Grift or Confusion?

I recently saw a video clip of Republican house representative Lauren Boebert telling a room of Colorado supporters that she was sick of hearing about the separation of church and state nonsense that “isn’t even in the constitution” and came from “some Jefferson letter.” I’ve seen a similar sort of perspective being vocalized from numerous other right-wing congress people as well which makes it fairly clear they haven’t actually read the constitution.

I never thought I would ever say this, but Lauren Boebert is actually semi-correct about these two points: the phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the constitution and it does come from “some Jefferson letter,” but that’s pretty much it.

First some context here. There is plenty of stuff that can be left up to interpretation in the constitution, but when the Founders felt that something was so absolutely and fundamentally important, like freedom of speech, they explicitly included it in the conssitution wherein they ensured that it was in fact not up for interpretation. And this wasn’t something where they were arbitrarily adding items into the consitution. It’s a sound argument that if they included one thing before another thing in this written document, the first thing was of higher prevalance and viewed with heightened importance to the second thing.

Freedom of speech is mentioned before freedom of the press. While both items are addressed in the first Amendment, it’s very clear that the Founders felt that these two things were not on equal footing – freedom of speech is something that is of slightly more importance than freedom of the press.

This is why I am so dumb-founded when these “MAGA Republicans” and white Christian Nationalists who claim to want to preserve and conserve the US Consitutiion continually denounce the separation of church and state and loudly proclaim that the United States is a Christian nation. Why exactly am I so dumb-founded? Because literally the first sentence of the first Amendment, before freedom of speech, is the explicit declaration of the separation of church and state. Indeed, the Founders felt that separation of church and state was so incredibly important and fundamental to the American experiment that they explicitly included it and even included it before freedom of speech.

I’m not naive and I do realize that someone like Lauren Boebert very likely has never read the constitution. In fact, the only reason I can confidentally say that I know she can read at all is because i’ve seen her read from a teleprompter. All the while, she, like many of her MAGA colleagues, loves to run around saying how their first amendment rights are being violated.

So, Lauren, dear, if you read this, please remember that the next time you want to complain about your “first amendentment rights are being violated,” please remember that every time you try to push your right-wing, white Christian Nationalist agenda on me, you are in fact trying to violate my, and all true, patriotic Americans’ first amendment rights.