Sarah Palin also hunts American icons. Now Palin is after JFK. Why is she targetting all the American icons? Let’s see: Reagan, Daddy and Mrs. Bush, W. Bush, and now none other than JFK. What has he done?
Back in the summer we ran a post celebrating the 50th anniversary of JFK’s speech to the ministers of Houston on the importance of the wall of separation between church and state. That speech was considered to be one of Kennedy’s most important. To this day, he is the only Roman Catholic to be elected President of the United States.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has addressed Palin’s erroneous thinking in an opinion piece in the Washington Post Saturday:
In her new book, “America by Heart,” Palin objects to my uncle’s famous 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, in which he challenged the ministers – and the country – to judge him, a Catholic presidential candidate, by his views rather than his faith. “Contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” Kennedy said. “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic.”
Palin writes that when she was growing up, she was taught that Kennedy’s speech had “succeeded in the best possible way: It reconciled public service and religion without compromising either.” Now, however, she says she has revisited the speech and changed her mind. She finds it “defensive . . . in tone and content” and is upset that Kennedy, rather than presenting a reconciliation of his private faith and his public role, had instead offered an “unequivocal divorce of the two.”
Palin’s argument seems to challenge a great American tradition, enshrined in the Constitution, stipulating that there be no religious test for public office. A careful reading of her book leads me to conclude that Palin wishes for precisely such a test. And she seems to think that she, and those who think like her, are qualified to judge who would pass and who would not.
If there is no religious test, then there is no need for a candidate’s religious affiliation to be “reconciled.” My uncle urged that religion be private, removed from politics, because he feared that making faith an arena for public contention would lead American politics into ill-disguised religious warfare, with candidates tempted to use faith to manipulate voters and demean their opponents.
Kennedy cited Thomas Jefferson to argue that, as part of the American tradition, it was essential to keep any semblance of a religious test out of the political realm. Best to judge candidates on their public records, their positions on war and peace, jobs, poverty, and health care. No one, Kennedy pointed out, asked those who died at the Alamo which church they belonged to.
But Palin insists on evaluating and acting as an authority on candidates’ faith. She faults Kennedy for not “telling the country how his faith had enriched him.” With that line, she proceeds down a path fraught with danger – precisely the path my uncle warned against when he said that a president’s religious views should be “neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend continued to defend her uncle’s position:
Palin further criticizes Kennedy because, “rather than spelling out how faith groups had provided life-changing services and education to millions of Americans, he repeatedly objected to any government assistance to religious schools.” She does not seem to appreciate that Kennedy was courageous in arguing that government funds should not be used in parochial schools, despite the temptation to please his constituents. Many Catholics would have liked the money. But he wisely thought that the use of public dollars in places where nuns explicitly proselytized would be unconstitutional. Tax money should not be used to persuade someone to join a religion.
Kennedy and Townsend both have it right. Palin has it wrong. A person’s faith should not be part of policy–ever. Too often nowadays, various churches call for sanctions against legislators who don’t do their bidding. This is especially popular amongst some Catholic bishops when politicians don’t vote for pro-life initiatives. Opponents have been known to call for religious sanctions against their opponents. That is reason enough, to me, for the wall of separation between church and state to stay solid. Thomas Jefferson was right. Robert Frost was right. JFK was right. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend IS right.
To read Townsend’s entire opinion piece:
Sarah Palin is wrong about John F. Kennedy, religion and politics
I read that this morning and liked it – liked it a lot. Religion has become more and more important in politics, and that worries me – worries me a lot.
I don’t disagree with you, punchak. I think the Kennedy speech is one of his most important ones.
Reagan seemed to usher in pandering to religions. I do not like it and have not liked it. People of faith need to continue being people of faith, but they cannot expect me not to bristle when it is shoved down my throat.
Momma Grizzly’s coming to bite you!!!
The people who write these books for Sarah Palin sometimes seem to have to just say things to fill up space. JFK’s Houston speech was an excellent guide for politicians. To take it on says a lot about the people around Palin. It reflects a kind of shallowness on points of fundamental importance to the American Republic. As a subsidiary note, it is also interesting that they held up Mitt Romney’s approach to explaining his Mormon beliefs as the new ideal. Romney, I think, faced a different issue in that there are a great many people who are not aware of or who do not recognize Mormonism’s Christian roots. Nonetheless, George Romney, Mitt’s father, hewed more to the JFK line when the elder Romney was a presidential candidate in 1960s.
Maybe the headline on this post should have been “Sarah Palin’s Moose Just Doesn’t Hunt”
This is all about trying to get more talk going about Romney’s Mormonism, and to try to get Romney to talk about it. “My silly childish superstitious belief is better than yours”.
Hi Scout, is that like ‘that dog don’t hunt?’
My mormons who used to live next door told me that many people don’t think Mormons are Christian because they don’t believe in the trinity. They believe in individual entities rather than a tripartite spirit.
Can’t prove it by me. I would think their name would establish their Christianity. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sort of screams Christian to me.
Rick, I think Palin just gets attention by taking pot shots at American icons like Reagan and Kennedy. It won’t serve her wll in the end, I don’t think.
Wouldn’t be awesome if Palin took charge of the RNC? …one could dream.
Stop dreaming she already said no…
That’s the loudest indicator to date that she’s running.
I think I might just have a Chris Matthews’ moment.
@Marin, help yourself. Why bring him up?
MH, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chris+matthews+thrill+up+my+leg
Moon, you and I go back to that era, so you will know what I mean when I say this. If JFK were alive today and a contemporary politico, you would have him on the roasting spit just like Sanford, Ensign, Edwards, Gingrich, and all the rest of those married, self-fancied lover boys.
Yes I would. What does that have to do with his speech on religion? Actually, the people I skewer for infidelity are those who have gone out of their way to push their own morality as part of public policy. Sanford, Ensign, Gingrich I would skewer.
Edwards….? he got skewered by me for a totally different reason. He got skewered because he had a lovely ill wife who gave up a great deal for him and he turned pig rat bastard on her. But Edwards never imposed his morality into being legislated into public policy. That’s how come Clinton escaped my wrath and as of late, Al Gore escaped also. I figure that isn’t any of my business.
To go on my skewer, you generally have to be a hypocrite. Was JFK a hypocrite? Not sure. I am not a huge Kennedy fan. It is probably accurate to say I tend to be objective about the Kennedys. I have mixed feelings about them both generally and as individuals.
We also didn’t know back in the day that the Kennedy men would grab up anything that moved and was female. They were fairly well protected by the press, as were womanizers before them. Actually at least one womanizer has been protected in modern times–one of those who people who live in Washington were aware of but protect…probably more for the family than the individual.
Which brings us around to way Saint Sarah is hammering away at American icons?