Jefferson, Christmas, and Sarah Palin's faux America; or, further evidence that Sarah Palin is a complete moron

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Raw Story:

If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, Sarah Palin said, he would probably go on Fox News to complain about the war on Christmas.

The former half-term governor of Alaska and failed vice presidential candidate appeared Thursday at Liberty University to promote her new book Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas.

She told the audience of students that the U.S. Constitution was written by and for moral and religious people, and that nonreligious people probably were incapable of appreciating its principles.

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Palin said Jefferson would likely agree that secularists had set their sights on destroying the religious themes in Christmas celebrations.

"He would recognize those who would want to try to ignore that Jesus is the reason for the season, those who would want to try to abort Christ from Christmas," she said. "He would recognize that, for the most part, these are angry atheists armed with an attorney. They are not the majority of Americans."

Palin said there was a double standard that protected atheists at the expense of the religious.

I was going to go through her incorrect statements one by one, but, really, everything she said is wrong. The woman has zero understanding of America, its Founders, and its Constitution, and it's simply ludicrous that she opens her mouth to suggest otherwise.

[Keep reading to see how Woody Allen fits into all this.]
 
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SOTU Night in America: Live-blogging the 2013 State of the Union address

By Michael J.W. Stickings, with Richard K. Barry, Frank Moraes, and tmcbpatriot

(Updated frequently -- in real time. Scroll down.)

So the gang's back together tonight. When was the last time we live-blogged? It was the election back in November, wasn't it? And before that the debates. Oh, what a good time that was... well, except for that first debate. Remember that one?

And what are we live-blogging? It's the Papal Election 2013! Woo-hoo!

Wait, what? It's not the papal election? So why the hell are we here?

Oh, right, the State of the Union. Alas. It's strong, isn't it? So what's the point of all this? Can't we go back a century or so, back to pre-Wilsonian times, when the president just sent the damn thing up to Capitol Hill in writing?

Yes, Wilson changed things in 1913. Before that, no president had delivered it in person, as a speech, since Jefferson, who ended the tradition in its infancy.

That's the first page of Washington's notes for his 1790 address. Pretty neat, huh?

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But okay, here we are. Let's make the most of it. (I was on my own for it last year. Should be more enjoyable with the guys joining me tonight.)

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Double billing

By J. Kingston Pierce

Has anybody else happened to mention this anomaly in American history? Barack Obama is now the third recent U.S. president in a row to be elected to two terms in the White House, following Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and George W. Bush (2001-2009).



 








The last and only other time three men were elected consecutively to two terms as president was back at the beginning of the 19th century: Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), James Madison (1809-1817), and James Monroe (1817-1825).



 








(Cross-posted at Limbo.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Glen Urquhart

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Christine O'Donnell is the main Delaware Republican in the news, but she certainly doesn't have a monopoly on craziness, not with Glen Urquhart around. (Urquhart was nominated to fill Mike Castle's state-wide House seat, Castle having been defeated by O'Donnell in the Republican Senate primary.)

Just check out this rather appalling statement, as reported by Right Wing Watch:

Do you know, where does this phrase separation of Church and State come from? Does anybody know? ... Actually, that's exactly, it was not in Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists. He was reassuring that the federal government wouldn't trample on their religion. The exact phrase "separation of Church and State" came out of Adolph Hitler’s mouth, that's where it comes from. Next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State ask them why they're Nazis.

That's right, Urquhart attributes Jefferson's famous "separation of Church and State" line to none other than Hitler. But of course it was Jefferson who said it, or wrote it -- and it does in fact appear in his 1802 Letter to the Danbury Baptists:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & 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 & State.

Urquhart is crazy -- and also, apparently, a complete idiot whose whole shtick seems to consist of calling his opponents Nazis. Evidently, though, he's also so utterly un-American as to think that one of the cornerstones of American democracy, as articulated by Jefferson, is some Nazi plot.

When you mistake Jefferson for Hitler and seek to overturn the Constitution, you're pretty fucking crazy, just like O'Donnell.

Painful Palin: Tearing down Jefferson's wall

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I was going to write a post debunking Palin's response to Katie Couric's question about the separation of Church and State, but my friend Steve Benen, who knows a lot more about this than I do, beat me to it.

Make sure to read Steve's post here, as well as this interesting article by his former colleague from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Rob Boston, on Jefferson's famous letter to the Danbury Baptists, from 1802.

In brief: While Biden takes a firm stand in support of the separation of Church and State, noting that the Founders "took religion out of government" (but not out "the public square"), Palin waffles, declaring that Jefferson's original intent was to ensure that "government did not mandate a religion on people" and, in populist mode, talking up "the wisdom of the people," and defending the people's "right" to "express their own religious view" in public.

What Palin offers here, in an awkward way, is a limited (and one-directional) understanding of one of the core principles of American constitutionalism. As Boston explains, Jefferson held that religious liberty, or freedom of conscience -- given that "religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God" -- requires "a wall of separation between Church & State." In other words, just as there mustn't be a state-sponsored religion, so too mustn't there be a religion-sponsored state.

Evidently, Palin just doesn't get it. But, then, she's a theocrat. Jefferson would not be amused.

Grounds of hope

By MSS

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man... those are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

-- Thomas Jefferson, in his last known letter, acknowledging but declining, for ill health, an invitation to the 50th anniversary celebrations of American Independence. Ten days after writing these words, Jefferson would die, on 4th July, 1826.

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May our celebrations on this 232d anniversary, and our collective and individual actions in the coming year, be worthy of Jefferson's last words.