PBS to promote religious right-style history lesson

[babylonsister]

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/11134.html#more-11134

PBS to promote religious right-style history lesson
Posted 11:15 am


I know the conservative myth that PBS is some kind of hotbed for liberalism isn’t true, but to see the network go out of its way to prove its conservative bona fides is disconcerting.

Two months ago, PBS gave Richard Perle a whole hour to repeat discredited neocon arguments about Iraq and the Middle East, including the notion that Saddam Hussein had a working relationship with al Qaeda, and the bizarre argument that Osama bin Laden’s “network has been destroyed.” As Media Matters noted, Perle’s PBS special “made a series of assertions about the Iraq war that have already been shown to be false.”

It appears that PBS is going down a similar road this month, with a special on religious liberty called “Wall of Separation.”

The “wall of separation” is a metaphor deeply embedded in the American consciousness. Most Americans assume that the First Amendment prevents the mixing of politics and religion. The freedom of religion clauses protect individuals from the entanglement of religion with government and secure the right to freely exercise religious faith. America is a religiously pluralistic culture guided by a secular government.

But what would surprise most Americans is the discovery that this is not what the Founding Fathers intended when they established the nation and wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In fact, they had a radically different interpretation of the role of religion in state and federal governments.

Uh oh. This reads a bit like a pamphlet from Focus on the Family. In fact, “Wall of Separation” is a production of Boulevard Pictures, which explained on its website that this PBS special will explain that the Founding Fathers had “a radically different definition” of religious liberty than what we have today, and that “the modern understanding of the role of religion in the public square is exactly the opposite of what the Founders intended.”

If this is starting to sound to you like religious right claptrap, we’re on the same page.

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[Buzz Clik]

1. I have no problem with PBS putting it out there.

Hopefully, they will facilitate some means of responding.

[bryant69]

4. It depends on how they do it

This is one of those issue that is depressingly not a cut and dried as many would like it to be - if they present all sides of the issue; fair enough. But if they do the right wing hatchet job, well, that's not good.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[unpossibles]

2. maybe they should ask Thomas Jefferson

http://www.usconstitution.net/jeffwall.html

Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 to answer a letter from them written in October 1801. A copy of the Danbury letter is available here. The Danbury Baptists were a religious minority in Connecticut, and they complained that in their state, the religious liberties they enjoyed were not seen as immutable rights, but as privileges granted by the legislature - as "favors granted." Jefferson's reply did not address their concerns about problems with state establishment of religion - only of establishment on the national level. The letter contains the phrase "wall of separation between church and state," which led to the short-hand for the Establishment Clause that we use today: "Separation of church and state."

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

I think that is pretty clearly stated. Why do they hate the Constitution so much (except the 2nd amendment of course)?

[BanzaiBonnie]

3. So PBS is now discrediting itself

with a bunch of claptrap nonsense. Next thing you know, they'll be putting on creation "science" experts.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. It was so radically different that, despite the best efforts of some,

the words "In God We Trust" did not appear on any US money until 1862, when it was stamped on a 2 cent piece. It was not mandated to be on all money until well into the 20th century. Teddy Roosevelt objected to it.

You think the people who lived 100, 150, 200 years ago might have had a better idea of what the founding fathers wanted?