Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.
Former Texas Rep. Nate Schatzline has apparently decided that the best way to stay relevant after his resignation from the Texas Lege is to fire up a podcast mic, mangle 18th-century history and join the chorus of dishonest dickheads claiming the U.S. is a Christian nation.
On his For Liberty And Justice podcast, the former Fort Worth Republican rep thundered that “America is a Christian nation,” citing the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 as proof the nation’s founders demanded fundamentalist indoctrination in public schools.
Schaztline even claimed kids were required to learn Christianity before morality, and morality before reading, writing and arithmetic.
That’s not just wrong. It’s so wrong that Schatzline is either unable to read about a junior high comprehension level, or he’s just a fucking liar.
Here’s what the Northwest Ordinance actually says: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
That’s it. No command to teach Christianity. No establishment of a Bible-before-all-other-books hierarchy. No government-ordered Sunday school, and certainly no Ten Commandments posted in every classroom.
The ordinance is a broad statement that education should promote religion in general, along with morality and knowledge — a document holding up the importance of civic virtue — and clearly not a blueprint for a Christian state.
Consider this: the same generation of thinkers that passed the Northwest Ordinance also ratified the First Amendment, which explicitly bars government from establishing a religion. Thomas Jefferson famously warned against those who would breach the “wall of separation” between church and state.
In other words, assclowns like Schatzline.
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