Fred Thompson's Christian Nationalist Pander

By Frederick Clarkson
Tue Jun 05, 2007 at 10:16:14 PM EST

When prospective GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson auditioned at a recent meeting of the secretive, far right Council for National Policy, he probably did not have to wonder which buttons to push. The CNP has, since 1981, been a key conservative movement leadership network, dominated by the religious right. As a man who entered electoral politics as moderate, has been at some pains to establish his conservatie bona fides. And these days if you want to show the religious right that you are one of them, one of the things you do is to let them know you share their Christian nationalism. Thompson, whose unofficial campaign is on a fast track, was quick to make a transcript of his remarks available to The National Review Online.

Our founders established an independent federal judiciary to decide cases, not social policy. Yet more and more that is exactly what it is doing. Roe v. Wade is a classic example. And nowhere is it more apparent than with regard to the issue of church and state.

Many federal judges seem intent on eliminating God from the public schools and the public square in ways that would astound our founding fathers. We never know when a five to four Supreme Court decision will uphold them. They ignore the fact that the founders were protecting the church from the state and not the other way around.

We can see lots of red flags fluttering in the breezes of former Senator Thompson's rhetoric. But I want to focus on just two.