Ten Bears again has posted a must watch short historical video.I did not know a lot of the information in the video, and it so closely matches what some are trying to do today.I think that might be because the same people now older and wealthy enough to fund this grew up during that time believing in that idea.They couldn’t get it done then, they think they can now. We must not let them, we must stop them as they were stopped then.Hugs. Scottie
Discussing the incredible speech given by academic, activist, and BET host Marc Lamont Hill at Saint Sabina over the recent protest (and subsequent reaction) to Joe Biden’s speech at Mother Emanuel AME.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just said the quiet part out loud, in complete rejection of what the Biden administration has been trying to accomplish while at the same time taking all the money & aid the U.S. has been providing.
By my dogs that love gravy, we must stop this Christian attack on the secular state of our country. This people are desperately misinformed yet have worked their way into power and money. They want a minority Christian rule over the majority using moral police and a Christian Taliban. This is a full out take over of the US by a driven religious group who are starting from the wrong premise and building a movement out of it. We have already seen how they want to base our laws on medical care on their religion, even if they don’t know what their religion says about the subject. I am talking about banning abortion, but also marriage, adoption, gender affirming care for trans people, and yes even what materials can be read by your students and what can be taught them. Hugs. Scottie
America as a Christian nation—that’s a heretical notion by today’s lights. We are a secular country, the experts have insisted—demanded—for decades. But that was never true. The Founders read Roman historians, yes. Some were influenced by Enlightenment philosophies.
But the Bible has been the main source of our national ideals. From the age of the New England Puritans to the Great Awakening that prepared the ground for revolution, Scripture has molded our common life from the first. Consider:
Our ideal of the individual has Christian roots. So too does our constitutionalism. Our great traditions of progressive reform were animated by an ardent Christian spirit—as was conservative resistance to their excesses. Even in our most bitter conflicts, Christian culture has been America’s common ground.
America has been profoundly shaped by the Bible. If Christians want to renew that influence today, we’re going to have to start thinking about what a truly Christian *economy* would look like – one with good jobs, high wages, and strong families https://t.co/yNac01DYDU
I’m really starting to HATE christians. I’ve known very few who actually walk the walk, and you sure don’t need a religion to do the right thing. In fact religious people will do the WRONG thing because of their religion.
I avoid them completely. Conversation starters like ‘tell me about your relationship with Jesus’, or any phrase that includes ‘sharing the good news’ have me running for the hills. There are good christians out there, they just don’t announce it to everyone because they are too busy being good christians. Wish there were more of them.
Of all the bullshit lines I’ve got hit with, my fave was “What’s YOUR form of worship?” asked in a tone making it very obvious her assumption was that of course no one is without a form of worship.
it’s interesting — even Joe Scarbourough, brought up S. Baptist has been saying for awhile now how that church, and other evangelical ones coopted the abortion issue in the Carter presidency … and turned those churches into the political (.. i’ll call them “clubs” ) that they are —devoid of any real Christian meaning.
Yes, it was the 1973 Supreme Court decision on tax exemption of religious organizations (Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v Nyquist) that got all of this rolling. It has always been about money and power.
That’s b/c the republican establishment knew that their platform of tax cuts for millionaires/billionaires along with corporations was a losing strategy. They knew that by renewing the horrid “southern strategy” that nixon made use of while allowing evangelicals a voice in dictating social wedge issues (abortion, gay rights), republicans would remain popular amongst low-info as well as suburban voters.
Like their elections, if they don’t get the desired result they get so over. Because only 4 of the founding fathers clearly pointed out that there should be a separation of church and state ,They have taken it upon themselves to say “ not a majority “ so we will force our agenda
[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
James Madison
James Madison (1836). “The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. Together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, Luther Martin’s Letter, Yates’s Minutes, Congressional Opinions, Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of ’98-’99, and Other Illustrations of the Constitution”, p.204
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Reports of Cases Determined in the General Court of Virginia: From 1730, to 1740; and from 1768, to 1772”, p.140
The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion. John Adams
If you want to see what a “Christian America” that Josh Hawley talks about looks like, look no further than Mississippi, where Evangelical Christianity is thoroughly infused in it’s government. It been that way for a long time. As I mentioned below, it’s also dead last or near dead last in every economic and social measurement, including high poverty, poor education, terrible health care outcomes, infant mortality, low wages… you name it. Josh Hawley and his fellow Christianists want to replicate Mississippi all over America.
Yes. It is unclear to me how the state districts are gerrymandered, but I am sure that they must be. MO never seems to have any competitive state-wide offices, though. This is a big change from past decades.
Those people from red counties are happy enough to come to the blue big city hospitals for their medical care.
Tate Reeves doesn’t want to accept federal funding to feed free lunch-eligible children a lunch during summer break. Super Christian – let them go hungry. That’s Mississippi.
my response to his X: “Dear Josh — read the US Constitution, read Geo Washington’s Letter to the Touro Synagogue, and read the Treaty of Tripoli (circa 1802)
you are Wrong, you are a coward, and you are the worst sort of traitor to the United States of America …’
A truly Christian economy is void of money and not made it the sole motivation of one’s existence. Greed is a sin. A good job is helping the poor and welcoming those in need to one’s home to house and feed without the intention of enslaving them for the free labor. What kind of fucking Christian is he?
And there would be jubilee every few years to forgive debt. How many Rethugs are loath to forgive their children’s education debt? How many of them work hard to give bankers the upper hand in all negotiations.
The law he touts that would allow local police to arrest people they “think” are not here legally and a local judge gets to order their immediate removal. Guess what that means in reality? Arrest all brown people, charge them, quickly send them to Mexico at gun point … learn later they were here legally, or maybe even citizens. Ah who cares, they republican leaders get their nice white straight cis ethnostate where they are complete rulers over how people live. Hugs. Scottie.
The third-term Republican responded that the state is using “every tool that can be used, from building a border wall to building these border barriers.” He also touted the new Texas law empowering state officials to remove people from the U.S. who they suspect of being in the country illegally.
“… the new deportation law, which is set to take effect in March and threatens to upend longstanding precedent leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government. The law would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of unlawfully entering the state from Mexico and empower judges to order their removal”.
Department of Public Safety troopers stand guard over migrants in a detention area Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023, in Eagle Pass as a surge of migrants push across the border.
William Luther
WASHINGTON — Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas is doing everything to stop border crossings short of shooting migrants because the Biden administration would “charge us with murder.”
“We are deploying every tool and strategy that we possibly can,” the governor said in an interview with conservative commentator Dana Loesch. “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border because of course the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”
The comments came during an appearance on Loesch’s show last week in which Abbott was asked what he believed was the “maximum amount of pressure” he could implement to secure the border.
The third-term Republican responded that the state is using “every tool that can be used, from building a border wall to building these border barriers.” He also touted the new Texas law empowering state officials to remove people from the U.S. who they suspect of being in the country illegally.
The clip was aired on Loesch’s program again Thursday without the line about shooting migrants. A version of the audio was also posted on social media by Heartland Signal, a progressive radio show based in Chicago.
Abbott said Friday that he was asked to point out where he was drawing the line on what the state can legally do to secure the border.
“I pointed out something that is obviously illegal,” Abbott said. “It’s that simple.”
The comments come as the Biden administration has sued the state to stop a slew of Abbott’s border security efforts, including the new deportation law, which is set to take effect in March and threatens to upend longstanding precedent leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government. The law would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of unlawfully entering the state from Mexico and empower judges to order their removal.
Abbott also has strung miles of razor wire along the border and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande, which the Biden administration is also fighting to have removed in a separate court battle.
But Abbott still has faced pressure from some conservatives to do more, and some in the GOP have called for the use of deadly force to stop suspected traffickers. Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged as much during a campaign stop in Texas last summer, saying those breaking through border barriers and displaying “hostile intent” should “end up stone-cold dead as a result of that bad decision.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety last month found no wrongdoing by agency officials after six troopers working for Abbott’s border security initiative alleged mistreatment of migrants last summer.
The complaints included an email from a DPS medic describing “inhumane” treatment of migrants he witnessed while deployed in Eagle Pass. The email said troopers had been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande and told not to give water to asylum-seekers even in extreme heat. The agency’s inspector general found that most of the incidents raised by the troopers did happen, but concluded that DPS officials did not violate law or agency policy.
Benjamin Wermund is the Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. He can be reached at ben.wermund@houstonchronicle.com. He covers the Texas delegation and the many ways the state and its leaders shape national politics and policy. He’s a Texas native and a diehard Spurs fan.
People like Abbott are precisely the reason why laws exist. He has no moral compunction against murder, but luckily realizes it could land him in prison.
History in Alabama is under attack again. A handful of state lawmakers are on a mission to erase it, to cancel those who would mention it and punish those who would protect it. No less than a revered state institution is on the line — the Alabama Department of Archives and History — and the stories it exists to preserve.
It’s LGBTQ history in lawmakers’ crosshairs. Founded in Birmingham in 2015, the Invisible Histories Project collects stories and material regarding LGBTQ history in the South — the things, it seems, many would like to pretend never happened.
In June, the Alabama Department of Archives and History invited one of the Invisible Histories Project founders, Maigen Sullivan, to speak in Montgomery about the group’s work, as part of a lunchtime lecture series. And that’s where all hell broke loose — this time.
Read the full article. As you can see in the June 2023 video below, state Sen. Chris Elliot [photo above] tried to defund the Archives shortly after the one-hour lecture took place. That bill failed. His new bill would fire the entire board.
Cancel culture strikes again.
Alabama Archives hosted a speaker on LGBTQ history. Republican lawmakers are pushing through legislation to fire the board.https://t.co/5stvXMxS0n
And acknowledging the crimes against LGBTQI+ people is some sort of lèse-majesté. Yasss, queen! Inflicting butthurtness upon homophobic hets is such a huge crime, so just don’t even dream of doing it or they’ll plot to toss you in jail… or worse. Really! In fact, they really like that “worse” option — and it ain’t pretty.
The point is erasing the LGBTQIA from public view. Like Russia did. Next is to make being LGBTQIA illegal, again like other countries do. This is not the end of it. It is a deliberate push to wipe out all progress of the past 70 to 80 years on equality and equal rights for those not cis straight white males. It is the first part in a war to return to white Christian cis straight male rule. Hugs. Scottie
A bill before the Legislature this year would replace trustees with political appointments.
Gay Pride Marchers in Birmingham, Alabama The Birmingham News The Birmingham News
History in Alabama is under attack again. A handful of state lawmakers are on a mission to erase it, to cancel those who would mention it and punish those who would protect it.
No less than a revered state institution is on the line — the Alabama Department of Archives and History — and the stories it exists to preserve.
But this time it’s not stories of Reconstruction or civil rights protests at risk of being lost. At least, not yet. Rather, something more recent.
In June, the Alabama Department of Archives and History invited one of the Invisible Histories Project founders, Maigen Sullivan, to speak in Montgomery about the group’s work, as part of a lunchtime lecture series.
And that’s where all hell broke loose — this time.
You see, the other Invisible Histories founder, Joshua Burford, had spoken as part of the same lunchtime lecture series the year before, and no one seemed bothered then.
But political winds changed. The Moms for Liberty types brought back the Inquisition and now a thing that had once escaped notice of all but a handful of history nerds became a moral panic of political importance.
A handful of lawmakers called the Archives and questioned why state money was being spent on such a thing. The Archives director, Steve Murray, explained it wasn’t state money but a grant that funded the lecture series.
Not that the funding mattered. These lawmakers did not want it to happen, period, regardless of who paid for it.
“I wanted to express my concern for this event,” state Sen. Chris Elliot, R-Josephine, wrote Murray in a text message I obtained through a public records request. “Ideally, I’d like to see it canceled.”
Canceled. There’s that word. The next time you hear someone yapping about cancel culture, look back at Elliot’s text message and remember who is trying to cancel who.
Murray declined, the event went forward as planned, and angry lawmakers began to plot retribution.
First Elliott tried to cut $5 million of state funding from the Archives, nearly half its budget. And remember, he already knew tax dollars hadn’t paid for the event.
This was punishment.
Elliott filed his first bill in a special session. Legislative leadership instead kept to the point of the special session to redraw congressional districts. Elliot’s bill died when lawmakers gaveled out and went home.
Now, Elliott has set his sites on those who control the Archives — its board of trustees.
“Ideally, I’d like to see it canceled.”
Alabama State Sen. Chris Elliott to Alabama HIstory and Archives Director Steve Murray regarding an LGBTQ historian invited to speak.
In a bill pre-filed for the 2024 session, Elliott would change the Archives governance from a self-nominating board to one controlled by the governor, lieutenant governor, and the Alabama House and Senate leaders.
All of the 21 current board members would be fired on June 1, 2024. Those board members include folks like Montgomery civil rights attorney Fred Gray, who knows a thing or two about Alabama history (because he made it).
But Elliott’s real target seems to be Murray.
“It really chaps me when we end up in a situation where you have unelected bureaucrats saying, ‘We know better. We’ll do what we want to do regardless of what the people think,’” Elliott said in a recent talk radio interview.
The thing is, I’ve seen Murray speak in at least a dozen public hearings, and I’ve seen him explain things to rooms full of lawmakers that they should have learned in fourth-grade Alabama History. Murray doesn’t fume, yell or condescend. Generally, he’s one of the more patient, soft-spoken people I’ve met in Alabama state government.
And I’ve never heard Murray speak the way Elliott described. Nor did Murray say any such thing in the text messages Elliott exchanged with him before the event.
The Alabama Department of Archives and HIstory was the first of its kind in the country and is home to the Museum of Alabama.Kyle Whitmire, al.com
I called Elliott to ask, who had spoken to him that way?
Turns out, no one. They just didn’t do what Elliott wanted them to do.
When I pushed him on it, Elliott argued that he doesn’t like how Archives and History board members are appointed and he said some things that weren’t exactly accurate.
“They are one of the few, if not only, self-perpetuating boards in the state of Alabama that does not at least answer to elected officials, or by extension to the people of the state of Alabama, and simply reappoints itself over and over and over again,” he said. “And you gotta wonder, is that good governance?”
There are a few problems with what Elliott said.
First, there are other boards that self-nominate to fill vacancies, including the University of Alabama Board of Trustees, and there are others controlled by professional associations, such as the State Board of Medical Examiners and the Alabama State Bar.
Elliott hasn’t filed bills to change how those boards work. I checked.
State Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, wants to fire the Alabama Department of Archives and History Board of Trustees after the department refused to cancel an LGBTQ historian’s speech last year.
Nor is it true the board lacks political oversight or that it is purely self-perpetuating.
The board does nominate its members, but those nominations then go before the Alabama Senate, where Elliott serves, for up or down votes — much like Supreme Court nominees go before the United States Senate.
If Elliott didn’t like any of these prospective board members, he could have voted against them. In fact, he’s had that opportunity 20 times since he became an Alabama state senator in 2018.
Care to guess how many he approved?
In the last four years, Elliott voted to approve all the people he now wants to fire.
Elliott approved three of those nominees this year — just two weeks before he took an interest in the LGBTQ stuff.
Not only did Elliott vote to approve those people for the board, but so did the cosponsors of his bill.
I didn’t get to ask Elliott about this during our phone call.
When I asked him how many Archives and History events he had been to — not counting the open-bar receptions special interest lobbyists host there — the phone call suddenly ended.
“Have a great day!” he said. “Bye!”
And the line went dead.
Text messages between state Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, and Alabama Department of Archives and History Director Steve Murray show Elliott knew the Food for Thought speakers series was not funded with state money. AL.com obtained the texts through a public records request.
Elliott’s record will have to speak for itself.
But what of his question: Is that good governance?
A handful of lawmakers out of 140 demanded an event be canceled because they didn’t care for its subject matter.
The director and the board declined to cancel it.
Because silencing a speaker who has tried to make Alabama history more accurate and more complete would be in direct conflict with Archives and History’s purpose — to document and share true Alabama stories.
They made the archives a place to tell Alabamians’ stories — not just the ones Elliott wanted told.
They did their jobs and now Elliott wants to fire them for it.
This is Don’t-You-Know-Who-I-Am politics.
This isn’t someone concerned with free speech.
This isn’t someone who cares about cancel culture. This is someone angry he doesn’t get to cancel someone else’s culture.
This is someone who wants to bring back the silence — to erase what little has been recovered and mute those who would speak of it.
Unless we say, enough.
Unless we say, this is history that won’t be forgotten.
Unless we say, not again.
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About the Authors
Kyle Whitmire
Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for AL.com, where he writes about political culture in Alabama. Dislikes: corruption, cruelty, incompetence and hypocrisy. Likes: quiet heroes. He is the 2023 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
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