Katherine Harris became famous in 2000, when, as Florida’s top election official, she did everything in her power to throw the presidential election to George W. Bush. (Her best efforts weren’t enough, and the Supreme Court had to step in to stop the counting of actual votes cast by actual voters lest Bush fall behind.)
Now she is a member of Congress and a candidate for U.S. Senate. From the Orlando Sentinal:
U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris said this week that the separation of church and state is “a lie,” that God did not intend for the United States to be a “nation of secular laws” and that a failure to elect Christians to political office will allow lawmaking bodies to “legislate sin.”
…
Separating religion and politics is “so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers,” Harris said.
We know it’s not the voters who choose them in Katherine Harris’ world.
“Our rulers” may seem like strange terminology in a democracy, but it just flows off the tongue if you don’t believe in democracy.
Harris isn’t the only right-winger to believe there’s no separation of church and state. Here’s Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel of Concerned Women for America:
Well, you know, the interesting thing is, at the founding of our country, there were state churches. That’s what it’s all about in a country where the people get to rule, and if you’re in a state you don’t like, you get to move to another state.
And Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:
government — however you want to limit that concept — derives its moral authority from God. It is the “minister of God” with powers to “revenge,” to “execute wrath,” including even wrath by the sword
And Thomas Jefferson:
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
Wait a second! How’d he get in here?
Spink Nogales | 27-Aug-06 at 3:54 pm | Permalink
Obviously, Jefferson could not foresee the flowering of the democracy he helped to seed. If he were alive today I don’t think he would be taken seriously unless he learned to think in sound bites.
Our ‘rulers’ in today’s age seem to take their cue from the flock of out of control ‘school principal’ characters in the ‘high school hi-jinks’ genre of movies from the 1980s. Real ‘Law and Order’ types.
I remember a time when the men and women who sought office would make speeches about ‘America’s brightest days are yet to come.’ Seems like a long time ago, now.