Donald Trump was right about something.
That hasn’t happened often during his two stints as president of this country and leader of the free world. But on Tuesday, the president let loose a tirade, dropped an f-bomb and finally said something about foreign policy that made sense. And something that should hold a lesson for all of America, especially Alabama.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” Trump essentially yelled at reporters.
The tirade came in response to Israel breaking a ceasefire with Iran that Trump allegedly helped broker. Less than an hour after the deal, Israel dropped bombs on Iran—the biggest bombing of the war to that point, according to Trump. And Iran retaliated with missiles of its own.
The bombings clearly frustrated Trump, who couldn’t seem to wrap his brain around the fact that the two countries would keep it up even when a deal was agreed to.
But those two countries, like many in the Middle Eastern region, are not basing their actions on common sense and reason. Instead, they are based on religion. And when religion is your guide, there is no wrong that you can do.
If you believe your god has dictated your actions, there is nothing—no vile act, no cruelty, no bloodshed, no torture, no indifference—you cannot excuse away. Because, after all, god told you to do it. Your religion dictated your actions. Eternal life in whatever heaven you believe in awaits you because of your actions when you act in service to your religion.
Which is why there are people slaughtered at weddings in Israel. Why children are being starved to death right now in Gaza. Why innocent people are being bombed out of their homes in Iran. Why Iraq and Pakistan and Yemen and Syria and so many other countries in the Middle East are war torn and dangerous.
And all of that is a perfect example of why America’s freedom of and from state-supported religion is so vitally important. And why it continues to boggle the mind that so many people in this country continue to fight so hard to inject religion—particularly Christianity—into our public institutions.
To be honest, aside from the widespread war potential, I’ve never understood this incessant need to inject one’s religion into things. Like schools. Why are some people so absolutely hellbent on pushing some form of religion into public schools?
They’ve tried everything. Posting the Ten Commandments. Mandating Bible study. Requiring a morning prayer. Pushing to allow churches to lead prayer groups. Suing to let coaches pray with athletic teams.
It’s endless and constant. Every single legislative session in Alabama, there’s another bill pushing to allow some form of Christianity into a public school.
(It’s also weird to me that the same people who love to push the symbols of Christianity into the schools rarely push the actual teachings of Christ into those schools. Feeding the poor and hungry students, for example, would seem to be a much better Christian example than hanging a plaque with commandments on it, but it’s rarely the former and always the latter that get the legislative push.)
It’s weird. Is your religion—your core beliefs—really so fragile that it can’t withstand an eight-hour school day? A school day, I’d remind you, in which every single student is guaranteed the right to pray and talk about their God without censoring.
It doesn’t make sense at its base level, and it certainly makes no sense when you factor in the potential for violence and destruction, so what are we doing?
Why is it so unbearable for some people to live in a world where everyone is equal, where every person has the same right to hold any religious belief, or none at all? It has never made sense.
There were a lot of mistakes made when this country was founded and our guiding documents drafted, but those guys also did a whole lot right. One of the things they got right was refusing the establishment of a national religion. They held long, intense debates about that topic, but in the end they made it abundantly clear that they favored religious freedom and a “wall of separation” between church and state.
This was confirmed in various and plainly stated ways by our first four presidents—Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. Jefferson was perhaps the most vocal and straightforward about his disdain for state-sponsored religion followed by Madison, but both Washington and Adams also made plain through their writings and their actions that America was not a “Christian nation.”
This approach has, undeniably, kept us holy war-free for nearly 250 years. Because we’re not, as a practice, starving people of a different religion. We’re not (usually) denying those of certain religions basic rights. We’re not sanctioning murders in the name of a religion.
That’s something we should take great pride in. It’s something we should protect forever.
Because it’s something that makes America truly great.
