In September 1787, when the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention finished their work in Philadelphia, George Mason of Virginia was one of the 12 who refused to sign. Too much centralization and no Bill of Rights, Mason said. He had other objections, too, including an even more perversely hypocritical stance on slavery than some of the other Founders. But, having written the Virginia Declaration of Rights, he was passionate for having something similar appended to the Constitution and didn’t give up until the Federalists yielded and added those first 10 amendments.
Imagine for a moment that, instead of merely having Alexander Hamilton penning his objection to the Bill of Rights, Cotton Mather had been born 75 years later and decided to join Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison in crafting The Federalist Papers. How different things might have been.
You don’t have to imagine anymore. Because, as Scout Finch and others pointed out yesterday, we have here in the 21st Century one of the pious Mather’s ideological descendants, GOP presidential contender Mike Dale Huckabee, who is telling audiences on the campaign trail that he wants to alter the Constitution so that it meets "God’s standards."
Fortuitously, I have obtained a copy of what Huckabee has in mind. Sorry, no link, and I can’t tell you how I acquired this document other than to say it came from a well-placed someone. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
BILL of SMITES
Preamble
Faithful and patriotic Americans, having come to realize that our country is going to hell in a hand-basket, and expressing a desire to curtail the degeneracy and wickedness creeping across the land, recognize that salvation requires the prompt ratification of the following Commandments derived from Holy Scripture; that they be inserted before Article I of the Constitution; and upon ratification shall in every case supersede all Articles or Amendments with which they may conflict; and that, moreover and furthermore, every reference in said Constitution to the "United States of America" shall be replaced by the "Dominion of America."
SNIP
Commandment IV
The teaching of Darwinism, Big Bang physics, geologic time scales, and any other such ludicrous theories shall not be tolerated no matter what scientists say, even the Christian ones.
Commandment V
No book, film, tape recording, video, DVD, CD, visual or audio download, hologram, or any other digital package in whatever technological format invented prior to the Rapture which fails to obtain a Godly rating from the most sanctified committee on Fidelity, Uprightness, Behaving And Reeducation shall be manufactured, shipped, sold, traded, gifted, viewed or listened to excepting only by members of the most sanctified committee on Fidelity, Uprightness, Behaving And Reeducation.
Commandment VI
Tax deductions of no kind shall be afforded to people who refuse to say their prayers every day.
IN IT'S GLORIOUS ENTIRITY (home page, second post):
http://www.dailykos.com/