Delaware is fielding some interesting tea party Republicans this election. Businessman Glen Urquhart of Rehoboth Beach narrowly defeated the endorsed Republican candidate, Michele Rollins, to secure the GOP nomination for Congress by roughly 550 votes out of more than 50,000 cast. Why do I call him interesting? Watch the video and you shall see.
Hitler instead of Jefferson, eh? Well why don’t we take a look at what Thomas Jefferson actually wrote 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.”
And what exactly does Hitler say that would give Mr. Urquhart the idea that the reviled German Chancellor was the origin of the quote, and where did Urquhart get such an idea anyway? I suspect it may have come from right wingnut Bryan Fischer. Fischer is talk-radio DJ, former executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, racist, homophobe, bigot, and white supremacist.
It was January two years ago that Fischer published a piece on the Teabagger Renew America site, titled Separation of Church and State: Straight from the Mind of Hitler. In this piece, Fischer quotes Hitler as stating, "Politics do not belong in the Church," and "The Church must be separate from the State."
So I suppose we could give Urquhart points for being technically accurate, because Jefferson says “separation between church and state” and not “separation of church and state,” but even if we were to allow that technicality, it still does not detract from the asininity of the sentiment, and even if Fischer could be trusted to accurately quote Hitler, those quotes are technically incorrect as well.
Perhaps Mr. Urquhart should spend a bit of time actually studying history. I bet the history teacher in the audience would quite happily tutor him.
~~
Posts
1 Comments:
Another cementhead who has no idea what he is talking about. It would be fun to get a group to picket one of his events, accusing him of not being a Christian because he belongs to the wrong church and worships a false god.
Post a Comment