|
Back |
Pardon Me, Are You a "True American"? |
|
|
by Bruce Monson March 12, 2002 |
||
Editor's note: Since the writing of this rebuttal, I have come to discover the identity of the 'anonymous' author in question. His name is Barry Loudermilk, a Republican Party "Chairman" and vocal "America is a Christian Nation" activist.
Suppose you were walking down the street one sunny
afternoon and were suddenly confronted by a radio DJ who tells you
that he is doing a survey on a very important political issue and asks
you if you would like to participate. You cautiously agree.
The delighted DJ then tells you that the survey consists of only four
questions which can be answered in any order, but he wants you to be as
honest in your answers as possible. Then, after a short pause to
make sure the little red blinking light that says "record" is,
well, blinking, he asks you the following questions:
What would be your response to these questions? For most, I suspect it would seem silly to even ask such a set of questions since the answers are so obvious. Indeed, we could make it even simpler by asking our contestant if s/he "could point out a non-American, an impostor if you will, on a busy street corner in Anywhere, USA?" Again, the answer would (or should) be obvious. And yet there is a portion of our society that would labor over these very questions, and go to great lengths in defining what an American is and more dangerously, what an American is not! It is one such case that we will be addressing here, involving a Christian revisionist tract that is currently making the rounds in Christian news groups and email forwarding databases. I have received it twice already from different sources. It was written anonymously (which should be cause for concern in and of itself) and it seeks as its goal to attack the very foundations of our Constitution by way of a Christian-based revision of history, to include changing the very convictions of our founding fathers, in order to convince the targeted audience (i.e., already believing Christians) that the United States is a "Christian nation," founded by Christians, for Christians! As we shall see, the author fails to provide any references whatsoever to back-up the polemical assertions he makes, but instead attempts to draw attention away from this problem by appealing to the post-September 11th emotional stigmas in the minds of his targeted audience. It will be my position in my rebuttal to demonstrate the egregious errors the author makes in his relaying of the "facts" about our history as a nation and what it means to be an "American." My commentary will appear along with the article in question, with the article text appearing in blue and my comments in black.
First, let me present the entire text of the article
in question:
The Rebuttal
I find it interesting that the author
associates "Americans" with being a "culture" in and
of itself, as if the cultural background of a Muslim immigrant, for
example, should be markedly different from a Muslim American simply
on the basis of geographical location. America is a country that
thrives in lieu of our differences, not in spite of them!
In fact, as my good friend Dan Barker has noted (correctly), the term
"United, We Stand" that we hear so often today is not really
accurate. It would be better stated "Divided, We Stand"
since that is what freedom is all about, being free to hold our
differences without fear of retribution because of them, and yet
find common ground on which to stand. As I will point out later,
this is what makes a secular government so critical, and pinpoints the
true genius behind our Constitution and the profound understanding of
history that our founding fathers displayed in creating it.
Notice how the author makes it a point to
apply the deeply emotive words "terrorist attacks"
(translation: "THEM, the Evil") and "patriotism"
(translation: "US, the Good"), and then ties-in The Good
with "the majority of Americans." And, of course, you
know who The Bad are, don't you? Yes, it's those among
the "politically correct crowd" who are, allegedly, the minority,
whose rights it seems are of little or no consequence.
Worse, the author makes a dangerous allusion to what he will later
confess outright; that by "the majority" he really means
Christian as in "A Christian nation," and how one must
be among that "majority" or else you are "un-patriotic"
and consequently "un-American." More on this later.
The sad fact is that he has conveniently
ignored one of the most important principles in the U.S. Constitution,
a principle that our founding fathers labored over in order to secure it
in no uncertain terms: that while the majority may rule the minority
has right! And in case there are some that don't understand
what is meant by "minority right," it means specifically that
the majority, whatever it may be at any given time, cannot (CANNOT)
impose it's will on the Constitutional rights of the minority, whatever
may be in the minority at any given time. Perhaps those that would
scoff at this simple yet brilliant ideology would do well to heed Thomas
Jefferson's warning:
Every citizen of the United States, whether
through birth or through naturalization, has the exact same rights under
the U.S. Constitution! We are all Americans in every
sense of the term! To deny that is to deny the unprecedented
nature of our secular Constitution and reduce it to just one more in an
endless line of totalitarian and theocratic regimes.
Talk
about shooting yourself in the foot! Amazingly, the author seems
to be unaware of, or unmoved by, the fact that prior to the
influx of European immigrants onto this section of North America we
now call the United States, it was already inhabited by aboriginal
natives, millions of them, and they had existed here in
some form for more than 10,000 years! They had their
own gods, their own customs, their own languages, and their own
heritage. But the tragic consequences of Colonialism and Manifest
Destiny would soon make itself felt through the complete and utter
devastation of these native populations!
Notice how the author's real
feelings begin to reveal themselves! His use of emotive
words begins to increase, and he does so because he is building-up to
something that he has a lot of emotional investment in. Look
again at these phrases:
It's difficult for me to believe that he
means what he claims here! If America is not
"multicultural" then what is it? Multiculturalism is
precisely what makes America America! Does he really
wish to imply that only those of European descent (i.e.,
Caucasian) qualify as "Americans" today? One must
first of all remember that all of the land we now claim as
"American soil" was literally stolen from the indigenous cultures
that inhabited it before us (and those would be
"sovereign" cultures, incidentally; a point the author
conveniently ignores)! Are all native Americans, then, just
aliens in their own lands; lands that their ancestors inhabited for
thousands of years?
And what of the tens-of-thousands of
Africans that were brought here through the "God
approved" slave trade? They did not want to come here, but
were captured and brought here by force; and as such they did what they
had to in order to survive, what anyone would do, they had children and
laid roots here that are nearly as deep as any among Caucasian ancestry
today. Later, they would be recognized as "free men,"
and as "Americans," although the deep prejudices persisted
(particularly in the case of women), as they do even today. So are
all blacks and their descendants living among us today to be
excluded as part of American culture simply because there is no
signature of a black man on the Constitution? And if they
happen to find more identity with their own cultural heritage in
Africa and seek to cultivate and carry-on that identity here
in America, as tax-paying citizens, does that make them any less
American than you or I?
Just looking at the author's points of
contention up to this stage, one would have to wonder just what he would
classify as legitimate Americans; a type of person, let's
say, that he would feel comfortable presenting as the poster-child for our
"national identity"? Indeed, to this point he has not
stated what America is, but rather what it is not! In
other words he is defining us through exclusion and, as we shall
see, his terms for what is not excluded is rapidly
narrowing toward a very ancient and very destructive ideology. . .
Sought freedom? Freedom for whom
and from what? The term freedom is very subjective and
it's meaning changes dramatically based on the perspective of those
applying it. The Aztecs and Incas sought freedom from the
conquistadors who ruthlessly murdered their men, pillaged their wealth,
stole their land, raped their women, and insulted their Gods, all of
which was supposedly "God-approved" on the part of
the conquistadors through Papal Bull (i.e., the Pope ordered it).
The African slaves sought freedom from the white man who
shackled him and sought to destroy his heritage, his religion, his
identity, indeed his freedom itself--for profit. The native
Americans sought freedom to inhabit their own lands and live
their lives unmolested by the pillaging, disease, and cultural
devastation brought-on by these pale-faced barbarians. The
Hawaiians sought freedom (and continue to seek freedom even
today!) from the American government that had set it's gaze upon
it's shores, as well as the Christian missionaries that soon
followed; the former, because it saw Hawaii as a critical military
outpost in the South Pacific, and the latter because it sought
to bring "God's love and grace" to a "primitive,"
"savage," "immoral," and "religiously
misguided" culture. The list goes on.
In the 1980's when the Soviets were still being
peddled by our government propaganda spinners, in typical Orwellian
fashion, as the "ultimate evil" (the "Red
Menace") and "unstable threat" to American freedom,
the American government (i.e., "the good") poured
literally billions of dollars into arming
and training these same factions of Muslim extremists that
we are fighting today in Afghanistan! Why? So that they
could fight for us against our archenemy, the "evil"
Soviets! We knew, even then, about the destructive terrorist
activities these militant factions were involved with elsewhere in
the world, but because we saw an opportunity to use them for
our purposes we were willing to look the other way and support them
with American dollars, American weapons, and direct training by
American military specialists.
But what is most interesting about
this debacle is that our government and mainstream media never
once referred to these factions as "terrorists" as
we do today (and they are terrorists, make no mistake); rather, we
called them "freedom fighters"! These are
the same factions, mind you, that flew passenger jets
into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11th; the
same factions that are now using the very weapons and training we
gave them, against us! Interestingly enough, they still
refer to themselves as "freedom fighters" (a term we claim for
ourselves) while we now refer to them as "terrorists," even
though their ideology and actions have not changed at all, only their
targets.
So let me ask you again: when this gentleman
talks of "the victories by millions of
men and women who have sought freedom",
to whom and from what perspective does he presume to speak? I
would encourage you to think about this carefully before jumping to
judgment about what I have said.
Hmmm. Is he correct? Let's
break this down. Prior to the colonization of the
eastern shores of North America by Caucasian, English-speaking settlers
(these were not "Americans," incidentally, they were
a British colony, not unlike Hawaii was a colony to the U.S. prior to
it's becoming a state in 1959.), there existed many different
languages spoken by hundreds of aboriginal tribes that inhabited these
lands, and "English" was not one of them!
The African men, women and children brought to these lands as slaves
also did not speak English! Even the so-called "discoverer of
America," Christopher Columbus (a dubious accolade to be sure), and
the conquistadors that followed him were not English-speaking, but
SPANISH, and Portuguese!
And what of that little U.S. land
acquisition deal Thomas Jefferson negotiated in 1803 called the Louisiana
Purchase? That vast expanse of land, extending from the
Mississippi river to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to
British North America (essentially the Canadian border today), was
purchased from FRANCE! Indeed, there is today a rich history
of French-Spanish-African ancestry in Louisiana in general and the port
city of New Orleans in particular. We even have a name for it--Creole.
And another thing these "English
only" pundits should consider is that virtually all of the Founding
Brothers of the United States itself, the
"revolutionaries," were highly educated and most were
fluent in three or more languages! Thomas Jefferson and
Ben Franklin had even been ambassadors to France! In his
autobiography, Ben Franklin had this to say about his pursuit of
language acquisition:
And he goes on to relate how his mastering
of the above mentioned languages (French & Italian) made it
easier for him to re-apply himself toward mastering the Latin language!
That makes a total of five languages that Franklin
would speak and even read! He even offers advice to "the
Consideration of those who superintend the Educating of our Youth"
that they should begin with French followed by Italian and only
afterward proceed to the Latin, because, and I quote:
Far from advocating an "English
only" attitude as this gentleman and others of his ilk are
demanding, we should be encouraging, indeed requiring, that our children
learn at least one additional language! In virtually every other
industrialized nation on the planet, it is a basic requirement
for students to become fluent in at least one additional language,
and it is not at all uncommon for them to speak three or four by the
time they graduate high school! By comparison, much of our youth,
indeed much of our adult population, cannot even speak proper English
let alone be fluent in another language! This is not something to
be proud of. We should be embarrassed by this "dumbing
down" of America; and not only in the areas of language acquisition
and science (where we are most lacking), but in every
other basic subject.
At last, the cat is out of the bag!
The theological message he intends to sell you is that America
is a "Christian nation," and that if one presumes to be a True
American (TM) then one must believe in God, and by
"God" he does not mean Allah, or Vishnu, or Mithra, or
Horus, or Quetzalcoatl, or any number of indigenous North American
tribal gods, he means the "Christian" God!
The fact is, however, his perception of
history is severely distorted, and it's quite possible that he knew
this in advance since he makes it a point to state that the
"Christian" views he is espousing are "clearly
documented," as if to say to the already believing
Christian audience he hopes to appeal to:
"If you really want to check my facts, my brothers and sisters in Christ, you may, but as I am a 'God-fearing' Christian who would never lie to you, you should just trust me at my word that I am telling you the truth when I say that the information I am relaying would be the same information you would find were you to actually study the documentation for yourselves. But since I have already studied these issues, and found them to be self-evident truths, there is no need for you to be troubled with repeating the process; as such, I humbly request that you do not delay in sending this message on to other good people such as yourselves. In His name, --signed, Anonymous"
But I say this: Don't take him at
his word! Do check it out for yourselves! Moreover,
I also suggest that you do not take anything I say at my word either,
but check it out! I will stand by the evidence that I
present, and I will put my name to it! Indeed, I find it
shameful that the rhetoric being peddled here comes with the
comfort of anonymity for it's author, because I would take great
delight in debating this person on his disingenuous soap box
rhetoric!
So, let's just test a few of his
"clearly documented" facts, shall we?
Is "In God
We Trust" the national motto our nation's founders decided
upon?
Well, if our Nation had been
established during the anti-communist McCarthyism hysteria of
the 1950's, then our friend might have a case here, since it was in
1956 that this "motto" came into being. The Cold
War was building and political propaganda spinners sought to draw a
clear line of delineation between the U.S. ("The
Good") and the Soviets ("The Evil"), and they did so by
making communism and atheism virtually synonymous terms (which is
silly), with each to be despised and aggressively opposed as a
"threat" to "American values" and the "American
way of life"--a stigma that remains alive and well even today.
But "In God We Trust" is not
our original motto! The original national motto, which
(thankfully) still appears on The Great Seal of the United
States today, is E Pluribus Unum (Out of
many, one), as agreed upon by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and
John Adams after the First Continental Congress (July 4th, 1776)
assigned them the task of producing an appropriate seal to represent our
country.
The actual design of our Great Seal was
one of great concern to our founders and the process ultimately
encompassed six years and three separate committees between 1776-1782
(each with different committee members) before it was complete. As
in any decision-making process there are going to be good ideas and bad
ideas produced in brainstorming sessions and such was the case here.
Ultimately some ideas from each committee were incorporated
into the final design, while others were rejected for one reason or
another. The motto E Pluribus Unum was one of the keepers!
Other ideas, such as depictions of Moses defying the Egyptian
army at the Red Sea, the Judgment of Hercules, a white-clad
"virtus" (virtuous) maiden, and other complex designs, did
not make the cut for obvious reasons. No where on the final
version, in fact, do the words "God" or "Jesus"
or "Christian Nation" or "One Nation Under God"
appear, and it was not by mistake that such things were
excluded! They were excluded for the same reasons such terms were
excluded from the Constitution; because this is not a
nation governed by gods or kings or masters, but by the People--"We,
the People"!
The changing of our national motto from E
Pluribus Unum to In God We Trust was a knee-jerk
reaction by Congress; as was the dubious addition of "under
God" to our Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. Prior to
that the Pledge read as follows:
I Pledge
allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
and to the
republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
But in 1952 the Knights of Columbus,
a Catholic organization, began a vocal campaign to have the Pledge
changed to read "one nation under God"; and,
riding the wave of anti-Soviet sentiments of the day, they
(and the American Legion) petitioned a sympathetic Congress to
have the wording changed. And just like that everything our
founding fathers had fought and labored to secure for 'We
the People' was trampled underfoot of a self-serving religious
ideology.
Were the founders of
our nation "Christian men"?
Many of them were Christians, and
yet many of them were not! Indeed, some of the names that
inhabit the "non-Christian" list are striking considering the
key roles they played in our history; people such as
Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams,
James Madison and Thomas Paine, among others. And some were not
only not Christian, but were openly critical of Christianity,
the Bible, and the clergy.
Jefferson was an avid student of religion,
including Christianity, and while he thought good of some parts of
the Bible, he despised most of it, and he made an interesting analogy of
this by calling those good points "diamonds in a
dunghill." And while he was very careful about expressing his
own views about the Bible in public (wisely, it seems), he was
more forthcoming in his private correspondences with family and
colleagues. In one letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, he makes a
statement that, were it made today (or even in his time), would
make him unelectable as President of the United States:
And what do you suppose would have been the
fate of George W. Bush in our latest Presidential election
were he to have expressed such words as these made by Thomas Jefferson
in a letter to a colleague of his, Dr. Woods?:
Jefferson made multiple more comments of
like nature to these, but that doesn't seem to stop people like our
anonymous friend here from claiming that our founding fathers were all
"Christian men" intending to make a "Christian
nation."
Thomas Paine is another case all together.
He is truly one of the most critical figures in American history because of
his uncanny ability to invoke action through the written word.
It was his best selling Common Sense pamphlets, in fact, that
re-invigorated the people with a will to fight at a time
when morale was at its lowest and defeat seemed a foregone
conclusion. It was Paine who went to France and convinced
Louis XIV to donate six million livres toward the war effort! It
was Paine who gave us the name, "United States of America."
It was Paine who said such famous quotes as "what
we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly" and "These are the times that try men's souls"
and "Those who expect to reap the blessings
of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it."
But Paine was also a vocal enemy to
Christianity and the Bible and any organized religion that sacrifice
reason for superstition and dogma, and he made
those views clear when he published The Age of Reason, which
was also a best seller but one which resulted in his becoming reviled as
a pariah and doer of the "devil's work." Here are just a
few quotes:
And what of others among our founders? Here are but a few among multiple dozens available.
This is not to say that any of these men openly
expressed atheism (as is the case today, to even suggest such a thing
would have been tantamount to political suicide), but rather
they posited deistic views about God and nature; meaning that they
acknowledged an impersonal "(g)od of nature" but did not
believe in the personal "(G)od of the Bible."
Is the United
States a "Christian Nation"?
Well, if it is then someone forgot to tell that to the 55 delegates that came together to debate and form our Constitution. They certainly had ample opportunity to do so, and yet nowhere in that document do we ever see the words God, Jesus, Christianity, Gospels, the Bible, or any other term associated with Judeo-Christian theology! Do you suppose it just slipped their minds? Nope. The only time religion is ever mentioned in the Constitution at all is in exclusionary form: Article VI, Section 3, which states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." A short time later it would be mentioned a second time in the establishment clause of the First Amendment, but again it was exclusionary of religion and not an endorsement! Luther Martin, a Maryland representative, addressing the Maryland legislature, stated:
But this proposal was, as Martin stated, rejected by the delegates (many of whom were Christians who thought we should be a "Christian country") "by a great majority . . . and without much debate," and the Constitution was drafted as a secular document. There are other examples that demonstrate the great considerations that went into the "no religious test" question, and how it was defended in the end even among "Christian" delegates. In Massachusetts it was feared, as Madison relates, "that the constitution by prohibiting religious tests, opened a door for Jews, Turks and infidels." Isaac Backus, however, defended the prohibition on the grounds that "nothing is more evident, both in reason and the Holy Scriptures, than that religion is ever a matter between God and individuals." In North Carolina, also, it was feared that "if there be no religious tests required, pagans, deists and Mohametans [Muslims] might obtain office among us, and that senators and representatives might all be pagans." But the rebuttal of James Iredell is telling, (1) because he was a Christian and (2) because he became a Supreme Court Justice. He replied that while it is possible that the people may "choose representatives who have no religion at all . . . how is it possible to exclude any set of men, without taking away that principle of religious freedom which we ourselves so warmly contend for. . ." (my emphasis) Well said. Hardly the exclusionary words we so often hear today from the "Christian nation" nuts like our anonymous friend here! While we can certainly see that religious bigotry was as big a problem then as it is to this day, we can also see that the majority of our founders were rational thinkers who saw it a reasonable possibility that anyone of any religious views, to include "no religion at all," might one day be elected by the people to an office of public trust. Did this cause fear for some? Yes. Did such fear cause them to invoke strict "Christian Nation" language within the Constitution, replete with "religious tests" and "swearing of oaths" to "the one true God, Jesus"? No, it did not! Moreover, it is more than a little interesting to note that it was in fact a Christian man, Charles Pinckney, an Episcopalian, who made the motion about "no religious test," a clause that ultimately came to be adopted into the Constitution under Article VI noted above! Honestly, do these sound like the actions of a group of Christian men intent on making this a "Christian nation"? I suggest the Constitution itself is evidence enough to debunk such nonsense. It is a very disturbing problem, I think, that so many people are being influenced by these right-wing Christian extremists (I'm sorry, but that is what they are) whom, finding our history as it stands to be unpalatable with how they think it should have happened, attempt to rewrite that history, and even the views of our founding fathers themselves, in order to contort them into something more in-line with their theocratic motivations. But these people are doing a great disservice to those minds (young or old) whom, thinking they are getting an honest and unbiased picture of history (warts and all), are not; and if they are not inclined to check-the-work of their would-be teachers then they may never learn otherwise, and that is a shame.
To invoke "God" is to presume the
supernatural, and that, by definition, carries religious
implications. And that fact in and of itself makes our friend's
assertion, that "it is appropriate
to display it [In God We Trust] on the walls of our [public]
schools" to be false! To the contrary, it is
categorically inappropriate!
To demonstrate the point, consider what this
man would say if we changed the word "God" to
"Jesus"; would he find offense in that? No, he would
not! Indeed, he would like nothing more than for the name of his
own professed god to be prominently displayed on the walls of very
classroom in the country in order that the Hindu child and Muslim child
and atheist child (all heathens in his mind) would have to look upon it
and acknowledge it as some divine authority that is not open to
challenge. But what would this man's reaction be if the word
"God" were replaced with "Allah" or
"Vishnu" or Isis? Imagine it, honestly: "In
Allah We Trust" or "May Vishnu Bless
America." Would he not be up in arms and demanding
their removal at once?
Yes, of course, let us rid this country of
the leeches! Let us send the African Americans back to
Africa; the Chinese Americans back to China; the Japanese Americans back
to Japan; the Mexican Americans back to Mexico; the French
Americans back to France; the Hawaiian Americans back to. . . a. . .; the
Alaskan Americans back to . . . ahem; The British Americans back to
. . . er . . . 'um . . . let's skip that one; the Native Americans
back to . . . Oh, dear.
Were this sort of vitriolic rhetoric not so
harmful it would be humorous. Our anonymous friend has
made it clear that his ideas of "freedom" are represented
in terms such as subservience, conformity, intolerance, subjugation,
discrimination and segregation--terms that seem antithetical
to the "freedom" our founding fathers fought a revolution to
obtain, and afterwards wrote a Constitution to ensure!
On the other hand, there is nothing unique
about our friend's views and I suspect that most of what he has said is
just parroting of propaganda that has been fed to him from the
pulpits, and not through any sincere efforts on his part to crack
the history books, the historical archives, and the autobiographies
in search of the truth!
The most alarming thing in all of this is that the
distorted views our friend seems to be living with are not unlike those
that have been openly expressed by President Bush and others in his
administration, particularly Attorney General John Ashcroft, who is
completely out of control. One wonders how far it will go.
Perhaps we should take seriously the warning issued by James Madison:
Visions of Bush, Ashcroft, and the Religious Right? As a thought experiment, consider the following two quotes and see if you can guess who the person was that said each of them:
For answers click here
Yours in Truth,
Bruce Monson
|