Republicans v secular America

[swag]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/feb/23/republicans-religion-secular-america

If you're part of secular America – that is, if you're an atheist, an agnostic, a religious liberal or even a mainstream believer who thinks religion should be kept out of politics and vice-versa – then you should be very afraid of what the Republican party has in store for you in 2012.

No news there, you might say. The Republicans, as we all know, have been in thrall to the Christian right since the Reagan era. But there's something new, something more intolerant, something truly ugly in the works. And if you don't believe me, let's start with Tim Pawlenty, unassuming governor of Minnesota in his day job, fire-breathing Christian warrior and aspiring presidential candidate in his spare time.

"I want to share with you four ideas that I think should carry us forward," Pawlenty said on Friday at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Committee, or CPAC. After invoking "basic constitutional principle and basic common sense," he continued:

"The first one is this: God's in charge. God is in charge ... In the Declaration of Independence it says we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. It doesn't say we're endowed by Washington, DC, or endowed by the bureaucrats or endowed by state government. It's by our creator that we are given these rights."

Never mind Pawlenty's fundamental and no doubt deliberate misreading of the founders' intent. (Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, is well-known for having cut up a Bible to remove all supernatural references to Jesus.) How, in practice, does Pawlenty envision "God's in charge" as a governing principle?

[starroute]

1. Republicans want to have this "rights" thing both ways

When it comes to terrorism suspects, they have no belief in unalienable rights at all. They're perfectly ready to suggest that only American citizens have the right to things like a fair trial -- which suggest they really believe that those rights are granted by government and are not universal.

But when they think they see some way to squeeze "God" into the argument, they're just as ready to take a statement in which Jefferson was attempting to make it as clear as he could in the language of his own time that human rights are innate and not created by any government and twist it into a defense of religion.

Idiot people.