You might recognize part of the title as the name of Bill Maher’s movie. If you haven’t seen it, take a look. It’s an interesting piece, but if you’re particularly religious, I’d refrain. It might offend you.
So if you’ve kept an eye on the political landscape recently, you might have noticed something interesting, and from my point of view, mildly if not outright disturbing.
I’m pretty sure that most of us remember at least a little of our American history classes from elementary school. Even if you don’t remember the bulk of it, I’m almost positive that everyone does remember the Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights. In that bill, there exists something called the “First Amendment.” For the sake of clarity, let me quote it now:
“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.”
I’m mainly concerned with the first line of that statement, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” In recent weeks, the question of separation of church and state has come up repeatedly. Now, as many of you may be wondering, “What about it? Didn’t they settle that when they wrote the Bill of Rights?” You know, I thought they did too, but apparently, a specific group of politicians and their followers have different ideas.
The “Tea Party” as they unofficially call themselves, is a movement within the Republican Party, although at this point, I wonder if Republicans are beginning to wonder about the intelligence of allowing these people to associate themselves with them. The supposed purpose of this movement is to cut back the size of the government, lower taxes, reduce wasteful spending, reduce the national debt and federal budget deficit, and to adhere to the United States Constitution. Doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, does it? However, like so many other political movements, what looks great on paper, seems to devolve into what I like to call a “clusterfuck” when put into actual practice.
So far, from what I can gather, the primary hallmark of the Tea Party Movement is to instill fear into the citizenry to get their candidates elected, by preying on people’s general ignorance. What do I mean by this? Well, despite the fact that the group states that they wish to adhere to Constitutional Law, they have interesting interpretations of those laws. Which brings me to my point on this blog. The most recent “interpretation” centers around the separation of church and state. In the past few weeks, three separate candidates that are Tea Party favorites have questioned the First Amendment and the application of said amendment.
Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, and Ken Buck. All three politicians are running for Senate seats. All three have stated that they do not believe that the First Amendment precludes a government joined with religion. I ask them this… What Constitution have you been reading, or rather, what drugs are you taking that would give you an interpretation that would say anything but a separation of church and state?
The argument that is most commonly given is that the Constitution doesn’t actually contain the words “separation of church and state.” In this regard, they are correct. However, if you’re going to play at semantics and pedantry, then there are a lot of things not explicitly said in the Constitution, not to mention the Bible (since this is an argument over religion) that they tend to follow. A perfect example? Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Satan rules hell. Double check if you don’t believe me.
It appears again that the problem here is that people aren’t taking things in context. If you examine the time in which the Constitution was written, the reason behind the First Amendment was because the country, and specifically the founding fathers, were trying to escape from religious persecution. By putting in the statement “…no law respecting an establishment of religion…” they are straight forwardly saying that the government can’t tell people what religion is the right one. Ken Buck counters this by saying, “While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not gonna have a religion that's sanctioned by the government, it doesn't mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion.”
I don’t know about you, but if the government isn’t allowed to establish a religion, then how are they supposed to work together without fear of there being some major influence? The whole reason behind putting together that amendment was to prevent religion from having any say in government affairs. You know what religious governments get you? Look at the Middle East. Look at any country where there is a nation mandated religion. They’re all rife with human rights violations, and besides all of that, this is a country “of the people, by the people, for the people.” That gives no space for there to be any singular religion to identify the nation, as this nation is made up of a wide range of people and religions. That’s what makes it great.
For now, I won’t even get into the hypocrisy that most of these Tea Party candidates engender by fighting for their right to bring religion into politics, but decry anyone who is Muslim. That’s another entry. All I’m saying is, these people who want to scare you into believing what they say are doing so by twisting the truth, and attacking some pretty established rules. I’m not even talking about rules that might have some form of negative connotation to them, but rules that have proven truly beneficial to our society. Don’t let them do it. Don’t let ignorance lead to the downfall of what was once, and hopefully will be again, a great nation.
