(Borrowed from the ‘Forward Now’ blog)
It seems we have all been dead wrong about Gov. Bobby Jindal’s aspirations to become Commander-in-Chief.
He would much rather be anointed as Prophet-in-Chief if that speech he gave at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Thursday is any indication.
And you may wish to change the spelling to profit—as in political profit—as might be realized by his shameless pandering to the religious right, the Family Forum, and, of course, the Tea Party.
Three words kept coming to mind as I read the text of his speech—written, by the way, on the Louisiana Governor’s Office letterhead so as to completely blur the line between church and state (wouldn’t his campaign committee letterhead have been far more appropriate?).
Those three words are: sanctimonious little twit.
While wagging his finger in our collective faces, Jindal had the nerve to quote John Adams as saying, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.”
There is but one way that statement can be taken: sinners and rapscallions need not apply. The accused no longer are entitled to a fair trial if their crime was not committed in the name of God. Those who profess to no religious belief apparently have no rights under our Constitution if those words are to be taken literally.
But Jindal failed to mention a couple other Adams utterances:
- “The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”
- “A constitution of government once changed from freedom, can never be restored. Liberty lost once is lost forever.”
The first quote simply means we should trust no one who would impose his version of morality on the rest of us. The second quote is self-explanatory.
And to be sure, the freedom to express no religious conviction is every bit as sacred as setting oneself up as a moralist over society. The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of religion—and that includes the practice to not cling to any religious tenet, including Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or the Presleyterians/Elviscopalians (those who think they will come back in their next life as Elvis).
Pointing out (correctly) that “every person wants to live out his or her values,” Jindal proceeded to cite several cases in which the federal government (Obama, in his preferred nomenclature) has sought to impose certain conditions, including attempts to force businesses to accept the administration’s contraception mandate under Obamacare, trying to protect a single teacher at a church-affiliated elementary school who became pregnant from being fired by the school, and a ruling by the New Mexico Supreme Court that a photography business had violated the state’s Human Rights Act by refusing to photograph a same sex wedding ceremony.
Even as he invoked the word tolerance (“There was a time when the left preached tolerance.”), Jindal quietly ignored events in his home state: the refusal of a justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish to preside over an interracial marriage and the expulsion of a pregnant teenager at a church school in Richland Parish while the boy who impregnated her, a football player, received not so much as a reprimand. Moreover, the school then attempted to impose a policy whereby it could indiscriminately test female students for pregnancies. Public outcry was such that the school quickly backed down from that hypocritical policy.
“There was a time when liberals in this country believed in debate,” Jindal said. “But that is increasingly not the case for the modern left in America.”
This from a man who tolerates absolutely no dissenting opinion in this oligarchy, er… administration.
All one has to do to understand how open this governor is to debate is go down the Jindal Teague List:
- Tommy and Melody Teague;
- William Anker;
- Cynthia Bridges;
- Mary Manuel;
- Raymond Lamonica;
- John Lombardi;
- Dr. Fred Cerise;
- Dr. Roxanne Townsend;
- Scott Kipper;
- Murphy Painter;
- Tammy McDaniel;
- Jim Champagne;
- Ann Williamson;
- Entire State Ethics Board;
- State Rep. Jim Morris;
- State Rep. Harold Richie;
- State Rep. Joe Harrison;
- State Rep. Cameron Henry
These are people who were either fired or demoted for the unpardonable transgression of disagreeing with Jindal on some level of policy or legislation.
So much for any belief in debate by this administration.
And now Jindal, who never seems to find the time to hold press conferences or to give interviews in his home state, goes traipsing off on yet another out-of-state trip in his quixotic pursuit of the presidency to give yet another speech about how everyone else should think and act as he does.
But did anyone notice that nowhere in that 4,500-word speech did Jindal once mention the word compassion?
Compassion. That’s a word that has been strangely absent from this entire administration.
Where was Jindal’s compassion when he vetoed that $4 million appropriation for the developmentally disabled last year?
Where was his compassion when he refused the expansion of Medicaid, thus depriving adequate health care for hundreds of thousands of Louisiana’s poor?
Where was his compassion when he attempted to “reform” the state’s retirement program that would have cut some state employees’ retirement by tens of thousands of dollars per year?
Where was his Christian compassion when he said the only reason for Louisiana’s public school teachers remaining on the job was the fact that they are breathing?
Where was his compassion when he turned his back on the people of Bayou Corne, refusing to so much as visit the expanding sinkhole for months on end?
And now he’s going to strap on his halo and wings and travel around the country telling anyone who will listen how great he is, how Christian he is, how tolerant he is, how open to debate he is?
Perhaps Gov. Jindal should read 1 John 4:20.
- “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
Never have the words to the song One Tin Soldier been more appropriate than for Jindal and his minions:
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend;
Do it in the name of heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
