The headline actually reads: “Congressman: ‘I Fear … We Will Have Many More Muslims In The United States’,” but it might as well read the same as my headline. Rep. Virgil Goode, a Virginian Republican, uttered this masterpiece. These are the words of a coward. The words of a rascist. The words of a fool. And what’s worse, there’s nothing more unpatriotic than uttering a phrase like that.
You see, I read stuff like this ridiculous comment online all the time. Let me quote “Answeil Vachette (R) Va.”: “America is Christianity.It is the 4th largest religion in the world.This nation was founded on Christianity.It is the fact.”
Where do people come up with this stuff? Anyone who has studied history ought to know better. I often hear people mutter this nonsense about America being founded by white Christians in the Christian vein, but it WASN’T (1) (2) (3) (4). I don’t care what you read online. It was founded by people fleeing religious persecution who went to great lengths to NOT write any religion into the constituion and laws. In fact, religion is mentioned twice in the Constitution, once in the first amendment which prohibits laws “respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and once in Article VII, which forbids “reigious tests” for public office. The brilliant authors of this document, the Founding Fathers, couldn’t have foreseen us destroying their intentions and forsaking their well-intentioned documents hundreds of years later.
Laws are intended to sway with the times, and laws are easy to repeal. The Constitution is the backbone of the US, and it is decidedly NOT Christian in nature. The only valid argument, I suppose, is that the basis of the morals set forth in the Constitution is Judeo-Christian in nature. So be it, I suppose. It’s not far-fetched to imagine that most Western cultures have the same basic set of morals for grounding, and I don’t think it really implies a tie to religion.
Getting back to ol’ Congressman Virgil Goode, his words reflect a xenophobia that I see more and more of, and it makes me sick. It exposes the poison deep-seeded in the veins of the US today, and it’s pathetic. It embarasses all of us, and pretty much proves that the decline of the US is inevitable, because we have turned on ourselves and destroyed everything that made this nation great. We were once a nation that said “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Remember that little ditty? It’s inscribed on the Statue of Liberty! At some point, that mentality made us a great nation. But Virgil Goode — a rotten, cowardly shell of a man — thinks he knows better.
America, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. And we should be ashamed that people like Virgil Goode represent us. And we should be ashamed that our mindset is getting to sound an awful lot like Nazi Germany.
