Notice it doesn't say "The Creator"
And before the errant Yahoo commenter (or the one in the local paper who uses the moniker "citizen") goes off on "divine Providence," let's remember that our revolutionists couldn't have wished to be dismissed as readily as modern-day liberals are dismissed so adverbially adjectivally by reactionary preconditioned spoutings (ginning up a signature brand of cocksure superiority). It remains difficult for aspirants to power to neglect godliness in the public sphere. Would it weren't a fact of life.
The royalists in the colonies and the folks back home wore religion sanctimoniously and the dipping of toes into such phraseology can hardly be termed a call for theocracy to replace monarchy. Yet reinterpretation is nothing if not fair game to those for whom there is no responsible push-back.
So when Ted Cruz says he's a Christian first and an American second, as reported by the Associated Press, he's BusTed for selective reading of the framers' intent. I would add: unfit for the job to which he aspires and that which he holds; but he is not alone among right wingers in that regard. Mr. "no government is better than the one we have - that'll learn 'em when we shut the whole thing down" is so far off base on this he's at the free throw line.
It may suit the both siderist manifesto that everything is fair game for a daily litigation of the shallowest dimension, but people with critical thinking skills formed and preserved since the fourth grade are rightly aghast at media's chronic flinching in reporting the obvious. We, savvy reader, are not looking to join a club that reinforces the selective. Rather, we join to share our allegiance to the republic.
Was there ever a time when that level of patriotism could be so exploited as a political weakness? Sadly, they are innumerable but, I dare say, not from so far out in the cold.
