented. Isn’t that the whole point of a democratic republic? In this case, the people, through their legislators, asked that gay marriage be legalized. Christie took it upon himself, exercising his moral standards, to veto the legislation. He has suggested a referendum is the appropriate solution. I hope that a referendum is voted upon and that the people assert their will to legalize gay marriage.
It is interesting that Christie is betting on the legislature NOT representing the true will of the people.
Given that the legislature regularly acted not in the best interests of the electorate, but those of the unions, and especially public sector unions, it doesn’t surprise me in the least. He was the first one to stand in in years and say “No, the taxpayers do not exist to make teaching a more lucrative profession than their own.”
I do agree, however, that on such an issue, that a referendum is the way to go. I confess that I haven’t read enough on Christy’s veto to know if it was an exercise of HIS moral standards, or deference to the VOTERS’ moral standards. That said, I’m not making any predictions regarding the outcome, because this is a state that voted for “Tax me more, I like it” for decades.
From my perspective legislation usually exercises the will of the represented. Isn’t that the whole point of a democratic republic?
The point? Yes, but in practice, this isn’t always the case.
I can assure you that when our legislature here in Washington made gay marriage a priority in the last session (so close after the recent passage of the Registered Domestic Partnership Act) instead of addressing our state’s ginormous budget shortfall, they may have been serving a vocal minority, but I don’t believe that it was a burning priority for a majority of the people represented. We’ll see if an initiatve against the law gets any traction, but I suspect that even if it does, it won’t be much different then the result in California, or previous initiatives where the voters soundly rejected the additional taxes put on our car license tabs in the three most populous counties, which we did no less than 3 separate times, and still the legislature clearly ignored the will of the people.
In this case, the people, through their legislators, asked that gay marriage be legalized.
Did they, or did the legislature take it upon themselves, much like Congress and a certain health care bill that is now before the SCOTUS?
For as smart a man as you are, I notice you increasingly rely upon lauding your intellectual superiority over your opponent.
Have you ever considered the possibility that I think you are capable of better arguments than the ones you concoct for any discussions resting on this topic?
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Tex opined:
“Being that the great majority of our Founders Protestant Christians, you’re undoubtedly a poor student of history with an uncanny ability to reach the stupidest of conclusions.
Since it’s foundings, our Congress has opened with a prayer. Since its foundings, the banner In God We Trust banner has hung over the Congressional chair. If there were to be an establishment of a theocracy, it would have been established long before your sorry ass ever hit the scene.
It’s not paranoia, because even a fool like you must recognize a theocracy completely opposed to Christ’s teachings.
No, your charges, and actions, and propaganda are far more simple than some fictitious threat of theocracy you use as ammunition. If that was your concern, you would be first on board to recognize what sharia really is.
Yours is a hatred of God and HIs people, Rutherford. The fact that you and your family, being of the same mindset as you, would even grace His places of worship is a disgrace. The word obnoxious doesn’t do justice.”
************
I see that since you tucked your tail and ran from Rutherfords, you still haven’t ordered that course on argumentation; you still think that yelling, spitting and name-calling substitute for a cogent argument. News flash: folks just scroll on by that kind of nonsense.
By your argument that the majority were “protestant christians” and the implied conclusion that carried some weight, should we conclude that, since they were all men, we should not allow any women in politics? In those dark days almost everybody was religious; it’s an artifact of the times. So what?
Yep, the trappings of religion have been in govt for a long time: banners, prayers, et al. Time to fix that.
And for the “hatred” canard: nobody hates anybody. Right is right and wrong is wrong. If a country is doing wrong, it is incumbent upon them to fix it. We’re getting there. Firstly, the ReBiblican party needs to jettison Santorum (Ol’ Frothy) and get back to the Goldwater Principle: small government, low taxes and keep your governmental nose out of people’s private business like religion and abortion.
When they do that, lifelong Republicans like me will leave the ranks of the Independents and come home.
Here: I’ll give you a leg up on that argumentation course. You need it.
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=4294
Then why don’t you join them and scroll on back to that hole from which a worm like you crawled? News flash. This makes three times your scrolling by somehow has led to following me.
———–
I feel dirtied even by your acquaintance, Pfesser. It’s as if discussing issues with a demon from hell. You represent everything that is wrong with the world.
And I do mean everything.
Between the absence of ghastly dialogue by pretentious, egotistical, self-absorbed butchers like you that have absolutely no place in leadership much less something like healthcare, and the idiocy of Poolman removed from my daily dose, life has been much better. So much better.
Maybe my tucking tail and running is just as simple as I wanted no part of you and your ilk anymore? Or are you so arrogant to think you carry some influence in my life, other than your startling bad example of how not to live one’s life?
Yep, the trappings of religion have been in govt for a long time: banners, prayers, et al. Time to fix that.
“Fix” it? Based on what, exactly?
He doesn’t know. The man is so willingly blind of anything decent, and stripped of his professional credential, monumentally ignorant, he has to ignore all the symbolism, much less the declaration and the history.
Can you imagine a country made up only of the Pfesser and Poolman type, believing themselves wise enough to govern anything? The stupid ruled by the totalitarian, militant, nihilistic atheist? The extremes of wretchedness and depravity, with nothing of worth between to bind the two?
If I could figure out a way to separate them from the flock, and we could leave them to their own means under no constraint but their own abject idiocy, in no short order the world would be rid of them by their own hand. A world of Fat Grannies disciples….
Sounds like a horror movie with a tinge of Blazing Saddles thrown in for good measure.
BiW, despite all the back and forth, you still fail to resolve the central contradiction of your piece. Do you agree with Kennedy’s comments or not? If you do, then how can you say “Santorum is right” for his stomach to turn after reading Kennedy’s comments?
Either Kennedy’s speech is vomit inducing or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then you can’t conclude that “Santorum is right”.
Sure BIC can, unless you are to assume the world, more specifically the United States, hasn’t changed for the last 50 years.
Fifty years ago, men like Pfesser would have been scorned, summarily rejected, and received well-deserved ridicule. He would have earned the title of outcast and lout. Now they believe they speak with some authority – and perhaps with that self-absorbed, nihilistic generation of 60s rejects that have irreparably damaged several generations of Americans, they do.
I disagree with Rick Santorum’s conclusion, who I find a perpetual scold and agonizingly shrill.
And still Santorum is more qualified than Obama.
Either Kennedy’s speech is vomit inducing or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then you can’t conclude that “Santorum is right”.
You’re like a kid giggling over a fart joke.
Let me repeat the important part for you:
Yes, the Senator was correct when he said this.
The vision that Kennedy was setting forth didn’t exist for his audience, who still attended those Friday Night Football games in south-by-God-Texas, which opened with prayers, and maybe gave the prayers at High School Commencments, and who would be alarmed if Congress didn’t open with a prayer, or witnesses in Court didn’t take an oath before giving testimony. For his audience, it wasn’t too terribly alarming for a President to consult with Billy Graham while in the White House. But, what Kennedy said, he said to assuage concerns that he was a “papist” who would have the Pope issuing edicts from the Oval Office. (Much like the glimmers we’ve already seen of what Mitt Romney will apparently be dealing with in the general election…apparently Charles Blow doesn’t mind being premature in his “criticism”) The manner in which he did it ignored history and avoided a better argument for the sake of his own political expediency, which was good for him, but injurious to our heritage because it gave an undeserved credibility to the view that says you can’t get religion on government (but you can get government on religion).
This is what Senator Santorum was addressing, and his analysis was correct, because he, like you was reading it with the benefit of hindsight, although his view is longer than yours, which is why he understands that it doesn’t in any way implicate a “THEOCRACY!!!111!!!” .
BiW, despite all the back and forth, you still fail to resolve the central contradiction of your piece.
This from the person who is unable or unwilling to make a capable defense of the various points he’s raised in the thread? If you want to convince others that there view is wrong, don’t you think you should actually understand the history, and be able to draw logical conclusions from it, or understand it well enough to be able to convincingly refute the conclusions drawn by others who have that understanding? Knowing how the law and the court cases have proceeded might also be useful. Without either, your argument boils down to “It ought to be THIS way, because I think that’s the way I think it ought to be, and the people responsible for the First Amendment and Jefferson with his “Wall” don’t matter, because they obviously didn’t know what they meant when they wrote those things, or so what? It doesn’t mean today what it meant then because it actually means what I think it means”.
None of those are winning arguments, and you know it.
First, I have asserted that it has changed. Second, Santorum ignores the intent of Kennedy’s speech and casts him as some sort of militant secularist hiding behind Catholicism. Kennedy did NOT say ban religious thought from the public square. Santorum is “sickened” because he thinks Kennedy DID say that.
Santorum consistently makes logical leaps that defy sanity. Like advocating higher education is “snobbery”. Did Santorum bother to watch Obama’s 2009 SOTU where he explicitly encouraged ANY kind of post high-school education — vocational, college, community college, technical, etc. Obama has never said that a four year Ivy League (where all that indoctrination goes on) degree is the only route to success.
I’m slightly relieved Tex that you are not “all in” for Santorum. The truth is the man never got past 1955 despite the fact he wasn’t even born until 1958.
P.S. That snob Santorum is actually far better educated than Obama.
I agree with you. Santorum doesn’t realize Kennedy was speaking to a bunch of Protestants at the time, I guess. It certainly wasn’t a bunch of militants like that feckless Pisser, or mocking, irreligious nobodies such as yourself.
It’s perhaps the last 25 years, that most Protestants and most Catholics have put their differences aside and realized who the real enemy is – that there is a shared brotherhood and we our all Christians, with Jesus as the master. I speak from experience of “interfaith” for lack of a better word, being I”m married to a Catholic, my children raised Catholic. I have no problem with that, as long as my children have understood that it isn’t Catholicism that saves, but Christ.
The world has changed – and certainly not for the better since many like you arrived on the scene. Look to the kids and their future, and the results couldn’t be more clear.
I wasn’t addressing Santorum’s remarks on higher ed, nor have I gone “all in on him”. That wasn’t the point of the post.
First, I have asserted that it has changed. Second, Santorum ignores the intent of Kennedy’s speech and casts him as some sort of militant secularist hiding behind Catholicism.
I think you have that backwards. The intent of Kennedy’s speech was to distance himself from his Catholicism, by hiding behind a vision which didn’t comport with the reality of the time, or what had gone before. As I stated earlier, while this was politcally expedient, it was not intellectually honest, and it has contributed gravitas to an argument which pretends that we today better understand founding principles than those who authored them.
There was no political expediency about it at all. It is only in the past few years that folks like you have gone on this “America is a Christian nation” kick. Kennedy confirmed for worried voters that he understood the separation between church and state as it WAS intended, not as it has been perverted by the current crop of religious paranoids. Folks were worried that Kennedy belonging to a particularly hierarchical and “rule driven” church (Catholicism) would take his cues from the Pope and not from his citizenry. He needed to dispel that concern.
I think with Romney, the situation is slightly different. People are less concerned with the Mormon Church running the country and are simply more concerned that being a Mormon ipso facto makes you a crackpot. Hell, even his fellow Christians say he’s not a Christian. So the speech he gave in the last cycle was different from Kennedy’s.
But I digress. The bottom line is, Kennedy was right, Santorum is wrong.
P.S. When I told Tex I was relieved that he wasn’t “all in” for Santorum, I wasn’t implying that you were.
There was no political expediency about it at all. It is only in the past few years that folks like you have gone on this “America is a Christian nation” kick. Kennedy confirmed for worried voters that he understood the separation between church and state as it WAS intended, not as it has been perverted by the current crop of religious paranoids. Folks were worried that Kennedy belonging to a particularly hierarchical and “rule driven” church (Catholicism) would take his cues from the Pope and not from his citizenry. He needed to dispel that concern.
So he had dispel concerns that he would take his cues from the church and not the citizenry, but it wasn’t politically expedient? I don’t understand how you can admit that he said it to address concerns about the kind of President he’d be, but state in the same breath that it wasn’t politically expedient. He was only talking about it at all so he could get elected. I don’t know how you can type things like this without your head imploding.
As for the recognition of our heritage, your perception could only be true if I ignored not only the prominent court cases of the last 15 years or so on the subject, but a hell of a lot of other evidence reaching back to the colonial period.
But then maybe you should tell this to people such as Benjamin Franklin Morris, or Roger Sherman, or Justice Story, or I could go on, and on, and on, and on. The only difference between then and now, is that people used to have a better grasp of the history that is largely untaught now, so it wasn’t really shocking, controversial, or something that had to be argued about with people who never heard any of it.
I think with Romney, the situation is slightly different. People are less concerned with the Mormon Church running the country and are simply more concerned that being a Mormon ipso facto makes you a crackpot.
So the general replaces a more specific religious bigotry, and that’s perfectly fine. Charles Blow worrying about Romney’s “magic underwear” is no different than Andy Sullivan spelunking in Palin’s uterus. Got it.
Hell, even his fellow Christians say he’s not a Christian.
If you take the time to read the entire link for Justice Story, you might grok that this is the circumstance he was talking about, which isn’t any different then the circumstandce that was set forth in The Federalist Papers.
So the speech he gave in the last cycle was different from Kennedy’s.
Massachusetts moderate who happens to be part of a sect that has never had a member elected President before addresses the inevitable concern that will be raised by the bigoted and the ignorant, who also happen to abandon all pretense of rationality when confronted with someone who professes a greater than “cafeteria”/ Sunday-only practice of their faith.
You’re right, there is nothing in common with the two at all.
BTW, I can tell than now you are at least trying.
Sometimes I wonder if Rutherford even believes what he types…
Here’s a man my age, that has lived through the Madalyn Murray O’Hair suits, and apparently has forgotten his life’s history. Probably even grew up in a public school during elementary period that had “Christmas plays.”
I thought that was supposed to be Rutherford’s field of expertise and interest?
Well I had little awareness of O’Hare until long after she was relevant. As for Christmas plays in elementary school, I really don’t recall them but we definitely had a Christmas party and were visited by “Santa Claus” complete with gifts for all the kids.Christmas is a terrible example to use for our being a “Christian nation” since the holiday has been commercialized during at least our lifetimes. I’d estimate a good 50% of those who “celebrate” Christmas don’t give a seconds thought to Christ’s birth.
Now Easter is another story. That holiday is filled with graver significance and I think about 90% of those who celebrate it keep the true message of the holiday front and center.
Getting back to O’Hare for a moment. She was a bit of an obsessive. I DON’T think Congress should open with a prayer. But it really is no skin off my nose. O’Hare on the other hand, had conniptions about such things. She also had a compulsive desire to piss off believers. I don’t. I’m way more live and let live than you give me credit for.
Maybe I’m parsing words too finely but I define politically expedient as taking the easy and often cynical route to resolve a political quagmire. I think Kennedy’s speech was not easy to give. In fact, I think it took courage. Of course he gave the speech to get elected. But the speech had risks, at the very least pissing off his Catholic demographic. I think it might have been far more expedient (but less effective) to just hope the matter went away on its own.
I hope you still define political expediency as Obama’s religion of choice…
It’s the only truly honest thing you’ve said in months.
BIC,
You know that theocracy Obama so paranoid of? Well, it looks like it is marching on, just like Rutherford predicted. OH WAIT!
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/mosques-america-nearly-double-911/401846