{"id":5807,"date":"2004-07-15T08:13:58","date_gmt":"2004-07-15T15:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/07\/15\/christian-nation.html"},"modified":"2014-11-05T15:22:25","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T22:22:25","slug":"christian_natio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/15\/christian_natio.html","title":{"rendered":"“Christian nation”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Texas GOP has included a plank in their state party platform that the US is “a Christian nation.” That’s just swell, guys.<\/a><\/p>\n

While it’s true that, numerically, Christians are a majority, and so one can describe to the US as “a Christian nation” in that way, that’s a bit different from asserting it as a political party plank. As Cathy Young notes, “If we’re going by the numbers, why not have a party platform asserting that the United States is ‘a white nation’? After all, 77 percent of Americans are white.”<\/p>\n

Or, conversely, given that only 44% (on the high end of estimates) of Americans attend weekly church service, what if a political party decided to assert that, “the United States is a nation that rejects churchgoing.” I suspect the Texas GOP (and those supporting its platform here) would likely have conniptions over someone making that sort of assertion.<\/p>\n

Political platforms are odd birds. On the one hand, nobody — least of all successfully elected candidates — really pays attention to them. When’s the last time an elected official said, “I’m voting for this because this is what the party platform says.” Heck, it’s usually hard to gets candidates to mention the platform during the election.<\/p>\n

That’s because the platform is written by various party factions and insiders. It’s usually much more extreme and polemical than the majority of party members (except for the paradoxical occasions when, faced with an extremely contentious issue, a platform will try to simply gloss over it completely with platitudes and no actual stance). Given that you could likely find significant differences of opinion between any two Republicans (or any two Democrats) on various substantive issues (the Iraq war, separation of church and state, abortion, the tax code, health care reform, the War on Drugs, what to do about Iran, what to do about Israel, environmental policy, gay marriage), expecting any document to stand for “what this party believes” is, of course, folly.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the whole platform thing needs to go away, and the candidates themselves need to develop their own personal platforms — “This I believe.” It would be more helpful, more accurate, and more interesting.<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, while on the one hand I hate to lend too much credence to any particular party platform as anything meaningful, I suspect we’re in for a lot of that this year, as both sides and their supporters try to make political hay from whatever tomfoolery the Dems or GOP put into Official Tomes (we’re already seeing this in the run-up to the Democratic convention).<\/p>\n

As for the Texans — well, folks, that’s just dumb. It’s one thing, as noted above, to conversationally or rhetorically make a broad generalization from an historic or demographic sense, because that welcomes debate on the matter and its meaning. But for all that party platforms aren’t worth the trees cut down to print them, they still have a patina of Official Government Policy (If We Get In) that makes a statement like that — well, impolitic, at best, and both inflammatory and Constitutionally suspect at worst.<\/p>\n

(via Volokh<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Texas GOP has included a plank in their state party platform that the US is “a Christian nation.” That’s just swell, guys. While it’s true that, numerically, Christians are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[109,52,718,9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-state","category-elections-2004","category-marriage-equality","category-politics-law","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":42421,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/06\/texas-gop-zany.html","url_meta":{"origin":5807,"position":0},"title":"Texas + GOP = Zany","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 6-Jun-14 11:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Waiting for them to also recommend dunking for curing witchcraft and human sacrifice for alleviating drought.Reshared post from +The Wire\"Cure the gays\" could soon be official state party policy. http:\/\/thewi.re\/1xiguUL\ufeff The Texas GOP Advances Its 'Cure the Gays' Platform The Texas Republican Party moved one step closer to adding an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42442,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/08\/political-platform-zaniness.html","url_meta":{"origin":5807,"position":1},"title":"Political Platform Zaniness","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 8-Jun-14 2:36pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Courtesy of the Texas GOP.Granted, political platforms tend to be, any more, fairly fringe ivory tower ideals that nobody thinks will happen (or even particular want to have happen). \u00a0But this bunch of proposals can essentially be summed up as \"we need to use our God-given guns to drive off\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131201,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/08\/03\/from-moscow-with-love.html","url_meta":{"origin":5807,"position":2},"title":"From Moscow with Love","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 3-Aug-16 9:01pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It's not so much that the Trump campaign pushed -- while leaving rest of the other GOP platform alone -- to defang an anti-Russian pro-Ukranian plank, but that they are so insistent that they didn't do it. Trump Campaign Changed Ukraine Platform, Lied About It Top Trump aide Paul Manafort\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":33528,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/03\/bigotry-and-bipartisanship.html","url_meta":{"origin":5807,"position":3},"title":"Bigotry and Bipartisanship","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 3-May-13 11:29am","format":false,"excerpt":"It seems the only thing the GOP is interested in fostering a bipartisan stance about is whose party is has been historically opposed to gay rights.\"First, I think we have to say, 200 hours ago, Hillary Clinton hadn\u2019t announced that she was for gay marriage. The 2008 Democratic platform that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131497,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/11\/yes-deplorable.html","url_meta":{"origin":5807,"position":4},"title":"Yes, "deplorable"","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 11-Sep-16 12:44am","format":false,"excerpt":"Apparently those folk who are vehement that political correctness is destroying our country are now frothing over Clinton's generalization that half of Trump's supporters hold deplorable beliefs and prejudices.Golly.'One way of reporting on Clinton\u2019s statement is to weigh its political cost, ask what it means for her campaign, or attempt\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30837,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/24\/political-party-time-the-long-form.html","url_meta":{"origin":5807,"position":5},"title":"(Political) Party Time – the Long Form!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 24-Oct-12 11:59pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So who are all those \"third\" parties out there (on the Colorado presidential ballot, at least), and can I get official summaries of what they stand for in a short sentence paragraph? \u00a0Let's find out! (Answer: No. But I managed to distill each one down into a bullet or two\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2012","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2012"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/socialist-equality-party.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5807"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46726,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5807\/revisions\/46726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}