Thanks to the Republican Club here at UMass, we had the distinct privilege of seeing one of the most delusional individuals I have ever encountered. Perhaps you have heard of Roy Moore, formerly Justice Moore of the Alabama State Supreme Court who happened to get removed from his bench after he failed to do his job. His job was following an order by a higher court to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments. Moore, of course, thought he was responsible to answer to an even higher authority.
What scares me about Roy Moore is not so much that he is out of his mind, because many people are and we put them in homes and jackets so that they can sit in a corner and hug themselves all day, but rather that there are many people who think like Roy Moore. I attended Roy Moore’s lecture, which shouldn’t really be called a lecture since it was more of a barrage of memorized quotations, I actually felt like I was watching a televangelist. I’m still trying to figure out if there was anything that Roy Moore actually said.
So, as he was orating on and on about how our forefathers were “Christians” and therefore America today should accept God as the sovereign, he actually devoted several minutes to rewriting the First Amendment. I kid you not. The man actually reworded one of the most important parts to our Constitution to make it more agreeable with his argument. I watched him practically copy and paste James Madison’s definition of religion into the First Amendment using a Powerpoint presentation. If I had any reservations about the higher courts decision to remove Ayatollah Moore from his bench they were gone after I had witnessed him literally rewrite the Constitution. As a judge, he is supposed to interpret the law as it is written, not as it is rewritten. I could not believe he dared to stand in front of an American flag and cut up the fabric of our nation’s government. Perhaps this didn’t seem hypocritical to him since he may plan to create a new American flag with crosses on it as opposed to stars.
When his rant was over he allowed time for some questions from the crowd, and this of course is an opportunity I rarely pass up. So I was called on and asked a two-part question: “Do you think your philosophy on secularism would change should you have been a religious minority, and can you explain the influences of Locke’s Essay on Toleration on Thomas Jefferson?” Well, the second part of my question he answered by pulling out his handy copy of the political writings of John Locke. Now this is a book we should all have but when you carry it around with you everywhere you go, I would be a bit worried. Needless to say he picked through different parts of the essay and chose lines out of context to support his opinion and perhaps neglected to mention Locke’s most famous quote from that essay: “Unless it be that I will, out of pride or overweeningness of my opinion, and a secret conceit of my own infallibility, taking to myself something of a godlike power, force and compel others to be of my mind, or censure or malign them if they be not …”
What Locke is simply saying here is that there is no problem with which religion you practice, nor should that be a concern of the state. However it becomes a concern when you force those beliefs or opinions on others. Of course, Roy Moore wouldn’t read this to the parish in attendance. It would simply expose him for the hypocrite that he is since he, in keeping the monument on state property, was doing exactly what Locke warned against.
He completely neglected the first part of my question, which I asked him a second time. Then he ignored it again by going off on some unrelated rant. The bottom line is if Roy Moore grew up as a Christian in an Islamic Theocracy, he would have a very different philosophy on secularism since it would be his minority rights that were being protected.
What saddens me the most was that he symbolizes a dangerous direction for the Republican Party to be heading. The Republican Party must remain committed to the Constitution and regardless to how many crazies it may have, it cannot allow itself to become the “party of God” or religious fundamentalism here in the United States.
Roy Moore’s insistence on outdated desert morality and chanting “onward Christian soldiers” shows that the direction he is leading people in is backwards not forwards. It’s time for him and others to realize that though you may firmly believe in your religious beliefs, you have no right, under a democratic state system, to impose those beliefs on others.
Yousef Munayyer is a Collegian columnist.
