November 26th 2008
The Lies They Teach #11 And #12
L
et’s return now to Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School), with two more lies from this solid review of what liberal history profs are doing to revise the past and pollute the minds of the next generation.
Lie #11 – No Terrorists or Weapons of Mass Destruction were Hiding in Iraq
A systematic search found no active production facilities or stockpiles for chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons of mass destruction, refuting one of the basic justifications for the war. – David Goldfield et al., The American Journey
Did the failure to find “active” WMD evidence in Iraq really refute one of Bush’s three justifications for the war? Ever heard of a murder conviction that came without a murder weapon or a body? Of course you have, but David Goldfield et al. would rather ignore the complex and hang on the simplistic – as would many of his colleagues.
First, the lib revisionists need to deal with who else was involved in the WMD “deception” – the French, British, Spanish, Australian, Japanese, German, Israeli intelligence services, the Egyptian and Russian presidents, the king of Jordan, and the United Nations Security Council, all of whom stated that Hussein had or was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
Then, of course, you’d have to overlook his gassing of the Kurds, which led Hans Blix of the UN to state Hussein had 6,500 WMDs. And there were Saddam’s two sons in law, who during their brief defection testified about Iraqi WMD programs. They were executed upon their foolish return to Iraq. (So foolish that I’ll go ahead and accept that their testimony may be discounted since they were obviously idiots.)
Then there’s little niggles like this:
In 2003, a UN weapons inspector confidently stated that Ira had an ongoing nuclear program, and that he knew personally of uranium reporcessing at a facility six miles from Tarmiya. A twenty-gallon barrel found in northern Ira tested positive for Sarin, and another tested positive for mustard gas.
And Goldfield et al. conveniently ignore the tape recordings found of Hussein discussing his WMD program, and the need to hustle the evidence out of Iraq prior to an invasion – and the 56 “sorties” ‘of commercial jetliners, their seats removed, between Iraq and Syria prior to the war.
As for terrorists in Iraq, Schweikart runs through the same sort of sources – our own State Dept., evidence found in Iraq, respected publications like Janes and less respected news sources like CBS, etc. – to prove that Hussein was supporting terrorists in general and al-Qaeda in particular.
There’s plenty more in this chapter; real, hard evidence, as opposed to cute “Bush Lied, People Died” sloganeering.
Lie #12 – The Founders Envisioned a “Wall of Separation” Between Church and State, Keeping Religious Influence out of Government
The Founding Fathers did not intend to establish the United Sttes of America as a Christian nation [and] the assertion that the United States … was founded as a “Christian Nation” is itself a myth. – Mark Weldon “Whitten, The Myth of Christian America
I found myself using my Kindle’s highlighting function multiple times on every page of this chapter because its stuffed full of rebuttal of the vapid claims of the separation of church and state fanatics. If, for example, America’s founding fathers didn’t see America as a Christian nation, how come the colony’s own constitutions saw it as one. Here’s Virginia’s:
We, greatly commending, and graciously accepting of, their Deisres for the Furtherance of so noble a Work … in propagating the Christian Religion to such People [native Americans] as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true knowledge and Worship of God [establish the colony of Virginia.
The Charter of New England (1620) stated that the main objective of the colony was "the enlightenment of the Chrisitan religion, to the Glory of God Almighty."
Why, if America was not a Christian nation, did some colonies have statutes requiring attendance at church? (The sort of thing correctly precluded by a proper interpretation of separation of church and state.)
In 1812, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment allowed Christianity to "receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and freedom of religious worship." In 1892, SCOTUS found unanimously:
Our laws and institutions necessarily are based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind ... [In] this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian. … This is a Christian nation.
And it remains one to this day, if you check any national polling or any compilation by government or religious organizations.
The Chapter also delves into Jefferson’s letter, which is the basis of fraudulent interpretations of separation of church and state, effectively dismissing the arguments as misinterpretations or outright frauds.
The Lies They Teach: #9 and #10
The Lies They Teach – #8
The Lies They Teach: #6 And #7
The Lies They Teach: #4 And #5
The Lies They Teach: #1 – #3
Posted in America, Higher Education, Iraq, Saddam Hussein, Separation of Church & State | 18 Comments » | |
November 29th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Comments
November 26th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
So now it’s a “lie” to report what empirical evidence reveals: that there were no WMD’s found in Iraq. By that logic, it’s also a lie to say that Aladdin’s magical cave is not in Iraq. Without empirical support, the continuing claim about the US (and others) being right about the WMD intelligence is fantasy worthy of a fairy tale book. Just because it was an understandable mistake doesn’t make it any less of a mistake. As for the terrorists, conservatives will have to do a better job defining “support” for terrorists in general an al Qaeda in particular, since George Bush’s own past personal business dealings with the bin Laden family, given their financial support of one infamous son, also constitutes, technically, support for al Qaeda. I believe most experts have limited their estimations of Hussein’s terrorist support to entities operating in the Middle East, in opposition to Israel. It would be nice to see some references and specific links to Janes and other respectable publications showing a strong link between Hussein and al Qaeda, especially since Cheney’s claims of an Iraq-alQaeda tie (involving secret meetings in the Czech Republic) were apparently disproven.
On the “lie” regarding separation of church and state, only a simpleton would try to distill millions of pages of case law, commentary and scholarship on this issue to a black and white, lie vs. truth dichotomy. There are clearly two balancing interests: freedom of religion and freedom from religion, and nothing cited above really changes that, unsurprisingly. While some colonies required church attendance, some also had slavery–so by that logic, we are still a racist country… But in all seriousness, it is striking to me that in a time and culture in which such laws mandating church attendance were enforced our founding fathers used very secularist language throughout the Constitution.
That is the bigger surprise and strong proof that they envisioned a state that did not endorse an official language (i.e., Christianity). We also know that the leading lights of the time (e.g., Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, etc.) were deists who believed in a very different God than the average evangelical Christian in today’s red states, and, unlike our more religious contemporaries, they knew that religious wars had cost millions of lives. This likely explains the secular slant of Constitutional language, the prohibition on religious litmus tests, and the anti-Establishment Clause–which does still mean something, evangelical propaganda notwithstanding.
Jefferson, who was publicly attacked for criticizing those who believed in Noah’s flood as a matter of historical record or, for that matter, the biblical age of the earth, clearly envisioned religious expression to be private and personal rather than public and official in nature. And, contrary to the “Lies” author, there are no fraudulent interpretations surrounding the Danbury letter (referenced above), which is not very long and includes the key revelation of Jefferson’s views on the matter, which you can judge for yourself, but for me speaks rather clearly: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. [Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from presenting even occasional performances of devotion presented indeed legally where an Executive is the legal head of a national church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.]” (bracketed part was written by Jefferson and then blocked out for deletion, but then never deleted when he gave the speech) So Jefferson, it appears, would not even have met with the Pope…much less acknowledged that the country was officially Christian…for fear of establishing such an appearance.
Finally, the SCOTUS ruling in Church of the Holy Trinity is an interesting choice for conservatives to highlight, since their judicial hero, Antonin Scalia, has scathingly attacked the opinion as an example of judicial lawmaking at its worst, yet there is no doubt that the court, in attempting to show that Congress did not contemplate barring English ministers from working in the US when they passed a law against importing foreign labor, certainly opened up a can of worms that contradicts a lot of case law; luckily, that case is not about a religious issue and carries far less precedential weight than if it were a case on the Establishment Clause. Once again, the “Lies” author shows a decided lack of nuance in trying to show how dumb and deceitful liberals are. Surely, there are smarter conservatives out there who can build a compelling case…
November 26th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Laer, I got this book in my monthly shipment from Conservative Book Club and I have to agree, it is an eyeopener. Another good one is based on the evironmental lies the libs have forced down our throats all these years as well. I believe it’s called “The REALLY Inconvenient Truths” or something similar (sorry, I just got home from work and am about to get down to the nitty gritty of holiday cooking). What the libe won’t own up to is the “unintended consequences” of their environmentalism (which has done more to RUIN the environment than we can imagine) to foist these lies off on an unsuspecting student base.
I have two teenagers at home; they go to charter school and the school cringes when the new school year rolls around because I demand to examine the textbooks prior to my children being taught from them. If I don’t like the “spin” my children are withdrawn from the class and given and alternate “cell” of which I approve. I also listen to talk radio and make my kids read my conservative books so they are better able to hold their own when the indoctrinators try their nonsense. I wish I could home school, but as a single parent, that’s impossible.
Great work bringing these lies to light!
November 26th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Miss Beth, while I respect your right to dictate your children’s education, I hope you don’t deny your children a sound grounding in science by attempting to shield them from the “spin” of Darwin’s well-tested theory of evolution or the “lies” of chemists and physicists who quantify with great precision the global warming properties of CO2. Otherwise, you are really contributing, albeit perhaps unknowingly, to the greatest problem facing our democracy: profound and willing ignorance of many of its citizens, who are called upon to evaluate public policy but lack the skills and knowledge to do so in an effective and responsible manner.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
DG, let’s try to focus here. The lie from the left is that Bush KNEW there weren’t WMDs and manufactured a lie in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. The evidence just does not support this. Everyone thought Hussein had WMDs and was getting closer and closer to using them. It is not a lie to racted to everyone’s best knowledge. It is a lie to accuse such a person of lying. This is so simple you should be able to unwind your crippling intellectualism long enough to understand it.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”
This letter, we know, was written to Baptists fearful that the state would prohibit their religion, thus the reference to no establishment of a religion, and no laws banning particular types of worship. This you twist into “freedom of religion and freedom from religion.”
There is no expressed “freedom from religion” other than freedom from having the state force another person’s religion on you. Extremists have taken this to – where else? – the extreme, saying that a Christmas display is forcing a religion on someone, which of course it is not. Muslims have a right to build mosques, which cities approve through their discretionary approval processes. Driving by a mosque may bring unpleasant thoughts to many of us – 9/11, jihad, the bad Muslims – but it does not force Islam on to us. There is no constitutional right to not be irritated by others, and government trying to impose a “freedom from irrigation” inevitably results today in infringing others’ pursuit of happiness.
Schweikart’s chapter on separation of church and state covers many lies; the lie I primarily focused on is the attempt to paint America as anything other than a nation that has Christianity at its roots. It does; it’s irrefutable. You can process that information however you want to, but it just can’t be denied.
Interesting, isn’t it, that i’m writing this comment on Thanksgiving, a federal holiday set aside specifically for us to give thanks to God? And DG: I thank God for your interesting comments on my blog and pray that you will find joy during the Christmas season.
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Laer, please do yourself a favor and read the US Constitution and the Establishment Clause cases decided by the SCOTUS. Then we can have an informed discussion on the issue. No liberal in the US calls for taking down Christmas displays, other than those that are put up by the state. Schweikart can claim that the US is Christian at its roots, but it remains a legal fact that there is no religious litmus test that is permitted to take office in the federal government. So I think there are decided limits on what Christian roots means in a country that must allow Muslims to ascend to office. As for the WMD argument, please read my post (again) more carefully. I stated clearly that the lack of WMDs is a rebuke to those many conservatives who continue to claim that they are there. The absence of evidence, after all of this time, becomes by default the evidence of absence. Yes, you can convict for murder without a smoking gun, but the entire body of evidence still points to the crime; in this case, that body of evidence points to a lack of WMD’s, so Bush was wrong. It is true that some liberals claim (wrongfully, according to the data gathered thus far by a secretive administration) that Bush lied about the intelligence. But I don’t make that claim–contrary to your accusation. I merely state that he was wrong about WMDs and this was a mistake; further, as the key justification for the war, it calls into question the war itself. This is not a “lie” but a serious and fact-based indictment of the administration’s most important decision over its eight years in office.
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:13 pm
And, Laer, how arrogant for you to assume that I need to believe in God in order to be thankful for what I have or to find joy in my life. I believe in what I can touch and see and, therefore, intelligently, am an agnostic. But this does not prevent me from knowing that my life could be much worse than it is. Nor does it keep me from loving my wife and children and cherishing the time that I have with them. And what is true for me as a non-believer is also true for millions of non-Christians that have a worldview entirely different that either of ours. But I do appreciate your prayers for my happiness, however ineffective I might personally believe prayer to be.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Four brief comments regarding ‘separation of church and state’:1. The founding of the colonies was not the founding of the United States, so the invocation of colonial documents is irrelevant to the question as to whether, institutionally and legally, we are a ‘Christian nation.’2. The blog posting evidences the common failure to distinguish between ‘Christian nation’ as a cultural-historical claim ( ‘nation’ as the people and their cultural institutions) and as an institutional-legal claim (‘nation’ as a political-legal entity). I reject the claim that America is a Christian nation in the second sense , not the first.3. The ‘quotation’ provided from the Holy Trinity v.United States (1892) Supreme Court decision contains spurious additions that are not contained in the decision. Check it out for yourself. [The author of the decsions (Josiah David Brewer) later wrote a book in which he made it clear that he was not claiming that the United States is a 'Christian nation' in the legal-institutional sense.] 4. I am not a ‘strict separationist’ and my book also criticizes ‘The Myth of Secular America.’5. I am not a liberal politically.Mark Weldon Whitten
December 7th, 2008 at 2:15 am
Thanks Mark Whitten, you summarized points 1 and 2 far more eloquently and concisely than I could. And I was not aware of point 3. I would be interested in hearing what kind of separation you believe the Constitution calls for, if not a “strict” one, however you might define that.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
You guys are so silly! The question is, “Is America a Christian country?” The Colonies were Christian and most were founded in the quest for religious freedom. To arbitrarily draw a line between the colonies and the federal state and say the religious roots of the colonies no longer matters is the sort of thing only an intellectual would believe. Then you trump your own foolishness by refusing to believe the actual writings of our early leaders, all of whom accepted a level of faith within our government that you refuse to acknowledge, clinging to snippets to keep yourselves from being swept away by the torrent of words that reveal their deep faith.
December 7th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Laer,I am afraid that is is your response that evidences silliness and ideologically-induced superficiality. First in your refusal to acknowledge the major distinction for understanding the character of our constitutional republic between colonial charters and the U.S. Constitution.Know that colonies like the Massachusetts Bay Colony or Virginia were not at all about religious freedom for anyone other than the established religion of the colony. Show me any anything like the wording of the colonial charters in our national charter – the Constitution. Not there! No appeal to God, Christ, religion or Bible. No religious rationales or purposes - Only secular political purposes and ’public reason’ justificiations underlying them.Read the records of debates within the Constitutional Convention in James Madison’s Notes ofDebates in the Federal Conventionof 1787. See if there is anything like ‘Christian america’ language or rationales. Not there!See that the Convention made a deliberate decision NOT to begin its proceedings in official prayer. See that when Benjamin Franklin later made a motion that it do so. the motion was rebuffed and never voted upon. See that Franklin wrote: “The Convention, except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.” See that the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by the U.S. Sernate during the Adams administration, in Article Eleven states that the United states “is not in any sense a Christian nation.”Sound like pious religionists out to create a ‘Christian nation’?In fact, read my book. See where I do acknowledge the religious faith of (most of) the founders, who for the sake of the welfare of both government and religion insisted on a mutual independence (‘separation’) of the doctrines and institutions of religion and the institutions of government.Try to respond to at least one fact I have stated or at least one demonstrated error by you (the spurious quotation) which I pointed out.Keep the issue clear. It is not whether we are a Christian ‘country’ or ‘nation ‘ in the historical-cultural sense that most Ameicans have been religious / Christian and their faith has impacted their cultural andlegal institutions. I do not deny that. The question I address is whether the United States is a Christian ‘nation’ in the sense that its political institutions are founded upon the doctrines of Christianity as their sole inspiration and fundamental ground, thus privileging religion / religious persons in general and Christianity / Christians in particularover fellow citizens of other religions and of no religion.OR, be an ideologue and an intellectual scoundrel and believe what you want to believe and respond as a sophist to substantive criticism.As I suspect it will be the latter, you will no longer be worth my time.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:42 am
DG – how arrogant of you to infringe on my religious freedoms. I’m free to go to my God and give thanks for whatever I want to give thanks for, including you. It’s between me and God and has nothing to do with what you believe or don’t believe. I am free to pray for the opening of your heart, and I will.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Mark, you’re continuing to split hairs that fell out of the head long ago. Posture as you will, you can’t rebut my point that America’s colonies were Christian and that the early republic was peopled with Christians. Whatever their charters, the colonies were founded for the most part as an expression of rebellion against religious repression in Europe. As a consequence, our founding documents were not envisioned by those who wrote them as a means of creating the sort of anti-religious brand of secularism you would have.
It was never my point that the wording of the charters is in the Constitution – I’m no fool! – all I said was that you can’t reinvent history, you can’t recast the character of the people at the time, you can’t pretend that the Constitution was written by people who share your secularist view. They saw the need to protect religion from government; they did not see the need to protect government from religion.
Cite your carefully extracted quibbles if you must, but they do little to stay the overwhelming documentation of America’s Christian heritage. You quoted Franklin; what do you say to this Franklin quote?
“In this situation of this Assembly groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we and daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. — Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance.”
Apparently he was one of those three or four persons.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Laer, no need to get upset. As I wrote above, I appreciate the prayers although I personally believe that they have no effect. This could be arrogant, but it has nothing to do with your freedom to do it, nor does it reflect a desire on my behalf to limit it. If it is arrogant to question the existence of God or the personal appeals for his intercession, then I’ll wait for God to judge me…not you. That you confuse secularism with anti-religion, as evidenced by your comments directed at me and at Mark, is curious. Those who wish to be free to worship have large latitude to do so in this country, contrary to the annual “war on Christmas” campaigns. As for your contention that the authors of the Constitution were not secular flies in the face of its highly secular language, as Mark as amply demonstrated. Contrary to the quote you cite above, which is well contextualized at http://candst.tripod.com/franklin.htm, Franklin was quite possibly an agnostic having famously commented that lighthouses are more helpful than churches. Finally, I don’t know on what you base your claim that the founding fathers saw a need to protect religion from government but not the other way around; there is much scholarship on the Establishment Clause that argues quite the opposite of your contention, reflecting fear of undue religious influence on government and, by extension, raising the specter of religious persecution of non-conforming religious minorities or of outright religious war. The pre-1776 history of Europe is filled with unfortunate examples of both.
December 8th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
“Finally, I don’t know on what you base your claim that the founding fathers saw a need to protect religion from government but not the other way around” – Jefferson wrote the famous letter to Baptists in which the concept of separation of church and state was first articulated to address the Baptists’ concern that their church would be banned by the state, in other words, protection of the church from the state. This was pre-establishment clause, of course.
The secular wording of the Constitution is appropriate; I’m all for it because I don’t want government breathing down the necks of our churches. Unfortunately, some are taking that secular wording as a launching point for campaigns to remove religion from the public square, and that was NOT the intent of the secular wording.
December 9th, 2008 at 9:28 am
What was the intent of the secular wording if not for the government to remain neutral on religion? And how can the state remain neutral if not by preventing tyranny of a majority’s religion by allowing it to dominate the public square? The very test the SCOTUS uses to determine whether the Establishment clause has been violated is whether or not the government is picking and choosing a particular religion (see Lemon for a test of First Amendment violation: 1) the government action must have a secular purpose; 2) its primary purpose must not be to inhibit or to advance religion; 3) there must be no excessive entanglement between government and religion). While there is tension within this test, and the analysis is always complicated, this is established case law, based upon a scholarly reading of the founders’ intent and grounded in multiple cases that have stood for some time now. If you want a religious icon in the public square, then it must be neutral (e.g., menorah alongside the Christmas tree) and it must have a secular purpose (e.g., cultural or historical value); otherwise, it is unconstitutional. You can bemoan the case law, but you cannot ignore it, nor the historical basis for it. Arguing that multiple justices on multiple courts have gotten the founders’ intent wrong, and you have gotten it right, is a difficult argument to sustain–unless, of course, you continue to ignore factual and logical refutations, such as those marshalled by myself or Mark.
December 9th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Neutrality on religion is fine but difficult to define. Actively scuttling religion is not fine and is pretty easy for reasonable people to identify. Your cultural test is always present with Christianity in America. This was the ridiculous thing about LA removing a mission cross from its seal under ACLU duress and replacing it with some goddess or another; the mission cross was culturally meaningful, the goddess was some (religious!) icon that is meaningless to our culture.
Government is to be responsive to the people. If a vast majority of the people want a Christmas display, government should not get in the way of a display in the name of phony “hurt” on the part of a few extremist secularists. This is not tyranny of the majority; it is just ridiculous whining by people who have to kid themselves into being offended and have no appreciation whatsoever of the hurt they’re causing the majority.
I’m so done with this discussion, DG. Let’s move on to other subjects, OK? I won’t be responding any further.