Welcome to the community supported best of the left podcast with clips

today from Ring of Fire, the Young Turks on the media and the Colbert Report.

Joining us now is Brooke Allen, an author and essayist who writes frequently from the New

York Times book review, The Atlantic Monthly and the Nation. She's with us today to talk

about her new book, Moral Minority, Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. Brooke, thanks so much

for joining us on Ring of Fire. I was great to be on. You wrote this in reaction to

this kind of disturbing assertion of the Christian right and essentially the Bush administration

that this nation was founded on, Christian principles. Was it founded on Christian principles?

It's absolutely not true and the founding fathers would be, most of them would be quite

horrified to hear it stated as a fact. In fact, there's some mention of God in the Constitution

and religion. Religion is only mentioned for the purpose of ensuring its absence.

That's right. That's right. The First Amendment and the Article of the Constitution, which

are really to keep this country from having the terrible troubles that all the founding

fathers have seen during the years preceding the Constitution in Europe, where there have

been hundreds of years of terrible, terrible religious wars really over minor matters and

it was very eager that this kind of thing didn't happen in this country. And also where religion

tended to fortify tyranny. Oh, absolutely. And in fact, Jefferson, who really hated and

despised all priests and ministers, said priests are always on the side of the tyrant. He said

these words. He's always on the side of the tyrant, always abetting tyranny. And they

talk this way quite strongly. You know, one other thing that the Christian right points

out is the fact that in God, we trust is on our coins. And one nation under God was under

the Pledge of Allegiance. Does that bolster their argument at all? Well, not at all.

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