Saturday, June 21, 2008

Book Learning

Free Stuff
“ “The lesson the President has learned best—and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him—is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administration’s current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles. Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent.”

- Brooke Allen “The Nation” on February 3, 2005, and echoed my mnany on the religious left (libereals).
 ”
I received from Human Events an advertisement for a book they're shilling, with this blurb

BACK IN PRINT AFTER 140 YEARS-THE ACLU's WORST NIGHTMARE!

The ACLU's worst nightmare would today be "President Cheney Takes Oath of Office, " but I of course understand the value of hyperbole.  Anyway, the book is Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States ... by  Benjamin Franklin Morris. 

Allen's specious argument in Nation could be dismissed out of hand, as the slightest perusal of The American Colonist's Library ()  will attest, i.e. "American Independence was Achieved Upon the Principles of Christianity," by John Adams for starters.  But, we are living in times where,  without arduous teaching of our nation's history that would make one question statements like Allen's, few do.

But, that's not what this is about.

 I immediately sought to find a free copy of the book, for archival purposes, and thanks to Harvard College, and Charles Sumner (class of 1830), I have it in hand.

But wait, that's not what this is about.

 Does the name Charles Sumner ring your bell?  It should, because it was Sumner who became the first, and alas last, United States Senator to be beaten within an inch of his life in the Capitol Building.  This famous lithograph commemorating the great event (the reasons don't matter), will refresh your memory, and the rollover will instruct about what could have, and should have been Sumner's legacy, a hundred times over. At least your lawyer will have precedent to cite at your trial, should you need one.
6/21/2008 10:57:00 AM 3 Comments

"If the number of Islamic terror attacks continues at the current rate, candlelight vigils will soon be the number-one cause of global warming. "
Argus Hamilton


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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How eerie. Just this morning I was reading about the humanizing of education on a similar topic--rewriting American history without the influence of Christianity. Great minds of you bloggers, I guess. At http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/ed-watch/6-10-anti-christian.htm

mary

6/20/08, 4:50 PM
Anonymous said...

You've lost me on this one. Allen is full of it, but what he writes is uber-nuanced: the Constitution may be "Godless" but it wasn't created by Secular Humanists. It was written by deists, I've always heard. Folks who had studied the natural philosophers of their times, Locke et al., who got to their conclusions from Christian roots, and what they arrived at are quite close to Christian precepts. So Allen can call it "God-less" though it's actually "God-based".
Such nuance is beyond mere mortals like me; I just call BS on his whole essay.

So how do you get from there to your rollover? Is that supposed to be Teddy K getting a smacking? What other Senator from Massachusets could you be referring to? And the connection to Allen or the ACLU to Kennedy is what in this context, other than that all are leftists? Or even to the abolitionist Sumner, Radical Republican, who was nearly crippled by the attack by slaver Preston Brooks as pictured here, after Sumner's long winded speech against the terrible situation in "Bleeding Kansas", in which he blasted Brook's uncle Butler, also pro-slavery and co-author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, with vicious ad hominen attacks?

I like this blog, but sometimes your posts and your readers comments seem to be on an astral plane the rest of us have never heard of.

6/21/08, 2:17 PM
Rodger the Real King of France said...

Forgive me if your use of "deist," which term many atheists favor when trying to position Tom J. to their liking, leads me to think that you are in that company? It doesn't matter though. I have no trouble with atheists, except those who turn it into a religion, as many have, and at which point they become insufferable canker blossoms.

Allen's theme is that George Bush was a liar for stating that America was founded on Christian principles. To argue otherwise, on this astral plane, or yours, will earn your a FAIL here. Did you read Adams? Or the others? Have you read Tocqueville's description of America? But, to put a fine legal point on all of this, when Arizona became the 48th state in 1912, she became the 48th state that had written into her constitution that very fact, and proscribing from public office any who would not claim Christianity. Those laws have been stricken, which salutary effect upon us escapes me, but there you have it. It is also a fact that a common religion and language kept us from the fate of nations not so fortunate. That too is behind us, thanks largely to the canker blossoms, and we'll pay for it.

And, yes, that is His Tedness taking a caning in my rollover; one he richly deserves. It's here that you miss, through unfamiliarity perhaps, my sense of humor. I give it free reign. Caning Ted Kennedy, or beheading Nancy Pelosi makes me laugh. I mean that in the good way.

6/22/08, 12:06 AM

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