We  believe that the Framers of the United States Constitution intended to found a secular nation, not “a Christian nation” as so many conservative pundits assert. We have looked for informed opinion about it, and found this one, given to us by Tom Hinkson, who is “a  life-long atheist”. He was, he says, “not brought up with any religion”, though both his parents “believe in a Christian deity”. He served his country in the Navy as a Nuclear Reactor Operator for seven years. In the last election cycle he joined the campaign for Marco Rubio. He is a  life member of both the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW).

Here is his opinion. It is his and not ours, but the information he provides confirms our own.

2011 is supposed to be the year of the Constitutional Conservative, but is it really? The Tea Party has helped  the Republican Party gain a majority in the House of Representatives, and near parity in the Senate, so things in the US have to get better – right? Not so fast! It seems that we as a nation have traded one evil for a possibly lesser evil, but another evil nonetheless. Have you noticed who is at the helm of the Tea Party? Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich … the list goes on. You might ask, “Well aren’t they better than Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Joe Biden?” The answer is yes, of course they are. But too many of the Tea Party figureheads represent that “silent majority” of biblical literalist Christians who, instead of wanting to turn the United States into a socialist utopia as Obama and the Democrats do, want to turn it into a kind of theocracy.

Since the rise of the Tea Party, there has been a movement to re-learn our American history, mainly fueled by Glenn Beck. This would be a very good thing, if he told the whole story. History is usually told with huge gaps to reinforce the tellers’ point of view. The so-called Christian conservatives bend history one way, and the Progressives would rather ignore history altogether.

If you have watched Glenn Beck for any appreciable length of time, you have seen him bring several people on to argue that we are a Christian nation, that nearly everything in the Constitution has a biblical foundation, and the proof for these claims lies in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. He and they make a compelling argument – at least to those who don’t know history.

It is true that the preamble of the Declaration of Independence refers to a divine power:

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.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The  Constitution, however, created a very explicitly secular government, and those that would argue otherwise try to re-write history to hide the transition from a government that derives its power from a higher power to one that derives its power from the consent of the governed.

Glenn Beck and the “Christian Conservatives” would have everyone believe that the Declaration of Independence founded our nation, and that the Constitution was written with the Declaration as sort of a foundation. The question is, are they right? Let’s look at some history that they won’t tell us.

The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th, 1776, formally declaring the independence of the 13 colonies from Great Britain, but did it create the United States of America? The answer is no, the United States of America was created by the Articles of Confederation, which created a binding agreement of government between the 13 original colonies. The Articles of Confederation were not ratified until March, 1781. Until the Articles of Confederation were ratified, the United States of America was just an idea. But wait a minute, why doesn’t anyone mention the Articles of Confederation? Probably because the Articles of Confederation created a government that failed in short order. The Constitution that we have today was originally ratified on September 17th, 1787, creating our current form of government.

The “Christian Conservatives” would have everyone believe that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written virtually side-by-side; in fact they are frequently published this way. The question is why would they want to ignore the 11-year gap? The answer is that the Constitution is a secular document. But, if we can be convinced that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written side-by-side, then an argument can be made to declare the United States of America a “Christian nation”, which opens the door for a biblical lens to view the Constitution through; even though the separation of church and state is an undeniable concept that is spelled out in the Constitution, and further explained by Thomas Jefferson in his letters to two separate Baptist organizations (see here and here).

Christians will argue that the intent of the founders was to create a Christian nation because Christianity was (and still is) the major religion present in the United States. But, if that was their intent, why not spell it out? Why would the founders specifically state that there will be “no religious test for office” (Article 6, paragraph 3 of the Constitution), or that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” (1st Amendment)? The answer is obvious: the founders wanted to create a secular government. Not only did they not state that there was a federal religion, they specifically banned it! In fact they went even further than that, and banned congress from making any law that RESPECTED the establishment of a religion, meaning that not only would the government not create a religion, or declare a national religion, but that the government would not even formally recognize religions.

Of course, the secular argument has a few problems: for instance, it is traditional for congress to open with a prayer, which would seem to contradict the Constitution itself, and honestly, it does. So, how can this be explained? Hypocrisy, plain and simple. If there is one constant in the history of this nation, then hypocrisy is it. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both outspoken critics of slavery, yet both owned dozens of slaves. No one today will argue in favor of slavery, even though several of the founders owned them. Yet, there are many who would argue for legislation based upon the bible or other religious texts rather than the Constitution simply because most of our founders identified themselves as Christians.

In the Declaration of Independence, there are three mentions of a higher power, they are: “Nature’s God”, “Creator”, and “Divine Providence”. None of these three terms are innately Christian, and the use of the terms is as an authority to separate from Great Britain. The United States of America is mentioned at the end of the document, but as I stated earlier, this was an idea; the United States of America was not formally established until the Articles of Confederation were ratified. Independence from Great Britain, and thus international recognition as a nation was not achieved until the end of the Revolutionary War by the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3rd, 1783.

In the Articles of Confederation, there are three references to a deity. Two of those references are “in the Year of Our Lord”, which was the common language for stating a date, not a reference to any divine inspiration for the government being created. The third reference is found in Article 13, the first sentence of the second paragraph states: “And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said articles of confederation and perpetual union.” “Great Governor of the World” is an obvious allusion to a higher power, but not specifically to a Christian deity.

Nonetheless, the “Great Governor of the World” is the authority that is used to create the government under the Articles of Confederation. So if  the United States of America were still governed by the Articles of Confederation, the Christians would have some proof that we were founded as a “Christian Nation”. But as The Articles of Confederation created a very weak and very flawed government which soon failed, it can be stated that the government formed as a direct result of the Declaration of Independence was a failure. The founders of our current government knew that several changes needed to be made.

Within the Constitution, there is only one reference to any higher power, and that reference is in the date, which as stated above, was the common way of declaring a date “in the Year of Our Lord”. That reference is at the end of the Constitution, just before the signatures. There are several very important differences between the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation.

The first, and largest difference, is that the Constitution does not claim any authority from a higher power, whereas both the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation did. Instead, the Constitution boldly proclaims “We the People” as the authority to create the government and all that comes with it. This runs in direct contradiction to the “Christian Conservative” claim that our rights are not given to us by the government, but by the Christian God (which was not specifically mentioned in any founding document). This puts a large hole in the “Christian Conservative” argument, but the Constitution does not stop there.

Within the Constitution, there are three specific bans on the co-mingling of religion and government. These bans are found in Article 6, paragraph 3, and in the 1st Amendment. The Constitution clearly states that there shall be “no religious test for office”, at either the federal or state levels, and that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This suggests very strongly that one of the many lessons that the founders learned from the Articles of Confederation was that the mixing of religion and government does not work.

So while in principle I agree with “restoring America” as the Tea Partiers and Glenn Beck advocate, I say let’s restore it to a government run by the laws set forth by the Constitution. While we’re at it, let’s restore the Pledge of Allegiance to how it was before 1954, when the words “under God” were added. We can also take the words “In God We Trust” off of our currency. Those words were added first to coinage in 1864, on the two-cent coin, long after the founders died. Paper money wasn’t tainted with those words until 1957. Our national motto “In God We Trust” wasn’t adopted until 1956. All of the laws ordering these changes are unconstitutional because they all respect the establishment of religion. Let us abide by the Constitution, and restore the secular nation that the Founders intended.

Obama is acting the role of POTUS, not  filling it. He reads from a script. He does not understand the responsibilities of his position.

That’s the opinion of several commentators.

Carol Peracchio writes at the American Thinker:

So far, Obama’s approach to being president has appeared to be: 1. Make a speech outlining a policy (health care, stimulus). 2. Hand everything to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. 3. When the negative public reaction reaches critical mass, threatening passage of the legislation, spend the last two days before the vote twisting arms and making offers to Democrats. 4. Pass the legislation on a strictly party-line vote. 5. Make another speech taking full credit for whatever ended up passing.

Unless reading a teleprompter can be considered work, it’s obvious that anything that can be considered an achievement of this presidency is due to Pelosi and Reid, with honorable mention in the arm-twisting category to Rahm Emmanuel. And in the rare instance where a goal of the president does not involve Congress (think the Chicago Olympics), Obama’s “read a speech” approach to hard work is shown to be an utter failure. If there is even a tiny glimmer of light in the Gulf oil spill disaster, it’s that the Obama con that he actually is working and involved has been exposed …

A fascinating illustration of Obama’s work ethic can be seen in this article by Jack Cashill, who has done exhaustive research on the dubious authorship of Barack Obama’s autobiography. Apparently a “hopelessly blocked” Obama gave all his notes to his friend Bill Ayers, who “helped” produce a manuscript. Exchange Nancy Pelosi for Bill Ayers, and we see that Obama’s modus operandi toward actual work has not changed. …

President Obama played the Big Con and became president by perfecting the art of appearing cool, calm, intellectual, and competent. Unfortunately, this seems to be the extent of his repertoire of emotions… No matter the crisis, the president reads his lines the exact same way: cool, calm, detached. He is truly one of the worst actors I’ve ever seen. It’s too bad there isn’t a director around who can tell our (Not So) Great Pretender, “I’m afraid you’re just not what we’re looking for.”

From Newsmax, by Theodore Kettle:

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, whose tireless leadership in the days and weeks after 9/11 made him a national hero, has accused President Obama of doing everything wrong in his handling of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

“It couldn’t be worse,” Guiliani said Wednesday when asked by Fox News’ Sean Hannity to rate Obama’s performance. “I mean, this would be an example, if you’re taught ‘Leadership 101,’ of exactly what not to do: minimize it at first; two days after or three days after it happened, go on vacation. … He’s been on vacation more often than he has, by far, been to Louisiana or Mississippi, or any of the places affected,” Giuliani added. …

According to Giuliani, the president’s nonchalance delivers a “signal right into the entire bureaucracy, that they’re also very lackadaisical about it. But one of the things you understand as a leader is: your actions are going to energize your bureaucracy to do the best it can.”

The ex-NYC mayor charged that Obama exhibited a similar lack of leadership in the case of the Christmas Day botched airliner bombing last year, with a negative ripple effect as the result.

“He did the same thing on the Christmas Day bombing,” Giuliani told Hannity. “He stays on vacation for 11 days. So the other guys go on vacation.” That’s a clear reference to National Counterterrorism Center director Michael Leiter not cutting short a ski trip after the December 25 near-destruction of a Detroit-bound passenger jet. … The reality is that the administration has made every mistake it could possibly make, right down to this criminal investigation of BP. … Are you gonna distract them from the job of what they’re supposed to be doing? … If we’ve got a bunch of criminals doing it, why are we allowing them to do it?” Giuliani wondered.

From the Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell:

Pretending that our economy can survive without a commitment to safe oil operations is naïve at best. It is binary: If we don’t drill, we import. And if we don’t open drilling to easier sources such as onshore deposits and shale, we limit ourselves to riskier exploration a mile below the ocean floor. Despite the president’s assertions at his press conference earlier this week, billions of barrels of “easily accessible” oil have been turned into “impossible to access” oil by federal regulations and moratoria – including the President’s own actions – that block any access.

What the President should do is examine the red tape that may have contributed to the failure to contain the environmental disaster. Were there missed opportunities to burn off more of the leaking oil because of overblown air pollution standards? What were the holdups in the use of dispersants? Did federal permitting delays stop Louisiana from creating the artificial barriers it needed? The answers to these questions appear to be yes, and that responsibility lies with the President. He and his team should make it top priority to waive any regulatory barriers that continue to slow cleanup and recovery efforts. …

The Deepwater Horizon platform sat on federal waters and was under federal jurisdiction. It is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure that the leased space is not a threat to public health or safety. And it is the responsibility of the government to ensure the clean up efforts in the Gulf are appropriately managed. …

Coordinating the cleanup is equally imperative … The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 authorizes the president to oversee the cleanup efforts of the responsible parties, and offshore this duty falls to the U.S. Coast Guard. Yet, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had to lobby the White House for weeks to get engaged on this front. …

The Obama administration’s resort to criminal investigation and possible prosecution of BP is not only premature, it is predictable. In the wake of accusations that Obama has failed to take decisive action, his administration is taking the path of “nothing shows that you are ‘doing something’ like prosecuting someone.”

It is possible that criminal wrongdoing occurred, but the current approach—one that all but announces that criminal charges will be brought and then seeks to identify the crime and who will be designated as criminal—undermines the criminal justice system and Americans’ respect for the law. …

President Obama instinctively leans toward an activist government except when every so often he hesitates. Ironically, it is these moments that tend to be the precise times when the federal government’s role is most justified, whether that be border security, the war on terror, ceding sovereignty to multilateral organizations, or now in the Gulf. The federal government has a role in the Gulf, and it’s time for the president to articulate it to the American people.

We don’t disagree that Obama’s an incompetent windbag and a bad actor, but he has real power and is using it to impose his collectivist ideals on America, immensely harming the country he was so disastrously elected to lead.

The Pythoness

(From AmeriPAC)

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is the prime mover in restricting the supply of water to the farms of California’s hitherto fertile Central Valley, so severely that the farmers are going out of business with  dire consequences. Food production is dropping, and local unemployment is 40% and rising.

She is doing this in order, ludicrously, to save the hypomesus transpacificus, a wee fish that she and her fellow environmentalists apparently believe the world cannot conceivably do without. [See our post below, Smelt fishy, 2 September, 2009]

You would think, wouldn’t you, that Nancy Pelosi is passionate about preserving endangered species?

Yet, according to the American Spectator, she herself ‘circumvented ESA [Endangered Species Act] requirements for two endangered species on one of her own investment properties‘.

While hypocrisy so characterizes the left that no new instance of it can be surprising, the wickedness of what Pelosi is doing is too outrageous to be passed over with a sigh.

This is an abuse of power that should be punishable by law. Is it? If not, why not?

Mike Adams, at Townhall, while telling the story of one farmer’s ruin, points out more consequences of this scandal:

For nearly 20 years, California’s water availability has been precariously tied to decisions made by bureaucrats and politicians using the power of the Endangered Species Act. The effects of the far-reaching ESA could ultimately lead to the destruction of one of the most fertile valleys in the world, the reduction of the nation’s food supply and greater dependence on foreign food sources that don’t meet high U.S. food standards. The use of this overriding legislation that mandates federal control of our nation’s land and water is representative of the overall trend in this country of increased government intrusion into the lives of its citizens. That a statutory decree exists that can override human suffering in the service of preserving animal habitats is a serious indictment of our government’s commitment to preserve liberty and the American way of life. …

In August, fifty mayors from the San Joaquin Valley asked President Obama to come see the devastation first-hand. He refused. Obama previously denied a request to designate California as a federal disaster area. To do so would have acknowledged the fact that Obama’s radical environmental policies are, quite literally, scorched earth policies. Just go to the San Joachim Valley and you’ll see plenty of scorched earth.

Here are passages from the speech Sarah Palin delivered in  Hong Kong on September 23 at the CLSA [Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia] Pacific Markets Conference, taken from excerpts published by the Wall Street Journal. More of the speech can be found here:

We got into this [economic] mess because of government interference in the first place. The mortgage crisis that led to the collapse of the financial market, it was rooted in a good-natured, but wrongheaded, desire to increase home ownership among those who couldn’t yet afford to own a home. In so many cases, politicians on the right and the left, they wanted to take credit for an increase in home ownership among those with lower incomes. But the rules of the marketplace are not adaptable to the mere whims of politicians…

Lack of government wasn’t the problem. Government policies were the problem. The marketplace didn’t fail. It became exactly as common sense would expect it to. The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who, as I say, couldn’t afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks…

If you want real job growth, you cut taxes! And you reduce marginal tax rates on all Americans. Cut payroll taxes, eliminate capital gain taxes and slay the death tax, once and for all. Get federal spending under control, and then you step back and you watch the U.S. economy roar back to life. But it takes more courage for a politician to step back and let the free market correct itself than it does to push through panicky solutions or quick fixes…

I can’t wait until we get that Reaganomics sense supplied again because we are going to survive, and we’re going to thrive and expand and roar back to life. And as the world sees this, the world will be a healthier, more secure, safer and more prosperous place when this happens…

Right now we have the highest unemployment rate in 25 years, and it’s still rising. And yet some in D.C. are pushing a cap-and-tax bill that could cripple our energy industry or energy market and dramatically increase the rates of the unemployed, and that’s not just in the energy sector. American jobs in every industry will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under this cap-and-tax plan. The cost of farming will certainly increase. That’s going to drive up the cost of groceries and drive down farm incomes. The cost of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also rise. We are all going to feel the effects. The Americans hardest hit will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet today, much less with this new tax every month…

With most of this we agree. We only don’t believe that people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd  wanted to increase house ownership among those who couldn’t afford it out of good nature. We judge them less generously. We think they wanted to redistribute wealth and increase the power of government.

At present Palin seems to us to be not only the most charismatic of the Republicans who might be in the 2012 presidential race, but also, to judge by these remarks, one who might rescue the economy.

Obama is hellbent on shifting America permanently to the political left. The name of  the change he promised is Socialism. He wants ‘health care reform’ not because he wants to reform health care but because  he wants to reform the land of the free into the land of the organized. As Mark Steyn says:

For most of the previous presidency, the Left accused George W. Bush of using 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Since January, his successor has used the economic slump as a pretext to “reform” health care. Most voters don’t buy it: They see it as Obama’s “war of choice,” and the more frantically he talks about it as a matter of urgency the weirder it seems. If he’s having difficulty selling it, that’s because it’s not about “health.” … The appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank et al is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture …

Three stories bubbled up in the past week, although if you read The New York Times and the administration’s other airbrushers you’ll be blissfully unaware of them: The resignation of Van Jones, former (?) communist and current 9/11 “truther,” from his post as Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar.” The reassignment” of Yosi Sergant at the National Endowment for the Arts after he was found to be urging government-funded arts groups to produce “art” in support of Obama policy positions. And, finally, the extraordinary undercover tape from Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government Web site in which officials from ACORN … offer advice on how pimps can get government housing loans for brothels employing underage girls from El Salvador…

What all these individuals share is a supersized view of the state, from a make-work gig coordinating the invention of phony-baloney “green jobs” to Soviet-style government-licensed art in support of heroic government programs to government-funded “community organizers” organizing government funding for jailbait bordellos… Van Jones, Yosi Sergant and ACORN are where Barack Obama’s chosen to live all his adult life…

My sense from Wednesday’s speech is that the president’s gonna shove this through in some form or other. It may cause a little temporary pain in Blue Dog districts in 2010, but the long-term gains will be transformative and irreversible.

The dishonesty of the Democrats in power is breathtaking.

Some examples: 

David Limbaugh writes:

When will Americans open their eyes? Everything about Obama’s plan is a lie. He says he wants to increase competition and choice, improve the quality of health care, reduce costs, and achieve universal coverage. But his plan would reduce competition, with mandatory government controls and mandates that would require uniformity of coverage. It would dramatically increase overall costs by artificially increasing demand. It would destroy the quality of health care, and it would crowd out and force out private insurers, through stacking the deck in favor of the euphemistically labeled “public option.” Congressional Budget Office projections indicate that for all the Draconian coverage mandates, the plan wouldn’t even solve the overarching problem of insurance coverage. Of course, the insurance coverage issue has been enormously distorted by this bunch, by their failure to disclose that millions of the uninsured are not American citizens, millions are young and healthy and choose not to buy insurance though they can afford it, and almost half of the uninsured only remain so for an average of four months…On top of all this… [is] the bureaucratic nightmare that awaits us if we adopt this plan … for what? Reduced health care quality, choice, costs and availability — in exchange for economy-destroying tax increases. Now is the time for all good Blue Dog Democrats to come to the aid of their country.

Nancy (‘Pythoness’) Pelosi claimed that the CIA lied to Congress and her grand ophidian self about its waterboarding of terrorists. It hadn’t. So she tried to find something that the CIA had lied about to justify her claim which was being challenged by Republicans in Congress. The best that Obama’s new man at the head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, could come up with to satisfy this slithery demand – after he’d ransacked the filing-cabinet and grilled the staff – was a discussion about whether there ought to be a program that would instruct CIA operatives to hunt down the leaders of al-Qaeda and other violent enemies of the US and kill them.  Scandalously, such a program was never put into effect. It was also, like all programs not put into effect, not reported to Congress. Pelosi wants this to be seen as proof of the CIA’s betrayal of its responsibilities, a deception if not an actual lie, in order to exonerate her, and, as a bonus, to allow her to blame it on Dick Cheney, the subject of her everlasting paranoia. In truth it is a giant Red Herring. 

The government is in great need of Red Herrings. As Jonah Goldberg says:   

 Democrats are clamoring yet again for an investigation into Bush-era policies at precisely the moment their agenda is starting to unravel. The stimulus is looking more like a dud every day, Obama’s health-care and cap-and-trade schemes are acquiring an increasingly bad odor politically, and suddenly Democrats, Panetta included, are looking to offer up a big, distracting spectacle by turning the CIA into a partisan cudgel.