Usually, I don't like to highlight gaffes of politicians. They are human like the rest of us, but
six minutes into this video, Christine O'Donnell proves:
- she has never read or studied the constitution or history of these United States with any depth
- she is not being briefed or handled by anyone competent enough to prevent her from appearing to be a political novice.
We all make mistakes. But not knowing the
content of the first amendment and running for the United States Senate are not phrases that should ever exist in the same sentence. In reality, Senate candidates when discussing religion should be intelligent enough, and historically grounded enough to understand the skepticism with which the Founding Fathers viewed organized (especially state based) religion, their embrace of
Deism, and their defense of secular reason as the
sine qua non of government. Someone should ask Christine O'Donnell if she has read "
The Age of Reason", the consummate
Deist commentary subscribed to by many if not most of the Founding Fathers. So terrible was the fear of state based religion and persecution by a theocratic state, that the founding fathers attempted to excise the possibility of state based religion from our constitution:
[text of the First Amendment]:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Thomas Paine's exceptionally popular treatise (
The Age of Reason) made clear the fear that most American's had of state based religion during the colonial period:
