'Perfecting' zee Chews

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Thom Hartmann:

The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) called on media to stop inviting Ann Coulter as a guest commentator and strongly condemned her comments that Jews should be “perfected” by accepting the New Testament and that America would be better off if Judaism were “thrown away” and all Americans were Christian.

“While Ann Coulter has freedom of speech, news outlets should exercise their freedom to use better judgment,” said NJDC Executive Director Ira N. Forman. “Just as media outlets don’t invite those who believe that Martians walk the earth to frequently comment on science stories, it’s time they stop inviting Ann Coulter to comment on politics.”

It's tempting to think that the Coultergeist could be 'perfected', but it's illegal to do what would be necessary. You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit anyway. A prefrontal lobotomy with ski poles would be an improvement though.

Similarly, Justice Antonin Scalia turned history on its head several years ago when he attended an Orthodox synagogue in New York and claimed that the Founders intended for their Christianity to play a part in government. Scalia then went so far as to suggest that the reason Hitler was able to initiate the Holocaust was because of German separation of church and state.

Justice Scalia and Ann Coulter may well benefit from looking back at the photographs that came out of Germany that were all over the newspapers and news magazines at war’s end. The photos that can be seen, for instance, at www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm of the Catholic Bishops giving the collective Nazi salute. The annual April 20th celebration, declared by Pope Pius XII, of Hitler’s birthday. The belt buckles of the German army, which declared “Gott Mit Uns” (”God is with us”). The pictures of the 1933 investiture of Bishop Ludwig Müller, the official Bishop of the 1000-Years-Of-Peace Nazi Reich. That last photo should be the most problematic for Ann Coulter and Justice Scalia, because Hitler had done exactly what Scalia is recommending - he merged church and state.

Which brings up one of the main reasons - almost always overlooked by modern-day commentators, both left and right - that the Founders and Framers were so careful to separate church and state: They didn’t want religion to be corrupted by government.

Well, that's a new angle, to me anyway. It seems a little ass-backwards, but I think I get his point: 'tis better for them to be corrupt separately, for corrupt both government and religion surely are. It's when they mingle and combine their corruptedness that truly bad things happen.

Mr. Hartmann goes on with a buncha historical stuff involving famous figures going on about separation or combination of church and state. Interesting stuff.

In some distant place, Adolf Hitler and Bishop Müller must be smiling at Ann Coulter and Justice Scalia’s encouragement of the growing conflation of church and state in America. It’s exactly what they worked so hard to achieve, and what helped make their horrors possible.

And Thomas Jefferson and James Madison must have tears in their eyes.

On the plus side, the Founders and Framers are spinning so fast in their graves it may help solve our energy problems.

Especially when Coulter and Scalia get their ovens fired up.

Update:

Go see this.