Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [27]
It never dawned on the liberal mob that, when speaking to a Tea Party group, Palin might be referring to the year of the Boston Tea Party, which occurred in … yes, that would be 1773. Only if you start with the premise that Sarah Palin is an idiot and therefore if she said something, it must be idiotic, would you not even bother to look up the year of the Boston Tea Party before leaping to the conclusion that Palin meant to cite the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
For liberals, Palin’s speeches are like one of those puzzles in a children’s magazine that say, “Spot the mistakes.” Palin was talking, so she must have made a mistake. The problem was, there was no mistake.
The same thing happened when Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell said that the Constitution does not mention a “separation of church and state.” Again, liberals believed their own fairy tales rather than the evidence. They’ve told themselves so many times that “the Constitution clearly provides for a separation of church and state!” no one ever bothered to check.
Whenever liberals talk about “constitutional rights,” they are invariably referring to some pronouncement inserted in an opinion by a rogue liberal judge fifteen years ago, which they now demand we treat as if it came from James Madison’s pen. One thing we know is that terrorists who intend to destroy us must be given civilian trials because that’s what the founding fathers wanted.
Really? Can I see the Constitution?
No, why would you ask?
Hey! That isn’t in the Constitution!
Yes, it’s right here, written in crayon, circa 2006.
Apparently some conservatives took liberals up on the invitation to read the Constitution and saw that the phrase “separation of church and state” is not there.
What liberals meant by “It’s in the Constitution!” was “It was slipped into a Supreme Court opinion around 1950 by Justice Hugo Black, a racist, redneck anti-Papist from Alabama who wanted to make sure no public money would be spent busing students to Catholic schools.” But that doesn’t sound as impressive as “It’s in the Constitution!”
True, the “separation” phrase comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson. He also wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” but you don’t hear conservatives going around citing the “tree of liberty clause” in the Bill of Rights. Like “the separation of church and state,” it’s not in the Constitution.
Indeed, a fair-minded person would look at the language of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause—“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”—and wonder why it was phrased so clumsily if the idea was to prohibit state involvement in religion. Why not just say, “Neither the federal nor state governments may enact laws favoring religion”?
The answer is: The framers were not only decreeing that Congress could not establish a religion, but also reassuring the states that they could establish religions and Congress couldn’t stop them. Inasmuch as a number of states had established churches both before and after passage of the First Amendment—decades after in some cases—the Establishment Clause obviously didn’t mean the states couldn’t establish religions. To the contrary, Congress was being forbidden from passing a law about the entire subject of—or “respecting”—an establishment of religion. That’s why they used the word “respecting.”
Liberals love to bellow “ ‘No law’ means ‘no law’!” but don’t want to explain why “Congress” doesn’t mean “Congress,” “respecting” doesn’t mean “respecting,” and “establishment” doesn’t mean “establishment.”
Back to Jefferson’s letter: It was written about a decade after the passage of the First