One of Ron Paul’s selling points as a presidential candidate is his willingness to reject Republican orthodoxy. As the theory goes, the modern-day GOP has been taken over by neocons and religious extremists, and Paul’s libertarian-brand conservatism rejects both. Given that most liberals have a similar disdain for the Podhoretz and Dobson crowds, Paul has picked up a few fans on the left, too.
But what I did not realize is that when it comes to the religious right’s theocratic worldview, Paul is surprisingly in line with TV preachers like Pat Robertson. An alert reader emailed me this Ron Paul commentary from December 2003, in which the Texas Republican laments “the ongoing war against religion” in general, and Christianity in specific.
Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view. The justification is always that someone, somewhere, might possibly be offended or feel uncomfortable living in the midst of a largely Christian society, so all must yield to the fragile sensibilities of the few. The ultimate goal of the anti-religious elites is to transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity.
What’s the difference between this analysis and the nonsense on The 700 Club? Slightly better writing, maybe, but the worldview is identical. Indeed, Paul is even on the same page as Bill O’Reilly when it comes to the absurd “war on Christmas.”
Christmas pageants and plays, including Handel’s Messiah, have been banned from schools and community halls. Nativity scenes have been ordered removed from town squares, and even criticized as offensive when placed on private church lawns. Office Christmas parties have become taboo, replaced by colorless seasonal parties to ensure no employees feel threatened by a “hostile environment.” … [T]he once commonplace refrain of “Merry Christmas” has been replaced by the vague, ubiquitous “Happy Holidays.” But what holiday? Is Christmas some kind of secret, a word that cannot be uttered in public? Why have we allowed the secularists to intimidate us into downplaying our most cherished and meaningful Christian celebration?
I can appreciate the fact that Paul supporters get annoyed when critics are dismissive of his ideas when it comes to eliminating most of the federal government, overhauling the modern foreign-policy apparatus, and eliminating the Federal Reserve. But are these same fans — most of whom ostensibly support church-state separation — equally willing to support Paul’s Falwell-like rhetoric on “protecting” Christianity from the nefarious “secularists”?
Indeed, given what I’ve seen of Paul in the Republican debates, I’m genuinely surprised at his penchant for religious right rhetoric. Usually, libertarians aren’t terribly concerned with whether some local city hall has a Nativity scene or not. Whether some clerk at the mall mentions Christmas or not is hardly the concern of members of Congress. The strength of a religious tradition will rise or fall in the free market of ideas, right?
Except Paul, at least as recently as four years ago, was taking a very different approach, publishing a thought piece that might as well have come from Focus on the Family.
The piece added:
The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion.
Seriously? Ron Paul continues to cite the U.S. Constitution has the single most important guide for the nation, and he believes it’s “replete with references to God” — despite the fact that the Constitution doesn’t mention God or Christianity at all? Has Paul even read the Constitution?
Paul’s bizarre piece on religion concluded, “[T]he secularists wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our nation’s Christian heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.”
None of this makes any sense. If this nonsense wasn’t still sitting on Paul’s office U.S. House website, I’d think it was a hoax.
A little something for Paul’s liberal supporters to consider.