Unexamined ignorance embarasses
CNN screen grab
This news story is a little musty but bears reincarnating:
A spokesman for failed Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, speaking to cable news network CNN just before his December 2017 loss, simultaneously reassured liberals that Southerners are generally know-nothing morons and embarrassed Southerners who know better.
The awkward incident was recounted in an unflinching Dec. 14 article on the American Humanist Association’s Humanist.com e-zine by Matthew Bolger, the AHA’s legislative director, who happens to be from Texas.
Explaining to CNN’s Jake Tapper Moore’s belief that same-sex marriage should be illegal, his campaign spokesman Ted Crocket said, “You people want to take the whole 2,000 or 3,000 years of our history and y’all just want to throw it out the window as if you’re going to make your own rules, your own man-made rules and do whatever you want in sin, and that’s part of the problem we’ve got in Washington, DC, today.”
These ideas that Moore and Crocket espouse, of course, are ancient biblical and Christian ideas, not universal among humankind today or ever. And the U.S. Constitution pointedly prohibits any religion enforcing its dogma on anyone.
Asked by Tapper why Moore believes Muslims should be blocked from serving in public office, Crocket then opined, “Because you have to swear on the Bible [for the oath of office]. I had to do it. I’m an elected official three terms. I had to swear on a Bible. You have to swear on a Bible to be an elected official in the United States of America. He alleges that a Muslim cannot do that ethically swearing on the Bible.”
Crocket seemed unaware that public officers are not only not required to swear on any holy book, the Constitution prescribes that no religious test of any kind whatsoever be required to run for or accept public office. Crocket blankly stared at Tapper when informed he didn’t know what he was talking about.
Fake news? SAD!
