Considering your clear, multiple and consistent statements favoring secession of Texas from the Union, that (a) “if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot,” and (b) Texas has a right to secede based on the false historical premise that “when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out.”
Sidebar:
(Not true, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission: Texas negotiated the power to divide into four additional states at some point if it wanted to but not the right to secede. Ah, but who’s fact-checking.)
We, the people of the Blue states and rational Red states, who oppose your schemes to politicize our children’s education, and will use every available legal means necessary to prevent this Texas poison from spreading beyond your borders, including court challenges and concerted multi-state campaigns to get our states off the Texas list,Strongly urge you to cease-and-desist your second civil war against America, and fulfill your campaign pledge to Texan secessionists, i.e., making it your first priority to lead the movement for Texas to secede from the Union. And should your secessionist aims be thwarted by the courts or Obama’s evil socialists, ramming stimulus funds and healthcare reform down your liberty-loving, tyranny-hating, beer-guzzling throats,
You will have the solace of knowing there are unreconstructed Confederate allies in a far-off tropical land who are prepared to receive you with open arms, should you (happily, for us) decide to follow GOP Party Boss Rush Limbaugh’s advice, and leave the country forthwith. Rush will be in Costa Rica, the new playground for pedophiles, and a country with universal healthcare, but you; You will be heading further South, to that great collossus of South America.
Behold! The Confederados community in São Paulo, Brasil:
“ Actually we’re the most Southern, and only, really, truly unreconstructed Confederates that there are on Earth because we left before, right after the War, and we never pledged allegiance to the damn Yankee Flag!”The Confederados in Brasil
Brazil’s Gray Ghosts
Festa dos Confederados
Confederate Party in Brasil
of you have sat, and perhaps thought, with us!
4 comments:
Carlos, while I agree with your overall point, implying that the FF were exclusively Deists is just as inaccurate as saying they were Christians. Some were Deists, some were Christians, etc. In fact, most of the problems in the colonies existed because of animosities between different "sects" of Christianity, not between Christians and non-Christians.
May I recommend the book Founding Faith by Steven Waldman.
Thanks for the clarification, Jimbo. We dcon't disagree. In the interests of keeping my text as short and to-the-point I conflated the general argument made by the wingnuts on the Texas SBOE, that the FFs, including most importantly, Thomas Jefferson, were devout Christians. This is accurate. I wanted to point out the fiction they are perpetuating, in Jefferson's name (even though they deleted him, because he scares them), that there is no "wall of separation" between church and state. That is historically FALSE. Because these extremists call themselves "strict constructionists", anything that is not explicitly written in the Constituion in effect does not exist. It's an absurd argument, but one that they made in the hearings.
Of course, you're right, but when the FFs drafted the Constitution, they went out of their way to ensure that it did not promote one religion over another, because they saw the danger in the establishment of a theocracy. Jefferson, in particular, was adamant about this, and I cited what he said during the debate on a religious freedom statute for Virginia:
"Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read, “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and the Infidel of every denomination."
This is heresy to the extremist Christian fanatics on the Texas SBOE, and that is why they have excommunicated Thomas Jefferson.
But I completely take your point.
Clarification: The Texas SBOE claim that the FFs were devout Christians is accurate, but is historically false. Some were Deists, including most prominently, Thomas Jefferson, who was diminished in favor of "Christian" philosophers John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas.
Jefferson's great sin, in the eyes of these wingnut hacks is (a) he was a Deist, and (b) he coined the phrase "wall of separation" between church and state, which these fanatics insist is a "myth."
I think a solution would be to send "government scientists" into churches to teach evolution. See what they think of the "Wall" then.
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