If This Doesn't Send A Chill Down Your Spine, Nothing Will

[turbinetree]

Mike Pence claims the First Amendment didn't establish a right to freedom from religion.

By Susie Madrak — October 27, 2022

I think I was 12 when I learned that Christianity wasn't actually the foundation of our country the nuns described. As a young Philadelphian, I toured just about every local historical site, where I learned that Founders like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson probably didn't even consider themselves orthodox Christians -- instead, they were likely Deists. (Something that today would fall into the category of "spiritual but not religious.

But there's one thing we know for sure. The people who wrote and signed our founding documents were deeply suspicious of state religion, having witnessed the damage it did in England and in the American colonies. That's why they wrote barriers against religious political influence into the Constitution.

And that's why this little discussion with Larry Kudlow and Mike Pence horrified me. From Kudlow's show:

https://crooksandliars.com/2022/10/if-doesnt-send-chill-down-your-spine

Hey Pence and Kudlow, did you two by some strange chance go into "any" history class while in high school, did you read the two men that wrote about the religion in the Constitution .....one was by a man named Thomas Jefferson, the other one was James Madison....so where you two fucking pin heads in any class concerning the Constitution or did you go to the federalist society meeting......


James Madison:

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1220/james-madison

Thomas Jefferson:

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/886/wall-of-separation#:~:text=Jefferson%20explained%20his%20understanding%20of,wall%20between%20church%20and%20State

[niyad]

1. white satan needs to quit wasting oxygen.

[Zambero]

2. The establishment clause is very clear

As is the freedom clause. They both stand alone, do not interfere with one another, and do not overlap.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

29. Not according to Rs & not according to earlier SCOTUS

decisions. Progressives should have seen this xtian dominionist crap coming & made it a priority to fight agsinst every law & court decision allowing the increasingly fast-paced normalization of cracks in the wall of seperation.

Unfortunately, despite however much the founders wanted that wall, they put cracks in it themselves.

[Girard442]

3. Pence is one of those people with an unlimited ability...

...to convince himself that what he wants to believe is true. If he ran for president of the Flat Earth Society, he'd be the sincerest Flat Earther of all.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. SCOTUS is now an established religion and is unConstitutional

Someone should make the argument. The truth may get no play but it can't be denied.

[Emile]

5. Christian Taliban running our government should send chills

down everyone spines!

[Irish_Dem]

6. The GOP wants to change the whole premise and identity of the United States.

From top to bottom.

[Sugarcoated]

8. Republicans hate America and everything we stand for

Always have, maybe always will. Calling Dems "Hate America First" was always projection.

[Irish_Dem]

25. American laws/values stand in the way of GOP's goal of permanent power, control, vast wealth.

So all US values, norms, laws, traditions, institutions must be destroyed.

They are getting control of the voting system, so free and fair elections will be a thing of the past.

If the GOP should happen to lose and election, they will fight and fight the results until the public just gives them what they want.

They don't want to pay for the US public education system, #1 in the world.
Or public health and other US institutions.

All US financial assets belong to GOP politicians and oligarchs.

[magicarpet]

7. Christo-Fascist utopia,...

.... who needs the Constitution ? Their interpretation of biblical law will suffice.

[HighFired49]

14. Yeah,

Isn't that sort of thing working out really well for the Iranians?

[dlk]

9. Never forget, Pence is a zealot

He receives a lot of credit for just doing his job according to the law but he actively looked for an out to help Trump overturn an election. Just because he chickened out doesn’t make him much of a patriot.

[NowISeetheLight]

10. Christian Nation

They’ll get their constitutional convention with their gerrymandered minority rule in the House. Then they’ll change the constitution to make America an official “Christian Nation’. That’s their goal.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217266356

[cutroot]

11. Someone should tell pence that the pilgrims came here to get away from guys like him.

[HardPort]

13. Actually, Pence would've made a stupendous Puritan. They were dour and uber-patriarchal.

And they came to N. America to establish a theocratic society.

The Plymouth Pilgrims were running away from Dutch porn, not English oppression.

[markpkessinger]

23. Actually, that really isn't accurate . . .

. . . The Pilgrims were a bunch of hyper-religious zealots who didn't play well with others. And the colony that they, along with the Puritans (of whom the Pilgrims were a subset) established was extremely oppressive to anyone who didn't accept the dictates of Puritanism. As for who they were trying to get away from, they had already moved to Leiden, Holland, where they were perfectly free to practice their faith -- they just couldn't impose it on anyone else. They didn't want to bother making the effort to learn Dutch, and they were worried that their dear children would fall under the "worldly" influence of the very tolerant Dutch.

[HardPort]

12. In God We Doubt (n/t)

[IronLionZion]

15. They'll keep the 2nd amendment and repeal all the rest

Since the first amendment is way too complicated for these idiots to understand. Maybe it means the complete opposite of what it literally says.

First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

[BittyJenkins]

16. Word on the street is

is revelations in the bible says when the world ends Christians will take over the governments on earth and something about seven mountains. Then they will all go to heaven necked leaving their clothes behind.

I am no biblical scholar but that is what I have heard. I think the first I heard of it was when Ted Cruz was running for president. His Dad figured he was the One to lead the nations with a sword…

So if you are standing in their shoes, they think they are kind of special and can’t wait for their necked trip. It is nothing to do with are constitution.

I do get chills down my spine and a good case of the willies.

[markpkessinger]

24. That interpretation of the Book of Revelation is one made up out of whole cloth by . . .

. . .19th C. evangelicals. The great majority of Christianity at that time did NOT believe that Revelation was a literal prediction of the "end times."

[BittyJenkins]

28. Thanks

It is crazy

[Zambero]

30. All necked emperors with no clothes

That fable seems to be written special for them!

[Pinback]

17. As it says in Ecclusiastics 3:14,

“And the Lord shall mark the wicked with a fly upon the noggin.”

[GreenWave]

18. We are the dern foreigners.

Our faith systems were imposed on indigenous belief systems.

[Farmer-Rick]

19. These Evangelicals are so easily manipulated into giving up their freedom

Freedom FROM (other people's) religion allows for freedom OF (your own) religion.

It's so obvious......

The religious propagandists just left out the important words.

[Lonestarblue]

27. They're willing to give up some of their freedoms if black and brown people, plus women and

LGBTQ, lose ALL of their freedoms. White evangelicals do not follow the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. They follow the patriarchal viewpoints in the Old Testament.

[Racygrandma]

20. The Methodists and Baptists really are on different pages

when it comes to interpreting the Bible. The Baptists believe in the rapture. I have a Methodist minister ask his congregation who believed in the rapture, several hands went up. He just lowered his head and shook it and said "it does not say that". So how is all that going to work when they finally get their state religion. I know when I went to a Baptist church, they really had little use for Methodists.

[Siwsan]

21. And which religion does he have in mind? And who will enforce it? These guys???

[Warpy]

22. Religious schools have been teaching that claptrap forever

and have been allowed to send ignorant students out into the world to do damage in the name of Jebus for as long. College generally requires a survey course in European history, but nothing on US history, so they're dropping the ball when it comes to getting religiously educated students up to speed on this stuff.

Most of the founders were deists and had rejected Christianity. That's why the constitution mentions neither Jesus nor Jehovah.

[halfulglas]

31. They kind of disappeared that commandment about lying, though.

They lie about EVERYTHING. They lie about things they've done. They lie about things they haven't done. They often lie about the things they want to do. They also lie about what is actually in the Constitution. They lie and say we were meant to be a Christian nation and that it's in the Constitution.