“The Declaration of Independence had three great ideas in it.
1.) That we were all created equal
2.) That each of us have inalienable rights given to us by God and not Government
3.) We have the right to rule ourselves
Our nation is not founded on a religion. It’s not based on a common culture, even, or heritage. It’s based on those ideas. We’re a creedal nation.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch
The Reason Interview podcast w/ Nick Gillespie
I can’t imagine much that is more stupid than this as coming from a Supreme Court Justice.
First, the three ideas that Gorsuch claims are the ideas that America is built on are ideas that find their roots in some religion. For example, the idea that “we are all created equal” stems from some anthropological convictions. Where did those anthropological come from if not from some religion?
Second, the founders did NOT believe that all men were created equal in the sense that Gorsuch wrongly understands the Constitution. If the founders had believed that they would not have later in the Declaration referred to the Indians as “savages.” The founder’s complaint against King George is that King George was not treating the Colonials as fellow Englishmen and as such the bit about all men being created equal was in reference to all Englishmen being created equal. Even Jefferson would have never countenanced the idea that an Iroquois or a Hottentot slave was his equal in the egalitarian sense that we throw that word around today.
Third, where else does the idea that we all have inalienable rights given to us by God come from except from some Religion a-priori? A people who genuinely had no religion would never invoke the idea of God. Gorsuch is just gaslighting here.
Fourth, Gorsuch apparently is not aware that in a now-famous study published in the American Political Science Review, which is the flagship publication for political scientists, a political scientist by the name of Donald Lutz surveyed the political literature of the American founding. He was looking to see who it was that Americans were citing in this political literature. He reports that the Bible was cited more frequently than any European writer or even any European school of thought, such as Enlightenment liberalism. The Bible, Lutz reported, accounted for approximately one-third of the citations in the literature he surveyed. The book of Deuteronomy alone was the most frequently cited work, followed by Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In fact, Deuteronomy was referenced nearly twice as often as John Locke’s writings, and the apostle Paul was mentioned about as frequently as Montesquieu and Blackstone, who would have been the two most-cited secular theorists. Because of all this to say, as Gorsuch does that our nation was not founded on a religion is just more gaslighting and is utterly jejune. America was founded as a Christian nation by Christian people, informed by a Christians ethos.
Fifth, we are not a creedal nation. Not even our founders believed that nonsense. Witness founding Father John Jay’s thoughts,
“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people–a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.”
Sixth, the right to rule ourselves was always window dressing and from the beginning has never been true. Like all other nations we are now and always have been ruled by the money interest.
Finally, the idea that there was no common culture or heritage owned by our founding Fathers is another knee slapper. Nine of the thirteen colonies at the time of the Revolution had state churches. They were different denominations, but they were all clearly Christian. Our common culture and heritage were Christian.
I hope Gorsuch doesn’t really believe the manure he’s shoveling, because if he does it demonstrates how incompetent he is. I suspect though as a member of the elite class he understands he has to keep gaslighting the hoi poloi with this drivel. I suspect that Gorsuch understands that if the religion of humanism is to continue as the State religion, then it has to be continually repeated that we were not founded on a religion.
