Tuesday, May 10, 2005

God bless Amerika, land that I love

My wonderful liberal mother sends me email all the time, stuff friends send her. Some of it is funny, some sweet, and some, from her winger friends, read like Limbaugh droppings.

Today we have the following (less the graphics):

As you walk up the steps to the building which houses the U.S.
Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the
world's law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is
facing forward with a full frontal view - it is Moses and he is holding
the Ten Commandments!

As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak
doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each
door.

As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see the wall, right
above where the Supreme Court judges sit, a display of the Ten
Commandments!

There are Bible verses etched in stone all over the Federal
Buildings and Monuments in Washington, D.C.

James Madison, the fourth president, known as "The Father of
Our Constitution" made the following statement "We have staked the whole
of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for
self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern
ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the
Ten Commandments of God."

Patrick Henry, that patriot and Founding Father of our country
said, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great
nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on
religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ".

Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a paid
preacher, whose salary has been paid by the taxpayer since 1777.

Fifty-two of the 55 founders of the Constitution were members
of the established orthodox churches in the colonies.

Thomas Jefferson worried that the Courts would overstep their
authority and instead of interpreting the law would begin making
law....an oligarchy....the rule of few over many.

The very first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, said,
"Americans should select and prefer Christians as their rulers."

How, then, have we gotten to the point that everything we have
done for 220 years in this country is now suddenly wrong and
unconstitutional?

Lets put it around the world, and let the world see and remember what this great country was built on.

I was asked to send this on if I agreed or delete if I didn't. Now it is your turn...

It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, it is very hard to understand why there is such a mess about having the Ten Commandments on display of "In God We Trust" on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the other 14% to Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!

If you agree, pass this on.


Well, I hardly know where to start. So lets do a little Googling. Here are parts of some relevant posts about this infamous email: (Lots of cut and paste here, not much original work. Others have done it much better than me, so I encourage you to follow the links)

truthorfiction.com

As you walk up the steps to the building which houses the U.S.
Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the
world's law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is
facing forward with a full frontal view - it is Moses and he is holding
the Ten Commandments!-
Truth! But Inaccurate!

Above the east entrance to the Supreme Court building (which is the back entrance, not the front entrance), Moses is one of three Eastern law givers along with Confucius and Solon.
Although he's in the middle, Confucius and Salon are facing the front as well, not facing Moses.
There are figures on each side of the three men facing them.
The tablets in the sculpture are blank and although inspired by the Ten Commandments, the office of the curator of the U.S. Supreme Court says they have come to symbolically represent the "tablets of the law."
The artist, Herman MacNeil, said "The 'Eastern Pediment' of the Supreme Court Building suggests...the treatment of such fundamental laws and precepts as are derived from the East. Moses, Confucius and Solon."



As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak
doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each
door-
Unproven!

As stated above, the tablets are used in the Supreme Court building as symbolic representations of law.
In some places they also represent not the Ten Commandments but the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see the wall, right
above where the Supreme Court judges sit, a display of the Ten
Commandments!-
Fiction!

The wall that is described includes a frieze that, among other things, has two male figures who represent the Majesty of Law and the Power of Government.
Between the two male figures is a tablet with the numbers 1 through 10 in Roman numerals.
According to the artist, Adolph A. Weinman, these represent the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

So far we have some selective and inaccurate analysis of architecture. Harmless? No. Weasel words to be sure, intended as propaganda? Clearly.

But now we descend into outright lying:

James Madison, the fourth president, known as "The Father of
Our Constitution" made the following statement "We have staked the whole
of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for
self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern
ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the
Ten Commandments of God."-
Unproven!
We've not been able to find documentation for this.

Patrick Henry, that patriot and Founding Father of our country
said, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great
nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on
religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ"
-Unproven!
We've not been able to find documentation for this.

Sounds about par for the course. Let's look elsewhere:

Jim Allison:

On page 120 of David Barton's book The Myth of Separation, David Barton quotes James Madison as saying:

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments."

Barton gives the following footnote for the quotation:

Harold K. Lane, Liberty! Cry Liberty! (Boston: Lamb and Lamb Tractarian Society, 1939), pp. 32-33. See also Fedrick Nyneyer, First Principles in Morality and Economics: Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association (South Holland" Libertarian Press, 1958), pp. 31.

The only problem with the above is, no such quote has ever been found among any of James Madison's writings. None of the biographers of Madison, past or present have ever run across such a quote, and most if not all would love to know where this false quote originated. Apparently, David Barton did not check the work of the secondary sources he quotes.


Read the rest, please, it's quite informative.

Now let's check in with Snopes:

James Madison, the fourth president, known as "The Father of Our Constitution" made the following statement "We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

  • Actually, this statement appears nowhere in the writings or recorded utterances of James Madison and is completely contradictory to his character as a strong proponent of the separation of church and state.
Patrick Henry, that patriot and Founding Father of our country said, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians . . . not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ".
  • Another spurious quotation. These words appear nowhere in the writings or recorded utterances of Patrick Henry.

Good work, as usual.

Now here's something really interesting, that should make some of the more sensible purveyors of such crap a little queasy. These guys have the whole post on their website: www.twelvearyannations

What's the big deal? Well, here's some more from those same Aryan boys and girls:

Jewish power has always been rooted in deception. A part of this deception is racial chameleony: they imitate Whites, so that they may pass as Whites when it suits them. For example, the Jews within banking, in the media, and in government bureaucracies ensure that their vastly over-proportionate presence eludes detection, or at least escapes recognition, by pretending that they are White people. On the other hand, the Jews avoid being displaced by Blacks or by Hispanics from jobs by declaring that "Jews are not Whites" and thus entitling themselves, also, to minority favoritism. The status of the Jews is never a thing of firm definition. There is no group with a higher per capita degree of privilege or power. Yet they greedily grasp at the benefits that they say Whites owe to the beggar races.


Nice. Good company you're keeping. Rush, Anne (You can turn the world on with your smile) Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and several others phony Christian believers and racists would be proud.

Really, this is too easy. Do small minded people construct such email propaganda in zealous naivete, or is this stuff created by seriously deceitful ideologs, interested in appealing to humanity's baser instincts? I used to think the former, but lately, I tend to believe the latter. Research is so easy these days with the internets (yes, I know, one must be careful not to support one fallacy with another), but still, whoever wrote the original document knew how easy it was to fact check, and did it anyway.

To me, that clearly shows intent to deceive. People who lie to prove their point are not worthy of joining into the discussion. We will tell the truth. You will be proven to be liars and cast out of public discourse.

And maybe stoned and pilloried, too. Just for fun.

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