And this man got elected!?

[elfs]

I think it's pretty clear in the original document, the Declaration of Independence, that we are endowed by our Creator certain inalienable rights which are the rights of liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness... Your rights come from God, that you then loan them to the government, which is why the Declaration of Independence begins 'We the people...'

-- Newt Gingrich.

I weep for this country.

(Just as a way of warning: the website linked to there is run by John Lofton, a Christian Reconstructionist who believes that the only law the U.S. should obey is the Old Testatment, and pulls no punches when he says that paganism and homosexuality are worthy of the death penalty.)

Comments

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

(Comment deleted on the grounds of being not-on-the-point and not-well-thought-out.)

With apologies to Mal

[norincraft.livejournal.com]

Might have been the wrong side ...

Still not sure its going to be the losing side.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

This man got elected because his constituency is from the buckle of the Bible Belt, Corn-Cobb County, Georgia, the county that passed a resolution against gays and generally believes that the Southern Baptist Convention should be the ruling body of the nation...

One man can pull this kind of abberation because at least thirty thousand of his fellow Americans support him in the effort.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe I'm missing what everyone else is seeing, but isn't this just a restatement of the 'social contract' theory that we allow the government to limit our personal freedoms in exchange for the benefits that an orderly society brings? If you're taking issue with the idea that rights come from God, well, if you're religious like Gingrich, where else would you believe they come from?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's not the point. Gingrich is a professor of American history. He's supposed to know what the Declaration of Independence says! Yet the words he quoted are the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. The Declaration begins, "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,..."

He can have the political and religious views he wants, but he shouldn't wave his credentials around and then profess ignorance or, at the very least, inattention. At least not in public like that.