I'm no fan of Bill Maher, for sure, but this rant about the differences between the Tea Party and the Founding Fathers is entertaining, if not a full-throated rebuke of the tea partiers. This is certainly dated, but here's part of what Maher had to say on his HBO show a couple of years ago:
"New Rule: Now that they’ve finished reading the Constitution out loud, the ‘teabaggers’ must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs. I’m talking, of course, about the Founding Fathers. Who, the ‘teabaggers’ believe, are just like them. But aren’t.
"... And, what’s more, you (tea partiers) would have hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris and thought the Bible was mostly bullsh--.
"... Super-religious guy Glenn Beck likes to play dress up as Thomas Paine. Thomas Paine -- an atheist who said churches were human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind.
"John Adams. Adams said this would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it. Which is not to say the founders didn’t have a moral code. Of course they did. They just didn’t get it from the Bible. Well, except for the part about it’s cool to own slaves. It’s in there, folks. I didn’t make it up.
"... I hate to break it to you, but: Thomas Jefferson, lawyer; Alexander Hamilton, constitutional lawyer; James Madison, lawyer; John Adams, constitutional lawyer. They were not the common man of their day.
"Ben Franklin studied scientific phenomena like lightning and the Aurora Borealis. And were he alive today, he could probably explain to Bill O’Reilly why the tides go in and out. James Madison was fluent in Greek and Latin and could translate Virgil and Cicero. John Boehner can’t translate Fareed Zakariah. And Thomas Jefferson was an astronomer and a physicist who founded the University of Virginia, played the violin and spoke six languages."
0 comments:
Post a Comment