COUP WATCH: COUP WATCH: John Ashcroft's speech
at Bob Jones University -- From Red Rock Eater News Service
COUP WATCH: John Ashcroft's speech
at Bob Jones University -- From Red Rock Eater News Service
By Phil Agre
Fri, 12 Jan 2001 16:41:13
-0800
[When the Constitution
was written, religious conservatives opposed it because, as everyone perfectly
well understood, it did not create a Christian nation. Their arguments
sound more or less identical to the arguments that their descendants make
today, as for example in John Ashcroft's speech at Bob Jones University,
enclosed. (On the depth of religious conservative opposition to the
Constitution, see Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution:
The Case Against Religious Correctness, Norton, 1996.) Having lost
that fight, the opponents of the Constitution now take a different approach:
they claim to have invented it. The evidence being so overwhelmingly
against them, they use bits and pieces of quotations to dance around the
Constitution's straightforward assertion that Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof. It's okay for them to hold these opinions. That's
what we're here for. What's not okay is for them to be placed in
charge of enforcing the laws. Lately they have taken to accusing
John Ashcroft's opponents of opposing him because he believes in God.
This is going to get worse before it gets better.
And let's Let's remember
what "personal destruction" really means. It means circulating a videotape
accusing a candidate of numerous felonies including murder. It means
bankrupting innocent people with bogus indictments and endless abusive
investigations. It means spreading dozens of factually false attacks
on their character. That's what "personal destruction" means. Telling
the truth about a person's record is not personal destruction -- particularly
when, as in the case of John Ashcroft, that person is a hardened practitioner
of the arts of personal destruction himself.
AP article on Ashcroft's
speech
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush-Ashcroft.html
The Proper Standard for
Ashcroft's Confirmation Fight
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/lazarus/20010109.html
Conservatives Flex Muscles
over Ashcroft
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/01/11/conservatives/
Conservatives Rally Around
Ashcroft
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49968-2001Jan11.html
Thanks to everyone who
contributed.]
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Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001
18:27:16 -0500
From: rachael.sunbarger@bushcheney.gov
Bob Jones University
May 8, 1999
Transcript of John Ashcroft's
Remarks
Thank you very much, Dr.
Bob. I want to thank each of you for investing yourselves in the
mission of Christ -- in redemption and forgiveness, and for preparing yourselves
in the way that you have.
A slogan of the American
revolution which was so distressing to the emissaries of the king that
it was found in correspondence sent back to England, was the line, "We
have no king but Jesus". Tax collectors came, asking for that which
belonged to the king, and colonists frequently said, "We have no king but
Jesus". It found its way into the fundamental documents of this great
country. You could quote the Declaration with me, "We hold these
truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, and are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights". Unique among the
nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly
and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood
that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no
king but Jesus.
My mind thinking about
that once raced back a couple of thousand years when Pilate stepped before
the people in Jerusalem and said, "Whom would ye that I release unto you?
Barabas? Or Jesus, which is called the Christ?" And when they
said "Barabas," he said, "But what about Jesus? King of the Jews?"
And the outcry was, "We have no king but Caesar".
There's a difference between
a culture that has no king but Caesar, no standard but the civil authority,
and a culture that has no king but Jesus, no standard but the eternal authority.
When you have no king but Caesar, you release Barabas -- criminality, destruction,
thievery, the lowest and least. When you have no king but Jesus,
you release the eternal, you release the highest and best, you release
virtue, you release potential.
It is not accidental that
America has been the home of the brave and the land of the free, the place
where mankind has had the greatest of all opportunities, to approach the
potential that God has placed within us. It has been because we knew
that we were endowed not by the king, but by the Creator, with certain
unalienable rights. If America is to be great in the future, it will be
if we understand that our source is not civic and temporal, but our source
is godly and eternal. Endowed by the Creator with rights of life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I thank God for this institution
and for you, who recognize and commit yourselves to the proposition that
we were so created, and that to live with respect to the Creator promises
us the greatest potential as a nation and as individuals. And for
such we must reacquaint ourselves daily with His call upon our lives.
Thank you. God bless
you, and thank you for honoring me by allowing me to stand with Asa [Hutchinson],
Lindsey [Graham] and a great Governor.
(Applause)