Over the weekend, conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch made a claim that has MAGA in full meltdown mode. His assertion: that the First Amendment exists, and that the nation’s founders were not motivated by the Christian nationalism so often pushed by the far-right of today.
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Gorsuch was speaking with PBS when he made a statement that has horrified MAGA, saying, “We were founded, a lot of our colonies, for our religious pluralism, right? And the opportunity to practice your own faith in your own way. And we were never supposed to be a nation that was about one race or one religion. It was about those ideas,” he noted, referring to America’s founding principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. “And those things are perfect ideas that speak to every human heart and that unite us all.”
Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump in 2017, Gorsuch’s words flew in the face of assertions by the Christian nationalists of MAGA, like Vice President JD Vance, who has claimed, “Christianity is America’s creed, the shared moral language from the revolution to the Civil War and beyond.” Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, added, “Across that history, our country’s major debates have always centered on how we could best as a people please God.”
But according to the Hill, “Gorsuch took a different tact, pointing out that Charles Carroll, who was also Catholic, signed the Declaration of Independence alongside members of other Christian faiths. He also explained that Amish and Quakers settled in the then-British colonies.”
As Gorsuch put it, “We have a First Amendment for crying out loud. No established religion, everybody has a freedom of religion, everybody has the freedom of speech, we are all equal under law,” adding, “Now, you can not agree with those ideas, fair enough. Then we have a problem. But those three ideas are something all of us can unite behind.”
MAGA, however, is decidedly not uniting behind Gorsuch’s words.
“Wow — that is astounding historical ignorance!” posted one outraged Christian nationalist. “I wonder what ‘Creator’ he thinks they meant in the Declaration of Independence?”
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“Our country is failing in every way possible because traitors to our founding and our nations principles are overthrowing it,” declared another MAGA adherent. “Now Gorsuch just said that our nation was not founded as a Christian nation. Everything that could go wrong, is going wrong. The communists and overlords are extremely powerful and there is no one to keep us on track with our constitution and with American principles. We also have a two tier justice system and our elections are stolen so we are ruled by anti Americans. Sad times, and to think ‘our side’ is in charge.”
“Good job GOP … Three picks, three sellouts, cowards and gibbering clowns,” wrote another, referring to Gorsuch as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, who have drawn MAGA’s ire recently for taking occasional stances against Trump’s agenda. “Screw originalism, the whole institution is rotten and should be ignored.”
“Really[?] So in dollar bill inscription IN GOD WE TRUST is totally Islamic and Muslim,” claimed yet another. “What … plain imbecile human[!]”
The slogan “In God We Trust” was not added to U.S. currency by the country’s founders. It began appearing on select coins nearly 100 years after the Declaration of Independence, and was not added to paper currency like the dollar bill until 1955.
