Right Wing talking point, Jefferson's "Judicial Oligarchy"

[Melodybe]

I have heard this freaking talking point everywhere recently.

People like Pat Robertson are even getting into the mix, guess someone forgot to tell him that Jefferson also said that there should be a wall between religion and government.

Oh well, if some nut bag fundie freeper brings this up point out that is a RW talking point and that they are ignoring the real judicial oligarchy of Bush filling our courts with pro-corporatist.

[Tux]

1. They also forget

That Jefferson and other Founders were Deists.

[regnaD kciN]

2. They also don't have much of a vocabulary...

"Oligarchy" has nothing to do with judicial activism. It means the rule of society by the wealthy...i.e., exactly what we have right now.

[Roland99]

3. Some quotes from some Founding Fathers (and others)...

George Washington: "The United States is in no sense founded upon
Christian Doctrine"

Thomas Jefferson: "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there
are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Thomas Paine: I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.

Roger Williams: God requireth not a uniformity of religion.

Thomas Jefferson: The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and the freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.

James Madison: During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment known as Christianity has been on trial, and what have been the fruits, more or less, in all places? These are the fruits: pride, indolence, ignorance, and arrogance in the clergy. Ignorance, arrogance, and servility in the laity, and in both clergy and laity, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

Thomas Jefferson: I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

John Adams: The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.

Thomas Paine: Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."

Abraham Lincoln: The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.

Benjamin Franklin: As to Jesus of Nazareth, I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with the most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts to his divinity.

==============================================================

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion ..." from the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by John Adams, June 10, 1797.

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should `make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State." Thomas Jefferson, in his historic Danbury letter, January 1, 1802

"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?" James Madison, in "Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785

"The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of church and state." James Madison, March 2, 1819

"Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State." The U.S. Supreme Court, 1947



And these feeble minds:

"They have kept us in submission because they have talked about separation of church and state. There is no such thing in the Constitution. It's a lie of the left, and we're not going to take it anymore." Pat Robertson, adressing the ACLJ, 1993

"The national government ... will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality." Adolf Hitler

[A HERETIC I AM]

4. The most amusing thing about Robertson quoting Jefferson

is that Jefferson couldnt get elected to County School board in this day and age. Jefferson was very public about his disdain for Christianity and said so publicly many times. He was a Deist and did not consider the persona of Jesus to have been at all devine. If he did indeed live today, Robertson would be among the first to deride him as an enemy of the church and all things christian.

On edit to say kudos to the above poster for the quotes. I opened the window to reply when there was still none but got distracted and came back a few minutes later. I didnt mean to be redundant.

[Melodybe]

5. kick for more discussion