As part of a broad national security plan to defeat ISIS, Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich proposed creating a new government agency to push Judeo-Christian values around the world. The new agency, which he hasn’t yet named, would promote a Jewish- and Christian-based belief system to four regions of the world: China, Iran, Russia and the Middle East…. “We need to beam messages around the world” about the freedoms Americans enjoy, Kasich said in an interview with NBC News Tuesday. “It means freedom, it means opportunity, it means respect for women, it means freedom to gather, it means so many things.”
Given the tone and tenor of the race to the bottom that is the 2016 GOP Presidential beauty contest, I suppose it was only a matter of time until one of the candidate put forth a proposal so blatantly, breath-takingly unconstitutional that it almost defies rational understanding.
You’d think that as one who’s been a politician most of his life, John Kasich would understand the importance of the separation of Church and State. The 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause proscribes Congress from advancing the interests of one religion over others…so the creation of a “Department of Judeo-Christian Values” would seem at first glance to be inimical to what the this country stands for. Never mind that America is officially NOT a Christian nation (doubters can refer to the 1771 Treaty of Tripoli, among other source documents). It IS officially a secular nation that boasts a significant majority who self-identify as Christian. That’s no small or subtle difference, BTW.
Despite what Kasich may believe to be an appropriate use of scarce public resources, the American government simply doesn’t have the Constitutional authority to promote Christianity…unless he’s proposing that all othe religions be included in state-sponsored propaganda.
[Kasich] defended the creation of the new agency, despite vows by some of his GOP rivals to shrink the federal government.
“There’s nobody who’s spent more time shrinking government and cutting budgets than I have,” Kasich said, according to NBC.
I see no end to the irony inherent in someone who’s based his political career on shrinking government to be proposing a brand new government bureaucracy. His claims that no one’s “spent more time shrinking government and cutting budgets” notwithstanding, this appears to be just another instance of a Right-wing culture warrior working for the creation of a government just small enough to enforce his political/ideological/theological agenda.
Hypocrisy much??
There’s certainly nothing wrong with wanting to promote Judeo-Christian values if you believe in that sort of thing. When a politician advocates for the creation of a government agency charged with promoting the values of a religion not all Americans (myself included) follow, that’s a (Constitutional) problem. When government begins promoting the values of the majority religion over those of others, can it be long before America becomes a more prosperous version of Iran or Pakistan?
There’s certainly no Constitutional problem with creating a department in the federal government focused on spreading propaganda…and if Kasich had spoken of promoting “Western values,” my reaction to his proposal would be far different. Unfortunately, there seems little doubt but that his language was very carefully crafted in a cynical attempt to cement his bona fides with the Rabid Christian Right. Never mind that Kasich has spent his political career championing smaller government and now wishes to add a bureaucracy tasked with pushing “Judeo-Christian values.”
If a Presidential candidate can’t be counted on to understand and respect the Constitution while running for office, how are we to believe he will do so when sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office?
