Rep. Paul Broun, R-GA, was on Fox and Friends yesterday touting his proposal to have Congress officially designate 2010 "The Year of the Bible", and he had an interesting rationale for it:
Broun: Well, it's all about freedom, actually. The Bible was the basis of our laws, it was the basis of the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence -- the Bible was the founding source.
Hmmmmm. Well, some of us have heard otherwise, but OK, whatever.
You may remember Rep. Broun. Last November he won lots of friends on both sides of the aisle and in the White House when he warned that Obama was preparing a Hitler-like dictatorship with his civilian-youth-corps proposal: "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did ... When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."
Broun is, of course, asking President Obama to issue this proclamation. And what will Obama achieve by issuing it?
Broun: The Bible was the basis of our nation. And as we look to the future, and as we deal with our economic problems, as we're stealing our grandchildren's future, we need to look at the principles that were taught Biblically. When our Founding Fathers established this country, they established it on freedom. That's what the Bible teaches. Every single one of our laws are based on the Biblical precepts. And we need to turn back to those precepts if our country's going to be strong and great again.
It's absolutely critical for us to understand what freedom's all about, what our own responsibility is all about, and what government's function within our society is supposed to be. And we have forgotten that in Washington. We are heading down a road that's going to destroy our nation. We are headed toward a total government control of everybody's lives -- a loss of freedom, a loss of our money, a loss of our private property -- and it's extremely critical now for us to go back to those foundational principles that this country was founded upon.
That's the reason a proclamation of "The Year of the Bible" will help people understand what the importance of those, um, principles are all about as we go forward to make our nation secure, free, and great again.
Oh. OK. So you want President Obama to issue this proclamation so right-wing nutcases like yourself can hijack the entire text of the Bible to promote your teabagging brand of politics. Whose entire purpose is to undermine the agenda of both the president and the Democratic Congress.
Right. Well, lots of luck with that, Rep. Broun.
You can't make this stuff up.
