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Title: Obama Rips Bible, Praises Koran
Source:
Breitbart
URL Source: http://www.breitbart.com/national-s ... bama-rips-bible-praises-koran/
Published: Feb 7, 2015
Author: Ben Shapiro
Post Date: 2015-02-07 06:32:22 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 206179
Comments: 433
Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. So it is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a simple tendency that can pervert and distort our faith. This is historically and philosophically illiterate. Historically speaking, the Crusades were a response to Islamic aggression in Europe and the Middle East; the Inquisition, as Jonah Goldberg points out while quoting historian Thomas Madden, director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University, was designed to regularize executions rather than leaving them to the will of the masses. Christians undoubtedly pursued horrible brutalities against people, including innocent Jews. However, as Goldberg points out, “Christianity, even in its most terrible days, even under the most corrupt popes, even during the most unjustifiable wars, was indisputably a force for the improvement of man.” Nowhere is that clearer than in Obama’s second example, slavery. Virtually all of the most ardent abolitionists were deeply religious Christians. Hundreds of thousands of American men marched to their deaths singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”: “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea / With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me / As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free / While God is marching on.” That was 150 years ago. It’s not exactly the modern Islamic slogan, “Death to the Jews.” Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was, as his name suggests, a reverend. He quoted old black Christian spirituals and the Biblical story of the exodus from Egypt. Christians obliterated slavery. Christians obliterated Jim Crow. Modern slavery is largely perpetrated by Muslims. Modern Jim Crow is certainly perpetrated by Muslims under shariah law. There is a larger point, here, too: President Obama’s foolish argument suggests that because Christians were brutal a millennium ago, they should shut up about brutalities today. This is somewhat like saying that because someone’s great-great-grandfather held slaves in rural Alabama, that person should shut up about human trafficking in 2015. It’s asinine. But Obama has a history of insulting Christianity and Judaism while upholding Islam. In 2006, Obama bashed the Bible and religious Christians and Jews in particular: Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles. He then concluded that religious leaders should not speak out against publicly-funded contraception or gay marriage. We can get into President Obama’s pathetic Biblical commentary here – his interpretation of Leviticus on slavery is incorrect, Jews still avoid shellfish, the Talmud explains that no child has ever been stoned for rebelliousness, and the Sermon on the Mount is not a pacifist document. Obama’s not Biblically literate – he’s the same fellow who says, “I think the good book says don’t throw stones in glass houses.” He said in The Audacity of Hope that he would define Biblical values however he chose, stating that he is not willing “to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount.” Both are, in fact, parts of the Bible. Citing the Sermon on the Mount to justify civil unions for homosexuals, as Obama has done, is not in fact Biblical. But more importantly, Obama’s scorn for the old-fashioned Bible is obvious. That became more obvious in 2008, when Obama told some of his buddies in San Francisco that unemployed idiots “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” The Obama administration has routinely attacked religious organizations and people who violate Obama’s personal political predilections. They’ve attacked all trappings of Christianity as well. Whether they’re using Obamacare to force religious individuals to pay for others’ contraception or toning down the National Day of Prayer instead of holding a public ceremony, whether they’re covering a monogram of Jesus at Georgetown University during a presidential speech or objecting to adding FDR’s D-Day prayer to the WWII memorial, the Obama administration clearly isn’t fond of Christianity. This contrasts strongly with President Obama’s romantic vision of Islam. He famously called the Muslim call to prayer “the sweetest sound I know.” He said in his first presidential interview, with Al-Arabiya, that his job was “to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives.” Weeks later, he said in Turkey, “We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country.” A few months later, in a speech in Cairo to which he invited the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama said: I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. He added that Islam has a “proud tradition of tolerance,” explained, ‘Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace,” and said, “America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” He said in his Ramadan message in 2009 that Islam has played a key “role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.” ISIS, Obama has said over and over again, is not Islamic. His administration maintains that America is not at war with radical Islam. He stated before the United Nations in 2012, just weeks after the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya at the hands of Muslim terrorists, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Hillary Clinton allegedly promised Charles Woods, father of one of the slain in Benghazi, that the administration would achieve the arrest of the YouTube filmmaker behind The Innocence of Muslims. The State Department issued taxpayer-funded commercials denouncing that YouTube video. President Obama variously called the video “crude and disgusting” and stated that “its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity.” At the UN in 2014, Obama lauded a Muslim cleric who backs Hamas. And, of course, Obama uses Islamic theology to promote his vision of world peace: All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer. All three religions do have access to holy sites now, in Jewish-run Jerusalem. They did not when Muslims ruled Jerusalem. But facts have no bearing in the fantasy world of the president. Perhaps one final contrast tells the tale. In 2012, according to the Washington Post. “U.S. troops tried to burn about 500 copies of the Koran as part of a badly bungled security sweep at an Afghan prison in February.” Two American soldiers were shot in the aftermath. This prompted President Obama to apologize profusely to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, writing him a letter stating, “We will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, including holding accountable those responsible.” Three years earlier, members of the military burned Bibles printed in Pashto and Dari. CNN reported that they had been discarded “amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans.” The Bibles were burned rather than sent back to their source organization because the military worried they might be re-sent to another outlet in Afghanistan. There was no apology to the church that printed the Bibles, or to Christians more broadly. Sure, radical Muslims around the world, supported by millions of their compatriots and friendly governments, are murdering innocents. But it’s Christian aggression that forces Muslims to burn other Muslims alive in Muslim countries.
On Thursday, at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., President Obama blithely informed his audience that Christians ought not get on their “high horse” about the problem of radical Islam:
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 347.
#2. To: cranky (#0)
And yet another opportune moment for TAR AND FEATHERS slipped away! -jmho
He's a Constitutional scholar, doncha know?
He's a Constitutional scholar, doncha know? Obama's middle name is Hussein so there is that sympathy he may have for Islam and/or maybe he is trying to prevent war fever in the USA - like the sinking of the Lusitania type of fever. As long as we don't go to war - more than we are that is - there. The Arabs have armies - this ISIS is a rabble that functions in a war zone no man's land the USA helped create by supporting Syrian rebels. Back the Assad regime and this is all over in 3 months.
No, I don't think Obama is a secret Muslim. I am saying that he lived in Muslim countries, His 2 fathers were Muslim - the Indonesian step dad and the birth father and he lived in a Muslim country (Indonesia). So without being Muslim himself he has a sympathy for them. That is not the same thing as being a Muslim himself (he drinks beer for example - and no he is not doing that to throw us off the Muslim scent). Obama has not done one thing to make the USA more Islamic - if anything his policies like supporting abortion and gay rights is anti-Muslim.
I'd love to play a few rounds of poker with you, boy(?). LOL! I'm sorry, but there are just no more words left to define...STUPID!!!
LOL! I'm sorry, but there are just no more words left to define...STUPID!!! Perciles may by correct and then he may not. After you finish rolling on the floor, please get up and tell him, and everyone, what Obama has done to make the USA more Islamic.
"and tell him, and everyone, what Obama has done to make the USA more Islamic." Pericles, as long as you are watching obama's right hand, then you won't be bothered by what he's doing with his left~ No president, from the founding fathers of this nation, till today, has seen fit after Islamic barbarians committed savage, inhumane atrocities before the cameras of the world, Obama has. A sane person does not jump to the defense of evil doers, a sane person does not incourage them with praise for their KORAN, that leads them on to even more wholesale slaughter, while in the same breath, trash his own country, blame this country and our people for their acts of savagery in the name of their heathen god. These rabid animals have all the support and encouragement they need from the lips of Obama himself to continue, they don't need mine, and will never have it...NEVER! - jmho #1 “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam” #2 “The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer” #3 “We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country.” #4 “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.” #5 “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.” #6 “Islam has always been part of America” #7 “we will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities” #8 “These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.” #9 “America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” #10 “I made clear that America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam.”
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp So Obama is stating what the Founding Fathers stated.....
Did George Bush Lie About America Being Founded on Christian Principles? “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.” Thus begins an article by Brooke Allen that was posted on the website of “The Nation” on February 3, 2005.1 It’s obvious that Allen has not done a thorough study of American history as it relates to its founding documents. There is much more to America’s founding than the Constitution. America was not born in 1877 or even in 1776. The Constitution did not create America, America created the Constitution. More specifically, the states created the national government. The states (colonial governments) were a reality long before the Constitution was conceived, and there is no question about their being founded on Christian principles. Here is Allen’s first assertion: “Our Constitution makes no mention whatever of God.” “No mention whatever” is pretty absolute. Given this bold claim, then how does she explain that the Constitution ends with “DONE in the year of our Lord”? “Our Lord” is a reference to Jesus Christ. This phrase appears just above the signature of George Washington, the same George Washington who took the presidential oath of office with his hand on an open Bible, the same George Washington who was called upon by Congress, after the drafting of the First Amendment, to proclaim a national day of prayer and thanksgiving. The resolution read as follows: That a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Constitution for their safety and happiness. * Pennsylvania’s 1790 constitution declared, “That no person, who acknowledges the being of God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this commonwealth.” * The Constitution of Massachusetts stated that “no person shall be eligible to this office, unless . . . he shall declare himself to be of the Christian religion.” The following oath was also required: “I do declare, that I believe the Christian religion, and have firm persuasion of its truth.” * North Carolina’s 1868 stated that “all persons who shall deny the being of Almighty God” “shall be disqualified for office.”5 The 1776 constitution, that remained in effect until 1868, included the following (XXXII): “That no person, who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State.”6 North Carolina describes itself as a “Christian State” in the 1868 constitution (Art. XI, sec. 7). If, as Allen maintains, “God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent,” how does she explain these state constitutional provisions? If the federal Constitution nullified these state constitutional mandates, then her point would be valid. The thing is, God was a major player in the founding of America for more than 150 years before the Constitution was drafted. The statement in question was to assure a radically religious (Muslim) government that America would not depose that government and impose Christianity by force. A single phrase ripped from its historical context does nothing to nullify the volumes of historical evidence that Christianity was foundational to the building and maintenance of this nation. The 1797 treaty constantly contrasts “Christian nations” (e.g., Article VI) and “Tripoli,” a Muslim stronghold that was used as a base of operations for Barbary pirates. Muslim nations were hostile to “Christian nations.” The Barbary pirates habitually preyed on ships from “Christian nations,” enslaving “Christian” seamen. “Barbary was Christendom’s Gulag Archipelago.”10 In Joseph Wheelan’s Jefferson’s War, detailing America’s first war on terror with radical Muslims, we learn that Thomas “Jefferson’s war pitted a modern republic with a free- trade, entrepreneurial creed against a medieval autocracy whose credo was piracy and terror. It matched an ostensibly Christian nation against an avowed Islamic one that professed to despise Christians.”11 Wheelan’s historical assessment of the time is on target: “Except for its Native American population and a small percentage of Jews, the United States was solidly Christian, while the North African regencies were just as solidly Muslim—openly hostile toward Christians.”12 In 1822, the United States, along with Great Britain and Ireland, ratified a “Convention for Indemnity Under Award of Emperor of Russia as to the True Construction of the First Article of the Treaty of December 24, 1814.” It begins with the same words found in the Preamble to the 1783 treaty: “In the name of the Most Holy and Indivisible Trinity.” Only Christianity teaches a Trinitarian view of God. The 1848 Treaty with Mexico begins with “In the name of Almighty God.” The treaty also states that both countries are “under the protection of Almighty God, the author of peace. . . .” 1 Brooke Allen, “Our Godless Constitution,” The Nation website (February 3, 2005). www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050221&c=1&s=allen
To Dr. Thomas Cooper Monticello, February 10, 1814 For we know that the common law is that system of law which was introduced by the Saxons on their settlement in England, and altered from time to time by proper legislative authority from that time to the date of Magna Charta, which terminates the period of the common law, or lex non scripta, and commences that of the statute law, or Lex Scripta. This settlement took place about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it. .............. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are all able to find among them no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
Sir William Blackstone, (born July 10, 1723, London, England—died February 14, 1780, Wallingford, Oxfordshire), English jurist, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vol. (1765–69), is the best-known description of the doctrines of English law. The work became the basis of university legal education in England and North America. He was knighted in 1770.
Thomas Jefferson thinks otherwise and his thinking and that of his contemporaries was what held sway. You argue the point for someone who Jefferson was against because of modern American Fundie attempts to hold onto their modern myths of Protestant Fundie America's origins.
The only myth is the leftist, atheist secular myth that the founders were deists. 93% of the Founders were Trinitarian Christians of the Protestant or Reformed type. 56 signers of DoI church affiliation On the "Fundie" issue...What? You don't hold to the 5 basic Christian fundamentals handed as the rule of faith since the apostolic era?: 1. The Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:1; John 20:28; Hebrews 1:8-9). 2. The Virgin Birth (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:27). 3. The Blood Atonement (Acts 20:28; Romans 3:25, 5:9; Ephesians 1:7; Hebrews 9:12-14). 4. The Bodily Resurrection (Luke 24:36-46; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, 15:14-15). 5. The inerrancy of the scriptures themselves (Psalms 12:6-7; Romans 15:4; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20) So the above was embraced by Christians at the turn of the 20th century to distance themselves from the dead liberal churches and theological centers promoting a false gospel. Thus they were called fundamentalists.
I did not mention that at all. I showed where Thomas Jefferson stated flat out that English Common Law was not based on Christianity and predated it - he mentions the fact that the British establishment always claims their laws are Christian based and he disagrees. And Jefferson did not hide his views - they were very open. Imagine the modern uproar if an American president said this? Also, the Treaty Of Tripoli which the Senate ratified for Jefferson flat out stated that the USA was not founded as a Christian nation and not one noted comment of shock, dissent, etc to the wording of that treaty which was published in the newspapers back then for all to read. That tells me this was an unremarkable view by Americans at the time of the Founding Fathers regardless of their individual faiths.
That would be article 11 of the treaty. Which some scholars note did not appear in the Arabic version of the treaty. Which is interesting. The treaty was renegotiated 8 years later after expiration. Article 11 was dropped in the English version ratified by the Senate. Historical context is important. The founders wanted no part of denominationalism defining the US government. The Barbary Muslims knew the various factions of Europe and their established churches. That was the clear message sent, the US was not a nation with an established church government. We were not Great Briton and her established church nor were we "Holy" Roman Empire subjects. That's the historical context of the treaty. There is a difference between establishing a religion or more accurately a denomination and the ideals in which this nation were founded. The early Americans were devoutly Christian. The Christian faith influenced our founding. Of which the first Great Awakening having the greatest influence.
The only people who claim this are Fundie revisionists trying to grasp at straws. Even if true (I Don't read Arabic) it matters not at all because the Senate ratified the English language treaty. As for ideals - Jefferson flat out stated the ideal were not connected with Christianity when it came to English common law.
No. The entire article 11 is spurious in nature. Even if it was included in the English version before the Senate, eight years later when the treaty was renegotiated the language did not appear. So the revisionism of the secular muhammadan left in the US grasps at straws to include an article of a treaty, a spurious one at that, to conclude Americans were secular and the government somehow knew what that meant at the time. We know whatever was put before Adams was signed. Yet Adams would be one of the last people to declare the USA did not hail from Christian roots. He was clear on this matter: The general Principles, on which the Fathers Atchieved Independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite, and these Principles only could be intended by them in their Address, or by me in my Answer. And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all those Sects were united: And the general Principles of English and American Liberty, in which all those young Men United, and which had United all Parties in America, in Majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her Independence. Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System. I could therefore safely say, consistently with all my then and present Information, that I believed they would never make Discoveries in contradiction to these general Principles.
My problem with all of the agina about a treaty concluded in the 1790s and the early 1800's is this: does it matter? Does it matter at all? It sure seems to matter to a lot of people. And why would that be? And if it DOES matter, even though having been written so long ago, then why do treaties with the Indians written by the same government one hundred years later NOT matter? Why are we not permitted to demand the punctilious observations of THOSE treaties, while we look back to a defunct treaty with a defunct emirate and give IT such importance? The answer is that the Indian treaties will cost us a lot of MONEY if we respect them, and we will lose political control of quite a bit of land. So two hundred million people are willing to turn a blind eye to treaties that contain legal obligations they have no intention of upholding, because it's not to their benefit. But people who think that a treat from the 1700s is in their benefit will exalt it. To me, the incongruity makes a mockery of the whole exercise, and reduces it to hypocrisy. If the treaty with the Barbary Pirates is important because of it's language, then treaties ratified one hundred years later with the Indians on our territory, tribes that are still here, are much MORE important, and ought to be respected to the letter. So, will the folks doing deep exegesis of the treaty with a defunct emirate devote that energy to upholding the honor of the nation by insisting on the full contractual rights under the Indian Treaties? Of course not. Forgive me for not caring what the Founders thought. Nobody cares what the politicians of a hundred years later when THEY bound the nation too. Americans only obey old laws and edicts that they find are beneficial. They ignore everything else.
So the Constitution as written by the Founding Fathers means something different to you than what they had in mind?
The Constitution as written was so dramatically altered by the post-Civil War amendments that it is, in effect, a new Constitution that just carries the window-dressing of the old. The Founders had three constitutions. The first was unwritten and ad hoc, and the country operated on it throughout the Revolution. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the Articles of Confederation were adopted. The war was WON before they were adopted. The Articles proved inefficient, so the Constitution of 1787, ratified in 1789, was put in place. It had its good points, but it ultimately failed because it could not address the evil of slavery. The country fell apart and war put it back together. To win that war, the Union broke the Constitution as necessary. After the war, Amendments were made, and realities of power were imposed, that made a new Constitution. Call it the Constitution of 1868. That's what we lived under until the 1930s. It ended up being morally compromised in two ways: the States were able to resurge and exert power to abuse the freed slaves to the point of disenfranchisement and apartheid, and the economic structure didn't work. With the Supreme Court, FDR got the Commerce Clause to mean plenary power for the federal government, and we have lived with that structure ever since. At each phase, the Constitution did mean exactly what its founders intended, but it didn't work. The first Constitution, the unwritten modus operandi of the Continental Congress, was sufficient to keep a regular army in being and in the field long enough to defeat the British and win independence, but it had no further governing power. And that was wholly insufficient for a new country of 13 states. The second, the Articles of Confederation, better coordination was got, but the fear of sacrifice of sovereignty was so great that it ultimately didn't work. It didn't even work for its amendment: the Constitutional Convention and ratification process violated the existing constitution (the Articles). The Constitution of 1787 sufficed for an expanding land power that engaged in shipping, but it could not address the evil of slavery, so it failed. The Constitution of 1868 addressed the evil of slavery, but could not deal with the corruption of crony capitalism. It failed in Plessy v. Ferguson and the Great Depression. FDR's Constitution of 1934 - the "West Coast Hotel" Constitution is what we are living under now. It concentrated power sufficiently to allow apartheid to be abolished, to win World War II and the Cold War, and to make America a middle class nation, but it is failing now, as there is no check against runaway government spending. It looks as though the check on THAT may well be Vladimir Putin. When the economic system comes unraveled, a new Constitution, our fifth, may emerge from the rubble. We COULD just amend the existing one through an Article V convention that sweeps away West Coast Hotel and Kelo, but it seems unlikely that we will. There is too much fear and too many vested interests. Same was true before the Civil War. So we'll have to actually get destroyed first, THEN new parties and interests will rise from the rubble. Maybe. Then again, Lithuania and Hungary were once the mightiest states in Eastern Europe, and Denmark made the West tremble. When they fell, they never got back up. We shall see. Truth is, the Constitution has written by the Founding Fathers stopped meaning anything in 1861. Now it's just like an old family crest. One wears it with pride and it shows the history, but the actual Constitution is what is really DONE, and the Founders' Constitution was set aside when it failed to address the evil of slavery. The current Constitution will be set aside because the concentration of government power without checks means inevitable national bankruptcy, driven by an unchecked government. If Putin goes to the gold standard, we will see dimly the shape of the 6th US Constitution. But the country may be so devastated by the economic collapse that it breaks up and regions go their separate ways.
The truth is you believe in a living Constitution, whereas I believe in a written one. Yes, errors were made in the past and in the present, but the Constitution is still a written document, with the shortcomings of a corrupt court translating it. I do not believe in relativism.
I don't believe in relativism either. But I also don't believe in totemism. I don't believe that by pointing at a physical object over and over again and ascribing powers to it, that those powers become real. The Constitution written in 1787 has not been followed since 1861. It was effectively rewritten in the period 1861 to 1868, through a series of amendments that create a federal override to everything. And the courts have come to interpret it just exactly that way, in time. Notably, from FDRs time onward, the Commerce Clause, which is in the Constitution, has been interpreted by the legitimately appointed Supreme Court, exercising its legitimate power of judicial review, to give the Federal government plenary power to do just about anything, because just about anything can be characterized as impinging upon interstate commerce. One can look back at a text that was meant a certain way and read a certain way for the first 72 years of its existence, note that it was changed, IN WRITING, and that the contents of the new writings effectively give a federal override...and go all the way back to Marbury v. Madison to find the founders themselves permitting judicial review as imagined in the Federalist papers. So, judicial review was an act of the Founders, the Constitution was amended, forcefully, in the 1860s to impart new principles that changed the balance of power to give a federal override on matters of personal liberty (from slavery) and due process of law, and the Supreme Court, exercising the judicial review power the Founders gave them, ratified this new expanded view. And they did it again with FDR's broad economic interventions. These are the realities of the constitutional structure, as written and in effect. It's not relativism to observe what is and say it is. It's realism. It's politics to try to freeze something written in time and claim that it has not changed and cannot change, because one likes it. But it's totemism to really believe it.
There are no replies to Comment # 347. End Trace Mode for Comment # 347.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest"I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear".
#3. To: Murron (#2)
"And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear"
#7. To: cranky (#3)
"And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear"
#10. To: Pericles (#7)
Obama's middle name is Hussein so there is that sympathy he may have for Islam
#11. To: cranky (#10)
#15. To: Pericles, cranky (#11)
Obama has not done one thing to make the USA more Islamic - if anything his policies like supporting abortion and gay rights is anti-Muslim.
#19. To: Murron, Pericles, cranky (#15)
Obama has not done one thing to make the USA more Islamic - if anything his policies like supporting abortion and gay rights is anti-Muslim. I'd love to play a few rounds of poker with you, boy(?).
#44. To: Gatlin, Pericles, cranky, All (#19)
(Edited)
"if anything his policies like supporting abortion and gay rights is anti-Muslim".
#63. To: Murron, Gatlin, cranky (#44)
(Edited)
Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli
#74. To: Pericles, ALL (#63)
(Edited)
By Gary DeMar
Allen’s article is filled with so many half truths that it would take a book to deal with them adequately. For those of you who are new to the work of American Vision, there are numerous books on the subject that easily refute Allen’s assertions.
* America’s Christian History: The Untold Story by Gary DeMar (1995).
* America’s Christian Heritage by Gary DeMar (2003).
* The United States: A Christian Nation by Supreme Court Justice David J. Brewer (1905).
* The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States Developed in the Official and Historical Annals of the Republic by B. F. Morris (1864).
* Christianity and the American Commonwealth by Charles B. Galloway (1898).2
It seems rather odd that the constitutional framers would thank God for allowing them to draft a Constitution that excluded Him from the Constitution and the civil affairs of government.
Allen is correct that there were a number of Enlightenment principles floating around the colonies in the late eighteenth century as well as anti-clericalism. And there is no doubt that some of these principles made their way into the Constitution, although it’s hard to tell where when compared to the obvious Enlightenment principles inherent in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789). But we should be reminded of Allen’s absolutist claim of a complete dissolution of religion from political considerations in the Constitution. She has set the evaluative standard. If she is correct, then why didn’t the framers presage the French revolutionaries by starting the national calendar with a new Year One? Why did the Constitutional framers set aside Sunday—the Fourth Commandment of the Decalogue—as a day of rest for the President (Art. 1, sec. 7) if it was their desire to secularize the nation as Allen suggests? The French revolutionaries reconstructed the seven-day biblical week and turned it into a ten-day metric week in hopes of ridding the nation of every vestige of Christianity. Nothing like this was done in America.
Then there’s the issue of the state constitutions. One of the reasons some give for the absence of a more explicit declaration of God in the Constitution was the fact that the state constitutions made numerous references to God. The issue of religion was the domain of the states. Since the Federal Constitution was a document of enumerated powers, to mention religion in a more specific way would have given the national government jurisdiction over religious issues. The framers believed that such issues were best left to the states.
Constitutional scholar and First Amendment specialist, Daniel Dreisbach, writes: The U. S. Constitution’s lack of a Christian designation had little to do with a radical secular agenda. Indeed, it had little to do with religion at all. The Constitution was silent on the subject of God and religion because there was a consensus that, despite the framer’s personal beliefs, religion was a matter best left to the individual citizens and their respective state governments (and most states in the founding era retained some form of religious establishment). The Constitution, in short, can be fairly characterized as “godless” or secular only insofar as it deferred to the states on all matters regarding religion and devotion to God.3
Keep in mind that the national Constitution did not nullify the religious pronouncements of the state constitutions, and neither did it separate religion from civil government. The First Amendment is a direct prohibition on Congress, not the states, to stay out of religious issues: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This is a good indication that the states were to be unmolested on their religious requirements. As I’ve noted elsewhere,4 even today every state constitution makes reference to God. Here’s a sample of some of the state constitutions and their religious language during the time the Constitution was drafted:
The Constitutions says nothing about morality or values. There are no prohibitions against murder, theft, or rape. The word “law” is used numerous times, but it is never defined. The author of an 1838 tract entitled, An Inquiry into the Moral and religious Character of the American Government, makes an important observation: “The object of the Constitution [is to] distribute power, not favour; to frame a government, and not to forestall and clog the administration of it by words of preconceived partiality for this or that possible subject of its future action.”7 This is especially true when religion was an issue reserved to the states. States wrote educational provisions into their constitutions, while the Federal Constitution remained silent on the subject. The 1876 constitution of North Carolina includes 15 sections on education.
In attempt to drive a stake in the belief that America had “been founded on Christian principles,” she resurrects the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli and its statement that “the Government of the United States . . . is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”8 I’ve dealt with this treaty elsewhere,9 but let me summarize the argument here.
In drafting the treaty, the United States had to assure the ruler of Tripoli that in its struggle with the pirates “it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,” that “the said states never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan [Muslim] nation” due to religious considerations.
A survey of the state constitutions, charters, national pronouncements, and official declarations of the thirteen state governments would convince any representative from Tripoli that America was a Christian nation by law. The Constitution itself states that it was drafted, as noted above, “In the year of our Lord.” The American consul in Algiers had to construct a treaty that would assure the ruler of Tripoli that troops would not be used to impose Christianity on a Muslim people. A study of later treaties with Muslim nations seems to support this conclusion. The 1816 “Treaty of Peace and Amity with Algiers” is a case in point: “It is declared by the contracting parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony between the two nations; and the Consuls and the Agents of both nations shall have liberty to celebrate the rights of their prospective religions in their own houses.”13
Piracy, kidnapping, and enslaving Christian seamen remained a problem despite the 1797 Treaty. In addition, Tripoli demanded increased tribute payments in 1801. When President Jefferson refused to increase the tribute, Tripoli declared war on the United States. A United States navy squadron, under Commander Edward Preble, blockaded Tripoli from 1803 to 1805. After rebel soldiers from Tripoli, led by United States Marines, captured the city of Derna, the Pasha of Tripoli signed a treaty promising to exact no more tribute.
It is important to note that the 1805 treaty with Tripoli differs from the 1797 Treaty in that the phrase “as the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” is conspicuously absent. Article 14 of the new treaty corresponds to Article 11 of the first treaty. It reads in part: “[T]he government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmen.” Assurances are still offered that the United States will not interfere with Tripoli’s religion or laws.
It’s obvious that by 1805 the United States had greater bargaining power and did not have to bow to the demands of this Muslim stronghold. A strong navy and a contingent of Marines also helped. But it wasn’t until Madison’s presidency that hostilities finally stopped when he declared war against Algiers.14
Those who use the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli as a defense against the Christian America thesis are silent on the 1805 treaty. For example, Alan Dershowitz cites the 1797 Treaty as “the best contemporaneous evidence” against claims that the United States was founded as a Christian nation,15 but he makes no mention of the 1805 treaty and other treaties that are specifically Trinitarian.
If treaties are going to be used to establish the religious foundation of America, then it’s essential that we look at more than one treaty. In 1783, at the close of the war with Great Britain, a peace treaty was ratified that began with these words: “In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain. . . .”16 The treaty was signed by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay. Keep in mind that it was Adams who signed the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli.
If one line in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli turns America into a secular State (which it does not), then how does Allen deal with the treaties of 1783, 1822, 1805, and 1848 and the state constitutions? She doesn’t, because she can’t. Allen needs to go back and do a bit more research and look at resources beyond the typical college professor’s bag of tricks and sleight of hand.
2 To be republished by American Vision in 2005.
3 Daniel L. Dreisbach, “A Godless Constitution?: A Response to Kramnick and Moore” (1997): www.leaderu.com/common/godlessconstitution.html. Dreisbach is a Professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University, Washington, D.C.
4 Gary DeMar, The Christian Foundation of America (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2005), 14–19.
5 Francis Newton Thorpe, The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies, 7 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), 5:2815.
6 Thorpe, The Federal and State Constitutions, 5:2793. The same 1776 constitution stated that “no clergyman, or preacher of the gospel, of any denomination, shall be capable of being a member of either the Senate, House of Commons, or Council of State, while he continues in the exercise of the pastoral function” (5:2793). This provision demonstrates the true meaning of “separation of church and state.”
7 Quoted in Daniel L. Dreisbach, “God and the Constitution: Reflections on Selected Nineteenth Century Commentaries on References to the Deity and the Christian Religion in the United States Constitution” (1993), 24, note 85.
8 The entire treaty can be found in William M. Malloy, Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1776–1909, 4 vols. (New York: Greenwood Press, [1910] 1968), 2:1786.
9 Gary DeMar, America’s Christian History: The Untold Story (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 1995), chap. 8.
10 Stephen Clissold, The Barbary Slaves (New York: Barnes & Noble, [1977] 1992), 4. The 1815 Treaty of Peace and Amity with Algiers includes the following in Article XV: “On a vessel or vessels of war belonging to the United States anchoring before the city of Algiers, the Consul is to inform the Dey of her arrival, when she shall receive the salutes which are, by treat or custom, given to the ships of war of the most favored nations on similar occasions, and which shall be returned gun for gun; and if, after such arrival, so announced, any Christians whatsoever, captives in Algiers, make their escape and take refuge on board any of the ships of war, they shall not be required back again, nor shall the Consul of the United States or commanders of said ships be required to pay anything for the said Christians.” (Malloy, Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1:7).
11 Joseph Wheelan, Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror, 1801-1805 (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003), xxiii.
12 Wheelan, Jefferson’s War, 7
13 Malloy, Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements Between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1:15.
14 Lewis Lord, “Pirates!,” U.S. News & World Report (February 25/March 4, 2002), 50.
15 Alan Dershowitz, America Declares Independence (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003), 64.
16 Malloy, Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1776–1909, 1:586.
#91. To: GarySpFC (#74)
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl227.php
#111. To: Pericles (#91)
#190. To: GarySpFC (#111)
. The work became the basis of university legal education in England and North America. He was knighted in 1770.
#195. To: Pericles, GarySpFc, liberator, Destro, BobCeleste (#190)
You argue the point for someone who Jefferson was against because of modern American Fundie attempts to hold onto their modern myths of Protestant Fundie America's origins.
#196. To: redleghunter (#195)
The only myth is the leftist, atheist secular myth that the founders were deists.
#202. To: Pericles, GarySpFc, liberator, Destro (#196)
Also, the Treaty Of Tripoli which the Senate ratified for Jefferson flat out stated that the USA was not founded as a Christian nation and not one noted comment of shock, dissent, etc to the wording of that treaty which was published in the newspapers back then for all to read. That tells me this was an unremarkable view by Americans at the time of the Founding Fathers regardless of their individual faiths.
#232. To: redleghunter, GarySpFc, liberator (#202)
That would be article 11 of the treaty. Which some scholars note did not appear in the Arabic version of the treaty. Which is interesting.
#282. To: Pericles, GarySpFc, liberator, Murron (#232)
The only people who claim this are Fundie revisionists trying to grasp at straws. Even if true (I Don't read Arabic) it matters not at all because the Senate ratified the English language treaty.
#305. To: redleghunter (#282)
#311. To: Vicomte13 (#305)
Forgive me for not caring what the Founders thought. Nobody cares what the politicians of a hundred years later when THEY bound the nation too. Americans only obey old laws and edicts that they find are beneficial. They ignore everything else.
#323. To: GarySpFC (#311)
So the Constitution as written by the Founding Fathers means something different to you than what they had in mind?
#345. To: Vicomte13 (#323)
Truth is, the Constitution has written by the Founding Fathers stopped meaning anything in 1861. Now it's just like an old family crest. One wears it with pride and it shows the history, but the actual Constitution is what is really DONE, and the Founders' Constitution was set aside when it failed to address the evil of slavery.
#347. To: GarySpFC (#345)
The truth is you believe in a living Constitution, whereas I believe in a written one. Yes, errors were made in the past and in the present, but the Constitution is still a written document, with the shortcomings of a corrupt court translating it. I do not believe in relativism.
Replies to Comment # 347.
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