Ted Cruz Knows As Little About History As Paul Ryan Does About Economics

Today at the shameless anti religious liberty rally-- "Rally for Religious Liberty"-- at Bob Jones "University" in Greenville, South Carolina, starring anti-Jesus hate-monger Tony Perkins and vicious homophobe Ted Cruz (congratulations Mati and Ian), Cruz said "America is a center-right nation built on Judeo-Christian values. It’s who we were in 1776 and it's who we are today." But, of course, that's a rewrite of American history. In 1776, the political right-- the Ted Cruzes and Jeb Bushes and Marco Rubios of the day-- sided with the British monarchy against the American patriots. The right-wingers took up arms against the patriots and after they were defeated huge numbers of them fled to England, the Bahamas and to the country where Cruz himself was born, Canada.

As for Cruz's other specious claim about the Founding Fathers pushing a religious agenda, that is equally false, and keep in mind that Cruz is advised by crackpot make-believe "historian," David Barton who peppers his diatribes with made-up quotes by the Founding Fathers. It was John Adams, George Washington's vice president and the second president of the U.S., who said-- in a not made-up quote-- "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." Unlike Cruz and his right-wing ilk, Jefferson and our nation's Founding Fathers actively promoted an anti-thesrcratic United States based on tolerance "meant to comprehend," he wrote "within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammeden, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."

Pious reactionaries like Huckabee, Rubio, Dr. Ben and Cruz themselves are perfect examples of something James Madison wrote to William Bradford even earlier (1774): "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." Amen.

Does this sound like a religious right statement by Thomas Jefferson's, the brains behind the Declaration of Independence and this nation's third president? "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." The year before he had written that "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."

No doubt how Jefferson would have looked at Ted Cruz. "There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity," he wrote. "It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites." But earlier today Cruz was preaching up a storm to his Bob Jones followers.

“We ask that our leaders understand this is not some random, ill-defined random extremism, this evil, radical Islamic terrorism needs to be called out what it is, and it needs to be defeated,” he said. Cruz has, and continues to, criticize the president for being “unwilling to call radical Islamic terrorism by its name.”

Cruz said “radical Islamic terrorism “ is “a malevolent force that right now, as we speak, is persecuting Christians, is persecuting Jews, is even persecuting fellow Muslims… This is an evil that must be confronted.”