Ainsley Earhardt Scolds Pol Who’s Fighting ‘In God We Trust’ Bill: ‘What Is So Wrong With Goodness?’
A Republican in the Minnesota State Senate is looking to pass a bill that allows schools to voluntarily display “In God We Trust” on posters, and what’s wrong with that, right?
Well, a lot. For a quick and easy Supreme Court precedent on this, check out Engel v. Vitale, which examined the question of whether the reading of a “nondenominational prayer” at the start of the school day violated the First Amendment. (Spoiler alert: It does.) But the line of argument taken here by the opposition is that the use of the term “In God We Trust” is alienating to those who don’t believe in God, or those who refer to God by a different name. Which is a heck of a lot of Americans.
But those Americans are in the wrong, or so Ainsley Earhardt would have viewers believe. Here to preach the word in a debate between one of the bill’s strong opposers, Democrat John Marty, and former press assistant to Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Lauren Debellis Appell, Earhardt leaned heavily into the proselytizing to try to get God back in our public schools.
“Senator [Dan] Hall, the author of [the bill], was saying 21 percent of Americans don’t believe in any god,” Marty explained. “And despite his saying he wants to be welcoming and uniting people, this is the opposite of that, for that 21 percent. It’s something that’s foreign to them, it’s not welcoming.”
“As a Christian, on behalf of the 79 percent, who do believe in a god, I don’t think it is appropriate for government to be choosing the terminology, the words, how and where we’re pushing things,” he continued. “To me… the motto is not what is offensive. It’s the fact government and politicians are trying to sanction it. I think that’s a very scary thing and I don’t think that’s helpful at all. It doesn’t promote religion, it doesn’t promote welcoming to the schools and anywhere else.”
Appell countered by saying that “Democrats have abandoned people of faith in this country” and that “people of faith have gotten behind President Trump because they have seen the Democratic Party and this war on people of faith and this war on God and they have seen their religious freedoms be assaulted.”
Earhardt quickly picked up on this and asked Marty to explain himself when “we’re taking God out of so much of our country.”
“What is wrong with goodness and forgiveness and treat your neighbor as yourself? Why do you want to take that out?” she asked him with shining eyes.
“I want to treat our neighbors as ourselves, to be welcoming to all people, regardless of whether they have religious faith or not. That is what we ought to be doing,” he replied.
But that didn’t satisfy Ainsley, who interjected: “But you love them enough to tell them about God and God’s mercy.”
“That is not what government should be doing,” Marty said definitively. “Government should be staying out of religion. That is the whole point of the First Amendment.”
Watch above, via Fox News.
[image via screengrab]
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