Sarah Palin: American Law Should Be 'Based On The God Of The Bible And The Ten Commandments'

Hi Leslie and Rob,

Here’s support for your argument that Palin doesn’t know what she needs to know. In this instance, she doesn’t know enough about our constitutional roots:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/sarah-palin-american-law_n_569922.html

The founders differed a great deal among themselves, but they reached broad agreement about matters of church and state. First, discussing God in the public square was just fine. They invoked God and his blessings on the new nation all the time. Lincoln in the nineteenth century and Wilson in the twentieth were two presidents who extended this tradition.

Second, a government that favors a particular church, sect, tradition or faith was not fine. The inter-faith wars in Europe were a recent memory for the founders. They wanted no part of those conflicts in America. Thus the establishment of religion clause in the Constitution. I should know where that phrase appears, but I don’t remember.

So in this country we have two extremes. One group wants to exclude all discussion of God from public discourse, no matter where it comes from. Most recently we saw opposition to a national day of prayer. Another group – led by Palin – wants not only God, but a Christian God central to our public discourse. We had a vision from the founders of a civil society that welcomes publicly expressed religious beliefs, but doesn’t favor a particular church. Current arguments about God’s place in the public square no longer point toward that vision.

Love,

Steve

P. S. In the last campaign, reporters asked Obama why he didn’t wear a flag pin in his lapel. He started wearing one. What would happen if a candidate wore a cross or a star of David in the same location? How about a cross next to the flag? In a healthier political environment, a candidate could wear anything and no one would remark about it. At least, no one would say anything directly to the candidate about the symbol.

It’d be great if a candidate wore a different symbol every day! One problem: Muslims eschew symbols like that, so they’d be left out of the rotation. Plus a male candidate wouldn’t want to wear a head scarf.

/sfg