Here we go again. More fear mongering and false equivalencies from Newt Gingrich as he's out trying to sell his new history revisionist book. For the second time in a week, though, a host on Fox News actually asked him if his ridiculous comparisons are over the top. It would be nice to see anyone ever ask this hypocrite about his phony newly found religious faith after the way he treated his ex-wives and why anyone should believe they're for anything other than political expediency.
VAN SUSTEREN: Continuing with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. He has a brand-new book, "To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular Socialist Machine." Speaker Gingrich writes, in part, "The America in which we grew up is vastly different from the America the secular socialist left want to create, and that's why saving America is the fundamental challenge of our time. The secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."
Speaker Gingrich is here with us. All right, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Go a little far on that one?
GINGRICH: No. Because I'm not talking about moral equivalence of the people, I'm talking about the end result. If the Nazis had defeated us, then America as we know it would have disappeared. If the Soviet Union had defeated us, the America as we know it would have disappeared. I argue in this book -- and I think it's a pretty reasoned and compelling argument -- that the fact is, the values of a secular socialist movement are antithetical -- and you hear from President Obama all the time.
You know, we're a country that says we're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. The secular socialist left doesn't want God anywhere in public life and doesn't want to acknowledge God anywhere in public life, to such a degree that the Democratic candidate for the Senate of Massachusetts said maybe if you're Catholic, you shouldn't work in an emergency room, OK? That's a fairly radical statement.
Similarly, we believed historically you get to go out and work as hard as you want. You get to dream as big as you want. And then you get to keep it. Now you have a president who says openly, you know, some people make too much money, and maybe he should decide. Now, I mean, his idea of redistribution is that politicians decide how much you ought to get to keep of what you earn.
VAN SUSTEREN: That's...
GINGRICH: I think that's a fundamentally different America.
VAN SUSTEREN: What -- in your -- in your thesis, what's worse, the secular or the socialist?
GINGRICH: Oh, I think they're intimately tied together. I think that you can't build a socialist country without being secular, although if you asked me to choose, I think the drive of the secularist to eliminate God from American life is a much greater long-term danger because freedom is built on faith. And the fact is, this country's deepest beliefs start with the idea that power comes from God to you personally, and then you loan power to the state. The state is not the center of power, you are.
And that's different than any other country in the world. It's different than all the European countries, which is why, frankly, having a European-style socialist movement in this country is so undermining of the American tradition.
VAN SUSTEREN: How do you reconcile the different beliefs?
GINGRICH: Well, I don't think you're going to. I think, frankly, we're going to have to beat them. I think they're wrong. I think they represent a -- a...
VAN SUSTEREN: But take -- I mean -- I mean, in terms of, like, in sort of the socialist secular. I mean, I take it -- like Muslims. You have any...
GINGRICH: Oh, no, look, I think -- if you're talking about faith beliefs...
VAN SUSTEREN: Faith belief.
GINGRICH: We have historically been very good at having a very wide range of religious beliefs. Washington writes a letter as early as 1791 to a synagogue in Rhode Island. Jefferson writes the Baptists. There's no great threat in America of a theocracy. But there's a real threat in America of eliminating God from public life entirely, and I think that's important to understand that the historic America model was God matters, religion matters. You should practice in your own faith, but we are going to respect you.
I mean, for most of American history, we had prayer in school and nobody thought that it was a theocratic institution and people were allowed to approach God in their own way. For most of American history, we had prayers at valedictory addresses. We had -- we had prayers at graduations. Nobody -- in fact, we still today have prayers in the U.S. House and Senate, although we have a judge who Obama nominated who said that it was unconstitutional for the Indiana legislature to open with a prayer.
