Timothy Birdnow

This is why we keep losing; we've got double-minded dimwits at the very pinnacle of our government.

Gorsuch has been a decent enough Justice but he's clearly malinformed about American history. America was overwhelmingly a Christian nation. The Establishment Clause was put in place to prevent government from putting it's thumb on the scale by deciding WHICH sect of Christianity would be dominant. Had the Founders thought Islam or Hinduism or any other religion would become dominant they would never have included that clause.

Forsuch told PBS' Margaret Hoover:

"We were never supposed to be a nation that was about one race or one religion … It was about those ideas [in the Declaration of Independence] … We have a First Amendment, for crying out loud. No established religion.”

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Why, pray tell, was slavery no abolished at that point then? Why weren't Indians given citizenship at first? Clearly they were thinking about race.

Race neutrality came later as a result of a long and very painful process - a process we have yet to complete as we simply flipped the dominant races.

But as for religion, yes, there is nothing specific in the Constitution about religion other to ban government from meddling in it, but that is a far cry from saying Christianity is not the core of our nation. Multiple Founding Fathers said so.

This illustrates that Gorsuch is not an originalist but a textualist; he doesn't divine the wishes of the Founders and why they said a thing in the Constitution but rather simply looks at the text as written (and using our modern figures of speech as opposed to theirs). He joins Amy Conehead Barrett and Jumpin' John Roberts as textualists.

The Founders could not possibly state every position in a way that could not be misinterpreted. They relied on their successors understanding this point and interpreting the Constitution based on their original intent. Textualism is silly; it allows for reinterpretation. Gorsuch is dead wrong about America and it's Christian bedrock.

As the article points out, most states had their own preferred religion and imposed all sorts of laws based upon them. Nobody ever suggested they couldn't do that.

In fact many states had religious tests for running for public office and you couldn't run if you weren't a Christian. Those laws lasted until 1961 in some states. It was the leftist Warren Court that struck such laws down as unconstitutional.

How did this practice continue so long if the Founders had opposed the idea that America was a Chrstian nation?

And what of the practice of opening both houses of Congress with prayers led by chaplains? Until recently it was always assumed they be Christian ministers.

Gorsuch is an example of how specialization rots the brain. He studied the law and clearly did not absorb a whole lot else. Law schools rot the brain, and working in the legal field REALLY rots the brain. Legal thought tends to be confused, to put it mildly.

Gorsuch got this idea not from original sources but by reading what other lawyers, his contemporaries, had to say about what the Founders believed.

This is America's problem. Rule by expert has destroyed our country because experts read and quote other experts and avoid doing a couple of simple things - reading the source material directly and using common sense. Scholars rarely do either. Most want to impress their collegues rather than get too the heart of what it is they are examining.

So the modern interpretation of the founding of America is that we have "separation of Church and State" and a guy like Gorsch isn't going to risk being thought a fool - he'll just open his mouth and remove all doubt.

The truly scary thing is Gorsuch is one of the better Justices on the Court. We are governed by a collection of idiots.

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