…are all on display as this embarrassing MAGA KKKatholic gives us his “America, the Light and the Glory” Protestant creation myth which doesn’t even respect the Catholic faith his ancestors were persecuted for on our soil, much less the Native Americans he spits on for the sake of his audience of MAGA cultists:
Where to begin? Where to begin?
First off, lots of people did not come here for religious liberty. New York and Jamestown were founded for the purpose of making money.
Sure. Some came here in search of religious liberty. The Pilgrims, as Garrison Keillor once noted, came here seeking the freedom to be harsher with themselves than English law allowed. But they were not at all keen on religious liberty for anybody else.
Catholics really did set up a colony that provided for the religious liberty of non-Catholics. That lasted right up until the moment that it became a majority Protestant colony, at which point (a theme common in early America) Catholic religious liberty was crushed.
Indeed, in the 19th century, Know Nothings would uphold the religious liberties of Italian Catholics like Santorum thusly:
As to the claim that other countries have changed over time, but not America? What does this even mean? Prescinding from the fact that our Constitution has seen a ton of amendments, our culture has seen enormous evolutionary change in 200 years–including the fact that the Normals in that culture accept the fact of evolution.
We have fought a Civil War to destroy slavery enshrined in that Constitution.
We have gone from being a collection of 13 agrarian colonies to a technological and military colossus that spans the globe in our imperial reach.
We have evolved from a slave state to a state that outlawed slavery.
And that’s just scratching the surface. What on earth can he possibly mean by saying we have not changed as a culture? In what universe is such a statement not sheer midsummer madness or ignorance so deep that nobody should ever listen to one who says it about any subject ever again?
As to the Native populations Santorum casually dismisses, the practice of genocide against them probably has something to do with their inability to make more contributions to American culture. As it is, Santorum glosses over some rather interesting contributions as he dogwhistles “Birth of a Nation” to his audience of MAGA white supremacists. That film, celebrating the founding of the KKK–like Santorum and his audience–does not manifest any interest in or knowledge of the fact that the Iroquois League, in existence since 1142, is the oldest participatory democracy on earth and greatly impressed such non-entities as Benjamin Franklin as a model for his own efforts in the actual birth of the nation:
In 1744, the Onondaga leader Canassatego gave a speech urging the contentious 13 colonies to unite, as the Iroquois had at the signing of the Treaty of Lancaster. This cultural exchange inspired the English colonist Benjamin Franklin to print Canassatego’s speech.
“We heartily recommend Union and a good Agreement between you our Brethren,” Canassatego had said. “Never disagree, but preserve a strict Friendship for one another, and thereby you, as well as we, will become the stronger. Our wise Forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations; this has made us formidable; this has given us great Weight and Authority with our neighboring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy; and, by your observing the same Methods our wise Forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh Strength and Power; therefore whatever befalls you, never fall out one with another.”
He used a metaphor that many arrows cannot be broken as easily as one. This inspired the bundle of 13 arrows held by an eagle in the Great Seal of the United States.
Franklin referenced the Iroquois model as he presented his Plan of Union8 at the Albany Congress in 1754, attended by representatives of the Iroquois and the seven colonies. He invited the Great Council members of the Iroquois to address the Continental Congress in 1776.
And then there is the fact that this guy is speaking from and to the heart of a political cult that has absolutely no interest in religious liberty except for themselves.
Tell the Muslims banned from traveling to the US by his god-king Donald Trump that he and his cult care about religious liberty.
Santorum doesn’t just spit on actual US history and pour out disinformation. He doesn’t just dogwhistle to white supremacists. He does not only insult Native victims of genocide as nobodies in the history of the US. He insults his own immigrant and Catholic ancestors. And for what? For the only thing the mad MAGA cult stands for: lies and raw nihilist power.
You can tell the story of the American founding honestly and still get in the real, albeit imperfect, execution of the quest for religious freedom. You can talk about the failures and the successes. You can talk about the immigrant experience in a way that not only discusses the immigrant’s desire for religious liberty, but admits the challenges they faced from bigots when they got here. You can speak about their achievements without spitting on the Native Americans “Judeo-Christians” crushed and killed as though they did not matter. You can talk about religious liberty now without lying about GOP efforts to destroy it.
But you cannot be a member of the GOP and do any of that without alienating your base of white supremacists, because to be MAGA is to be one of the People of the Lie. What Orwell said of Big Brother in 1984 is absolutely true of MAGA: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
What shall it profit a man, Mr. Santorum, to gain the whole MAGA cult and lose your own soul? God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.
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8 Responses
Speaking of MAGA uber-alles-Qatholics, fornicating, adulterous Newtie, married three times with some overlaps between the three wives, so to speak, the last time in the church because reasons mostly having to do with power and money, had this to say yesterday about Mr. biden…
“ They’re only going to have 200 people in the entire room. Now, this is a room which can easily hold virtually 1,000 or more people.
But they have decided for COVID reasons — and this is a president whose pathological concern about COVID is almost bizarre — for COVID reasons, that each party, 50 House Republicans, 50 House Democrats, 50 Senate Democrats, 50 Senate Republicans, that’s it.”
I don’t Often have pathological concerns, but when i do, it is usually about actual pathologies that have pretty much stopped the world, killed nearly 600,000 americans that we know of, and millions more around the world, with no let up in sight, especially in such Catholic places as Brazil.
Where to begin:
Fornicating, adulterous Newtie, like Covid, is pathological about people. Newt is proud of the fact that in his entire career, he was never caught caring about anyone other than himself. Ask whichever of his first two wives about that. Mr. Biden’s “pathological” concern for the health and safety of others, when there is no personal profit in it, totally baffles him. You can almost here his smirk a la leona helmsley— compassion is for the little people. Well, not for them, not from the likes of fornicating, adulterous Newtie whose third marriage was in the church.
It is, of course, a HUGE concern that Mr. Biden didn’t want overwhelmed hospitals and people dying of Covid on sidewalks. That was where Dolt45’s strategy of dealing with the pandemic was heading. Sorry. HEADED.
After FOUR years of Trumpitude, Mr. Biden has turned out to be just what we needed now. Someone smart enough to listen to smarter people and act responsibly. Gawd-I-don’t-believe in forbid, a grown-up. What a refreshing change this has been. Of course conservatives are freaking out about things like this because they can’t attack him on anything of substance. It’s not like he wore a tan suit, or sumpin’.
Dear Mr. Fornicatin’ Newtie: What Mr. biden is doing is called “setting an example,” if not being cautious and following CDC guidelines, you bloated, perambulating social disease. If only you possessed the decency to set an example, other than an incessant example of hypocrisy.
End of rant.
I particularly hate and despise Mr. Newt.
You can only ask one of his ex-wives about him, the first one is dead. He famously served her with divorce papers when she was in a hospital recovering from cancer surgery.
Which probably means that from a Catholic viewpoint his second marriage was invalid, implying that he wouldn’t have needed an annulment when he converted to the Church and married his former mistress, the lovely Callista, former ambassador to the Holy See.
All of which infuriates me out of all proportion.
My warm and fuzzies for the flaming hypocrite are in very short supply. He is one of the main ones of many that is responsible for the mess this country is in.
And i would certainly have no problem slapping that smug smile of his off his face. But i am not a violent man.
Would you do it, please?
What is really sad is that, when one treats The USA and its history honestly, it’s still a pretty amazing place, both historically and in its current form. Santorum’s nonsense doesn’t uplift the history and culture of the USA, it diminishes it and turns it into a caricature of itself.
After this, I think I’ll start being inordinately proud of being a citizen of country that started its independence with an opera in which the lead charcter doesn’t even sing, but mostly gesticulates wildly during the performance.
There is a reason why native American cultures haven’t contributed much to modern American culture, isn’t there?
We here in New Zealand are trying, now, after over a century of shameful suppression of Maori people and culture – Maori children in public schools were once forbidden to speak their own language at school – we are trying to acknowledge and to incorporate Maoritanga (Maori culture) into our national culture.
Suppression of The Other is not, alas, a speciality of white European Christian people. The Chinese appear to be trying to wipe out Uighur people. Hutu and Tutsis come to mind. It is so easy to compare oneself with someone worse – or equally bad. No – change always starts with me.
This country is guilty of it everywhere.
In french polynesia, they still speak polynesian languages. In Hawaii, as in Aotearoa, it was suppressed. There has been an attempt to bring Hawaiian back, but I don’t think it goes very far.
How to reply to Ben?
In the Russian language there is an expression, “a face that pleads for a brick”.
I think that I would slap his face if I could.
He is a confluence of the worst in religious and conservative politics, and will never pay any cost for it, because the Devil takes care if his own.
And that is two folkloric phrases in a single post.