O’Reilly on Jefferson

O’Reilly, in a recent syndicated column, said that Thomas Jefferson would ‘mock the secular fools’ [who are assumably waging the war on Christmas]. He also reiterated the fallacious claim that the separation of church and state was a myth, etc., etc.

O’Reilly is, at least, grossly mistaken and, at most, a blatant liar preaching to the converted choir that has no purpose for reason or evidence anyway. If O’Reilly had found it incumbent upon himself to back up his assertions with actual words from Jefferson, he would have surely been distressed at the mountain of quotes to the contrary.

I find it ironic that O’Reilly would be so careless as to invoke both subjects in the same column, that is, Jefferson and the Wall. It was Jefferson, for God’s sake, who coined the term “Wall of Separation” between Church and State. Do you really think, do you really believe he would think it was a myth, ‘if he was alive today’? It was Jefferson who authored the First Amendment and the Virginia Statute on the Free Exercise of Religion. Do you really think that he would want religion and government to become increasingly entangled?

Here’s a good Jefferson quote, often cited to show his support of religious matters: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” It should be noted that, when one consults the context of this quotation, they find that Jefferson is vowing eternal hostility against the machinations of theocrats.

Ah, here’s a good Jefferson quote: “Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.” And another: “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.” That’s our Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, in love with public religion and scornful of ’secular fools.’ I’ve had with O’Reilly, he’s just a damned moron.

Let us hope that a good portion of O’Reilly’s readers took it upon themselves to fact-check his error. A people should know their Founders, and know their past. For, as Jefferson said, “If a people expect to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, they expect what never was and never shall be.”

This is how it starts

A poll conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that thirty-nine percent of Americans think Muslims should wear some special identification, like an armband or a tattoo. Sound like Nazi Germany yet?

Just read Revelations

I overheard a coworker expressing her dissatisfaction with mainstream news networks. “Don’t watch the news,” she advised me, “just read Revelations.”

Religion is all well and good. Or, rather: belief is fine. As long as religion doesn’t begin to impede the progress of rational people, I don’t mind. When churches start burning scientists at the stake, barring same sex couples from marrying, or teaching creationist pseudoscience as fact is when I gear up for battle.

Such is the case in this instance: an irrational belief in Biblical inerrancy giving rise to a wholesale disregard for worldly matters. A resignation, an inevitablist attitude, or a belief in determinism and predestination: don’t all these lead to some kind of political nihilism? ‘Why vote? Your vote won’t count anyway!’, or ‘I’ll vote and leave the rest up to God’, et cetera, et cetera.

Religion is all well and good, except for when it becomes a regressive force within society, e.g. restricting the rights of consenting adults or sowing the seeds of political ambivalence.

Here’s another gem, uttered from the same mouth in the same ten minute period:

“Well,” she offered, “I vote my morals.” I took offense at the implication that liberals — for, certainly, she was a conservative — don’t vote their morals, or, otherwise, vote knowingly for immoral practices.

It’s this kind of black-and-white, on-or-off, good-and-evil perception of reality that is anathema to a productive democratic process. It is troubling, the miniscule amount of civil and informed debate that goes on nowadays, and wantonly characterizing The Other Side as brazenly, unanimously and incorrigibly immoral is meaningless conversation.