Friday, January 07, 2005

A very bad article:

I don't have the time or desire to refute all of the inaccuracies in this very long article on the Separation of Church and State by David Kupelian of WorldNetDaily. That could literally swallow the rest of my vacation time.

Instead let me note that the article erroneously claims that "the 10 Commandments [are] the undisputed basis for America's laws," (when in reality only 3 or 4 of the Ten Commandments are in any way appropriately related to the civil laws, and such norms, for instance against killing and stealing, have existed cross-culturally in places never touched by the Ten Commandments). And he sums up his article with one of David Barton's phony quotes, attributed to, but never uttered by James Madison:

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."


The rest of the article is full of errors or misleading arguments like this.

[Update: I sent Mr. K my post; he didn't write back. However, the phony quote by Madison is now gone from the article. It was there this morning (it concluded the piece). Now it's gone. Should I expect a "thank you"?]

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