A few weeks ago Sarah Palin said the nastiest thing she could think of about Pope Francis, all because he took a stand against economic inequality. She called him a liberal (ouch). A couple of days later she had second thoughts and apologized to the Pontiff, who probably couldn’t have cared less. But that wasn’t the end of her pontificating on faith.
Last week Palin made an appearance to peddle her “War On Christmas” book to the Tea-vangelicals at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Her standard stump speech was typically littered with patriotic cliches and liberal bashing. But she introduced a new theme in this theo-con venue that goes a step further than her routine divisiveness and exclusionist rhetoric, saying that…
Palin: …our Constitution was created wholly for a moral and religious people and our Constitution would be irrelevant and impossible to follow, it would be no good, it would be inadequate for any other people.
So Sarah Palin, and her Liberty U. hosts who heartily agreed with her, regard the United States Constitution as a document that is “irrelevant” and “inadequate” to all but the devoutly religious like themselves. Never mind that the first amendment explicitly states that there shall be “no establishment of religion.” Palin is essentially denying the benefits of constitutional liberties to the 20% of Americans who describe themselves as non-religious. For these wayward heathens the Constitution is “impossible to follow.” In fact, she goes so far as to say that the absence of religion removes all reason to follow it.
Palin: [T]here will be no reason to follow our Constitution because it is a moral and religious people who understand that there is something greater than self, we are to live selflessly, and we are to be held accountable by our creator, so that is what our Constitution is based on.
Where Palin gets the notion that understanding the Constitution requires living selflessly she didn’t bother to explain. However, if she believes that, she has a funny way of showing it. Was she being selfless when she betrayed the people of her state so that she could pursue a lucrative career as a talking head at Fox News? Are her positions against food stamps, health care, the minimum wage, and tax fairness for the wealthy (like herself) examples of selflessness?
What’s more, her assertion that the Constitution is based on being “held accountable by our creator” was apparently manufactured from the thin air circulating between her ears. Nothing in the Constitution even hints at that. To the contrary, it is evident that the Founders intended to place the power to govern in the hands of the people and their designated representatives, not their deities.
The hypocritical and false piety of grifters like Palin is all too common coming from right-wingers who wish they could restrict our nation’s liberties to just themselves. It’s the sort of country club constitutionality that forbids membership for people who are different, like minorities, immigrants, and those unclean peasants who populate our working class. But rarely do cretins like Palin come right out and say that, unless you believe like they do, you are incapable of understanding freedom and are therefore undeserving of it. And when they do come right out and say it, they demonstrate that they know as little about the Constitution as they do about morality.
