A Tea Party Train Wreck & The First Amendment
The so-called Tea Party Express has identified some favored candidates for this election cycle in an effort to advance a bevy of right-wing attacks on American civil liberties, all in the name of “taking the country back.” I asked before and I’ll ask again here, back to what? A close look at just one of these candidates, Nevada GOP candidate Sharron Angle, provides an unflattering and menacing answer.
Sharron Angle fascinates like a train wreck. Her outrageous statements are legend. In Nevada, we await the next gaffe, the next lunacy so that we can cringe, laugh, and perhaps shake our heads. Meanwhile, down deep we prepare excuses and half-hearted apologies so as to be ready when folks ask whether Ms. Angle is really on the ballot.
My interest in Angle’s public comments and the underlying principles they expose arises not because I support her, because I clearly don’t. No, my concern is more with the readiness of some people to embrace the intellectually and historically dishonest arguments Angle throws about without much thought as to how silly and un-American such declarations truly are. Apparently, no falsehood is big enough to rupture the hypnotized rapture of Angle’s Tea Party followers in Nevada and across the country.
There are several of Ms. Angle’s comments that could have been the focus of this opinion piece including her condemnation that social security is welfare and her exhortation for people to take “Second Amendment remedies” against elected officials. However, the set of statements that triggered my train-wreck watching curiosity related to Angle’s disagreement with the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state embodied in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Much to the delight of her Tea Party acolytes, Angle claimed that such separation and the religious freedom and tolerance it has guaranteed for over two centuries were not part of the constitution and that “Thomas Jefferson has been misquoted” as often as she.
In 1779, Jefferson wrote “An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom.” He wrote this bill because he was profoundly committed to the principles of freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion. Jefferson feared that Europe’s historic religious intolerance and the numerous wars such intolerance had unleashed would take root in America. As governor of Virginia, he introduced the bill to the Virginia General Assembly which enacted it into law on January 16, 1786. It states in part: “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion.” Elsewhere the bill stated, “. . . our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions.”
This bill included Jefferson’s core views on religion, religious tolerance, and formed the foundation for the First Amendment to the Constitution which has universally been considered to guarantee the “First Freedom”, i.e., the freedom of religion. That freedom has two parts: the prohibition against the establishment of a state religion and the freedom to exercise a religion or no religion without fear of reprisal. Jefferson’s politics clearly were not beholden to any religious views and rested on the force of reason over the supernatural. In 1787, Jefferson said: “Question with boldness even the existence of God; for if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.” In Query XVII of Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson wrote, “it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no god . . . . Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”
Sharron Angle undoubtedly believes that the louder and shriller she repeats a falsehood, the more likely it will be believed. And, the Tea Party constituents she represents could not be more shrill but sadly more wrong in their attempt to rewrite our great nation’s history and founding principles. I guess that’s good, blindfolding politics for some. And, it works at times and in certain places and with a populace willing to be misled. On this planet there are governments and terrorist groups who are led by leaders that claim monopolies over religious beliefs and practices.
I’m sure the vast majority of Americans do not want to replicate those theocratic systems here in our country. I’m also absolutely certain that Thomas Jefferson, the architect of our Constitution, would vehemently disagree with the Tea Party and Sharron Angle that the separation of church and state is absent from the First Amendment and should be banished from our national fiber. Now, once again I ask, what do the Tea Partiers and people like Sharron Angle want to take our country back to? Thank goodness for reason and critical inquiry and the fact that, after a while, even train wrecks lose our interest.
