christian, nation, christianity, religious, right, tripoli, treaty, us
The Religious Right is in love with the idea that the US is a "christian nation". Read any sufficiently fundamentalist blog/message board/"news" site, and you'll see that phrase more than once. In fact, you'll also see a great deal about "returning" the US to the "christian principals the country was founded upon".
The arguments are many, but mostly revolve around two ideas: (1) the Founding Fathers were Christians, and (2) many of the Ten Commandments are found in the US Criminal Code.
I could argue the above 2 points until somebody's cow comes home, but I don't need to. I have the US Treaty With Tripoli. Written in 1796, read aloud in its entirety to the Senate in 1797, and personally approved by John Adams, Article 11 clearly states:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion
So there you have it. We are not, nor were we ever, a "christian nation".
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
5 comments:
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But we all know that John Adams was the weeniest of pseudo-Christian presidents. His voice carried as much weight as an anorexic Asian chick.
ReplyDelete(Too much?)
LOL! But he made good beer . . . ;)
ReplyDeleteHOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS TREATY!?
ReplyDeleteno, fucking seriously, i am a Political Science MAJOR (ok, and also Communication, but the journalism thing isn't the issue here, the political history IS) HOW DID NO ONE EVER TELL ME OF THIS? i read history for FUN, and i never knew of this!
*tears hair out*
*sob*
do "Musslemen" = Muslims?
and is that really a treaty with the pirates of Barbary Coast? wow...
i'm guessing musslemen are muslims. i never heard of it, either.
ReplyDeletei just linked to this post over at Pandagon, just so you know :)
ReplyDelete