If you look at the founding documents, there is ZERO mention of Jesus or Christianity and only one mention of “God” and that’s in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Nature’s God, which had and has a very specific meaning.
This is why, in the Treaty of Tripoli, the first international document to recognize the US as an independent nation, it reads:
“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, religious 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.”
Didn’t the first pilgrims who came to what is now the USA do it because they wanted to practice their specific flavor of Christianity and England was like “nah bro, that’s crazy”? Or did my teachers in school lie to me? I know the country itself wasn’t founded on religion.
Yeah, the timeline between Columbus and the Constitution was huge. I know that a lot of the founding fathers were deists as well, which is fascinating. I wish some of their visions for the country were still a thing.
The buried lede here is that the disease of religion was embedded into the nation's DNA from the very beginning whether or not the country was conceived of as a "Christian" nation or a religious nation of any other kind. While many of the founders were perhaps agnostics or even covert atheists, it would be a mistake to think of them as a monolith or that their intentions are any less valid than those of their more devout brethren. Using the argument that the "Founders" never intended us to be a Christian nation is a categorical fallacy, as it is impossible to deny that absolutely some of them did, just as it is likewise impossible to deny that many were slave-owners who never saw african americans, women or even certain European ethnicities as their true equals.
Looking back on it now, it's clear as day that the Founders' faustian bargain was merely a 250-year timebomb waiting to explode. We're in the last moments before the fuse goes off, and the religionists are licking their chops.
I find it amusing how the argumentation that America is a Christian Nation is wholly reliant on not understanding political terms along with being ignorant of the history and founding documents of the United States. This is so frequently bundled with American supremacism and yet they care so little for the work of the founders or the history of the country.
Oh so I just need to be a lackey for the dems for thirty years and then I can con my way into a being a superdelegate and have some say in who I elect.
And then when I pick the atheist anarchist I get told they're unelectable.
When was the last time we had non-Capitalist or non-Christian as options on any level of the selection process? In the two-party duopoly we’ve had… Vivek Ramaswami with the American Fascist Republican Party for non-Christian and then the closest we’ve got to non-Capitalist being Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Bernie Sander’s Social Democracy (which Sanders mislabels as Democratic Socialism).
Humans as a whole are selfish, greedy, short-sighted, ignorant, aggressive, toxic assholes.
Saying we’re made in God’s image is one of the hardest-hitting insults at God we could possibly drop - it’s literally an attack on every single one of Sky Daddy’s features.
I’m an atheist. But I understand the need for this language because the majority of the country believes this bullshit so you have to pay lip service to it.
This really isn’t anything different than any other president has said in living memory. If anything, it’s not as extreme as some of them.
For example-
No, I don’t know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.
That was George H. W. Bush.
That said, I will give his piece of shit son credit for one thing. He said this:
I will be your president regardless of your faith. And I don’t expect you to agree with me, necessarily, on religion. As a matter of fact, no president should ever try to impose religion on our society. The great – the great tradition of America is one where people can worship the – the way they want to worship. And if they choose not to worship, they’re just as patriotic as your neighbor.
Crazy times when the bar fell so low that Bush isn't even considered to be one of the worst US presidents anymore. US hardliners have all gone so crazy that people like him, by comparison, appear to be moderate now.
Jesus, that was such a weird time that folks wanted Bush back despite the super recession he caused. Obama really rocked the right hard so they said to themselves “never be mocked by libruls again” and are trying to take down democracy. And folks were calling out the fascist direction back with Bush/Cheney too.
Then your memory is lacking, sorry to say. Bush is the patriot act, Iraq war, border fence, torture program, PRISM, secret courts, worst economic crisis since the great depression, too big to fail, surplus-to-deficit, rich tax cuts, axis of evil, no child left behind (deceptively-named act that burdened public schools), global embarrassment guy. He is actually worse than trump, and unlike trump’s fumbling ass, bush was well-connected enough to successfully steal the election in 2000 with help from the supreme court. Don’t help republicans shift the overton window by rehabilitating that war criminal’s image and treating him as some sort of moderate.
Feel free to list them. As for COVID, Biden was just as eager to open things up, he was just lucky that the vaccine became a thing as he entered office, so he could fast-track that (Trump tried to sabotage the rollout on his way out because he’s a sore loser). Lockdowns weren’t popular among the capitalist class because of the impact to business, and you can see they weren’t taken seriously with a number of politicians flouting lockdown rules (including democrats). As a reminder, Bush was warned about a potential terrorist attack happening and then let 9/11 happen on his watch, then used that as an excuse to launch two wars and install a vast surveillance apparatus, secret courts, and a torture program.
We’re doing a comparison. Me pointing out that Bush was just as bad in this regard is not a “handwave” it’s part of the comparison. Your “many worse things” list turned out to be a damp squib.
How? You claimed I was handwaving, but you’re the one handwaving. You project like a republican and you play into their hands by pretending trump is a special case when he’s really just following standard republican policy.
If we’re going to play that game, how many wars did trump start vs bush? How many torture programs did trump start vs bush? How many surveillance apparatuses did trump start vs bush?
Why should I read from the beginning when you changed the subject a handful of posts ago? Would that alter the fact that you changed the subject? I’m pretty sure that accusing me of doing it first doesn’t alter what you did.
I didn’t change the subject, you did. I listed all the things that bush was worse for and you decided to change the subject to one that wasn’t even a political focus back then. When it came to lgbt rights back then, it was mainly about marriage, and bush was against that. Bush was also for upholding sodomy laws, as one of my links pointed out. Do you honestly think that bush would be for trans rights or whatever other lgbt issues that are the focus today?
trans rights or whatever other lgbt issues that are the focus today?
And here’s the actual issue. You know nothing about what queer people faced under Trump and what they’re going to face if he gets back into office. I’m guessing that’s in part because you didn’t actually look at my link.
Going further up the thread will not have made the change of subject I pasted not a change of subject. Strange that you’re accusing me of playing games when you’re doing the “what are you going to believe, me or your own eyes” thing…
To be fair, Dubya said a whole lot of things that no president before or since has said, mostly because his grasp of the vocabulary, grammar, and basic sentence structures of the English language is tenuous at best.
Bush Jr was totally a warmonger… but he was also seemed more rational and sane than a lot of republicans comparatively… I wouldn’t say that he’s a good guy, just one of the least bad republicans. I’ll also give it to Romney for having some sense of principles and standing up against Trump despite everything else about him. They seem like the last in a rare breed of republicans that actually have some basic sense of honor. It’s a pretty low bar honestly but they seem to be slightly less lead poisoned? Which is something, I guess?
Dude barely could form coherent sentences. He wanted to be on his ranch, not make hard decisions and coast through life as he always had on his privilege.
His cabinet on the other hand, of course picked for him, was the Mr Rushmore of military-industrial corpo takeover.Cheney ex Halliburton CEO that directed no-bid contract awards in the many billions to them. They of course still fraudulently over billed the government and had to cop to repayment in a level of awkwardness seldom achieved. "Con"deleeza Rice, who Exon named an oil tanker after prior to being secretary of state may have had oil interests in mid, Rumsfeld who was both the youngest and oldest secretary of defense in Ford and then Shrub administrations directed negative and increasingly antidemocratic military policy from Vietnam to Afghanistan.
He clearly wanted to be to republicans what Clinton was to democrats, the firm commitment to centrism. Instead 9/11 happened and the country lost its damn shit and decided to declare war on Muslims and for some reason environmentalists.
Why is it always that the US does something bad or beyond logic, it always goes back to “what about that time when x said/did something worse” as if it’s any fucking better?
Remember that time when obama bombed a wedding?
Remember when bush made up lies about invading iraq and got out scot-free?
Remember that time when we invaded countries for no reason other than pushing our agenda?
Remember when we funded terrorists that are now terrorizing the locals?
Remember when we changed regimes to religious fundamentalists that turned into theocracy?
Remember when we supported coups in democratic countries?
He can say any fucking prepared statement, he’s a piece of shit zionist currently perpetuating a genocide. People trying to present him in positive light comparingto the scum of the nation are maggots that plague the earth.
In the same breath, Biden asserts that every person is created in the “image of God,” implying a place for faith in interpreting America’s founding principles.
coming from a Catholic that was in office when Roe v. Wade was overturned
You don’t seem to understand that the President and the Supreme Court are two different branches of the government, each with separate powers and responsibilities.
Saying that Biden ‘was in office’ is meaningless, because there was nothing he could have legally done.
Not too long ago you couldn’t have a Catholic president saying this isn’t a Christian nation. It’s smaller progress than could be hoped, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
“the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”. Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the United States Senate unanimously without debate on June 7, 1797, taking effect June 10, 1797
I’ve literally had people argue to me that the First Amendment only meant that you could pick whichever version of Christianity you preferred but didn’t specify any right to non-Christianity at all.
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