And While We're on the Subject..........

It seems to me that, for all of our reverence and respect for the “Founding Fathers,” we have apparently forgotten who and what they were: they were REVOLUTIONARIES in the purest sense of the word. They were the Chicago Sevens of their day, except for the fact that they not only advocated the violent overthrow of what was the LEGAL government at the time, they actually SUCCEEDED in overthrowing that government and replacing it with the form they thought would best serve the needs and interests of the American people.

We need to remember the Founders not as we see them in the paintings hung in so many public buildings--sedate, moderate, hollow--but as they really were: passionate men fighting for a radical new idea, the vision of a nation governed by THE PEOPLE rather than the aristocracy of wealth or spiritualism. They would be horrified at the way the country has slowly returned to what it was before the War for Independence--a country ruled by the economic and political interests of foreign nations at the expense of its own citizens.

Not so long ago, President Bush justified his war in Iraq by claiming that to “cut and run” would mean that all of our soldiers who had died in that war would have died in vain, but what about all of the patriots who fought and suffered and died in our very first war, the war which separated us from England and made us a nation in our own right? And what about the second war in 1812 in which England tried to reclaim America as a British colony--will we allow those who fought and suffered and died in that war to have died in vain also?

But there’s another, much more pragmatic, point which I haven’t seen brought up anywhere (if I’m wrong, I’d appreciate someone pointing it out): assuming Mike Huckabee and his followers succeed in making this a “Christian nation,” what KIND of Christian nation will it be? There are a multitude of sects which fall under the generic heading of “Christian” from which to choose--Catholic vs. Protestant being the biggest one, but under the Protestant category, you have Baptists/Southern Baptists, Methodists, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Unitarian, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Pentecostal/Evangelical and others. The faithful of each of those sects will passionately defend the most minute difference between themselves and the others, even when the significance of such minutiae escapes the rest of us. Would we see them battling it out for supremacy in a competition for not only the hearts and minds of people but for their bodies as well, in the form of government agents enforcing attendance at religious functions and regulating whatever behaviors the ruling religion bans or requires? Would candidates for the highest office in the land have to compete in Old Testament-like contests of “My God is better than your God,” in which the winner is determined by surpassing his rivals in the performance of miracles and wonders like altars lit by fire from heaven and the raising of the dead? No doubt the crowds would be entertained by such spectacles, but do we want our spiritual leaders reduced to the level of any talented Las Vegas showman or Hollywood special effects crew?

And what about the freedom of religion guaranteed under the First Amendment? What about the right to belong to whatever church--or to no church at all--which best fulfills our spiritual needs? Will we be compelled to change churches according to whichever church the next Political Pope (or whatever we would call the holder of the office we now call the President) belongs to? Or would we follow the Catholic model and have Popes who reign for a lifetime?

Even if I am wrong in thinking that we would ever see HOLY wars become CIVIL wars, the men who founded this country believed that the separation of church and state was vital to preserving both religious and civil freedoms, that encroachment by either into the areas rightfully belonging into the other would result in tyranny--they would certainly be shocked and outraged at the way that people like Mike Huckabee invoke them to promote a cause they would have completely opposed. And Mike’s claim that “most” of them were clergy is ridiculous--if not outright dishonest: there is no formula by which 1 out of 56 can be considered "most" of anything.

In the words of one of those Founding Fathers:

I am for freedom of religion, and against all manœuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another. — Thomas Jefferson, Philadelphia , 1799