Oh and by the way, it was on that treaty (Which was UNANIMOUSLY ratified by the US Senate in 1797.) where it declares that the United States is NOT, in any sense, founded on a Christian religion.
There is some argument that it doesn't count because it did not show up on the Arabic translation of the treaty. But as pointed out here, that is just a bunch of smoke a mirrors designed to distract from a facts.
More generally, we can't imagine how the absence of Article 11 in the Arabic version effects the separationist argument. It was the English version of the treaty that was approved by President Adams and Secretary Pickering, and this version unquestionably contained Article 11. Similarly, when the Senate ratified the treaty, they did so knowing full well that the English version declared that the United States was not a Christian nation.
God I love it when facts refute essentially EVERYTHING that the Fundamentalists try to jam down our throats.
By the way, I think SOMEBODY owes Iraq and Afghanistan an apology.
1797... hmmmm, wouldn't that have been around the time of the founding fathers?
ReplyDeleteI guess that answers the any questions regarding their original intent to keep religion out of government.
Think I'll go to church and light a candle.
They will never believe it because people like David barton have re written history and fox news and glenn beck have had this guy on shows numerous times.
ReplyDeleteOf course, barton and beck and fox news never lie to their viewers, so how is this not a christian country.
Claiming voraciously that America is a Christian nation serves the purpose of disenfranchising huge groups of people. Next, these fundie loonies will want to limit voting rights to Christians only.
ReplyDeleteBTW, yeah I'm a Christian, but I also believe in the possibility that God spoke to people of other religions. It is incredibly arrogant to think that God affiliated himself exclusively with Christians. Many "Christians" seem to believe that people of other religions are "children of a lesser god."
@WakeUpAmerica
ReplyDeleteDitto.
Conservatives are a curse on America.
ReplyDelete~Canuck~
Public education has failed America, and America is reverting to Europe before the Enlightenment, with the help of fundies : great inequality between rich and poors, the poors having to obey both the laws of religion and those of the State, while the rich obey none. That is best achieved through denying knowledge to the poors.
ReplyDeleteAny country that doesn't invest massively into public education is bound to regress as well. One day or later comes a crisis, the fundies ride on it and destroy all knowledge that may threaten their power. Which is to say : all knowledge.
One hope left for average Americans is to educate themselves through Internet ; no wonder the conservatives (fundies' pals) proposed laws to restrict the Net. It was very courageous of your President to step in, and to protect the ability of future Americans to garner knowledge via non-1%-controlled ways.
Fundies destroyed the Arab civilization in 1200-1300 ; in a very short timeframe, that civilization went from inventing optics, mathematics, chemistry, and naming the stars - to male children being hit by their master's stick, if they make one error in bellowing the part of Quran they have to learn word by word.
It's been 800 years and the Arab civilization has not yet recovered. I'm told the Arab 1% are very well off, though.
No wonder the Koch brothers would like America to be a lot more like Saudi Arabia : very very religious and unthinking, with a side dish of submissive and ignorant women (research has proven that the higher the education of the mother, the higher the social status of her children - all other factors being corrected for).
It's funny in a way.
ReplyDeleteThose who loudly tout "American exceptionalism" almost always fail to admit that what made America exceptional was the Constitution, the very document that made America a secular nation instead of a theocracy, as were all the other nations before it. Now almost all nations have copied the exceptionally good American style, and even Turkey (95% Muslim) claims to be a secular democracy.
It takes a rewriting of history and a stubborn refusal to face facts, but that's what some Christian "nationalists" such as Barton, Beck and others like them do to falsely claim America as a Christian nation.
This is excellent! I'd like to have this statement printed on a plasticized card to keep in my wallet to show the nutjobs who insist that America is a Christian nation. Thank you for finding it.
ReplyDelete~physicsmom
Thank You for this post. What these people who think America is a Christian Country don't realize is that they're turning our Democract into a Theocracy, much like Iran, they're so hellbent on occupying.
ReplyDeleteIt always amazes me how clever the forefathers were in how they constructed the Constitution as a "living document" of sorts, that can evolve under the law over time.