Harold and Kumar score one more for the US of A

I finally managed to see the new Harold and Kumar movie last week, and now that I’ve finished moving into my new apartment, I finally have the time to write a few things about it. I won’t attempt a review; the film is as endearingly wacky as its predecessor, if not as tightly plotted, but the reader has at her disposal any number of resources to learn more.

No, what I’d rather write is what I took to be the central message of the film, and why I found it so bad-ass wicked awesome. And also sweet.

Near the end of the movie, a pot-addled interpretation of a certain political leader (I won’t spoil it for the unitiated, except to say his name rhymes with “tush”) tells our heroes, “You don’t have to trust your government to be a good American. You just have to trust your country.” That may sound incredible coming at the end of a story about two young men wrongly interred at Guantanamo Bay, but it falls squarely at the heart of the matter, both in the movie and in the real world.

The basic outlilne of the government of the United States is enshrined in the Constitution. In a very real sense, the Constitution is the United States, because therein are laid out the principles upon which the nation is built: rule by the people, equal protection under the law, freedom of expression, et cetera. When the character mentioned above calls on us not to trust our government, he is reminding us that the tenets of governance prescribed in the Constitution are not perfect, and that they are not set in stone. When he tells us, however, that we are to trust our country, he is calling us to place our faith in the principles upon which the government must ideally rest, central among which is the ability to amend and improve them.

In the midst of the diarrhea jokes and pot binges, the Harold and Kumar movies are at heart a love letter to the United States of America. In spite of all the adversity, both realistic and absurd, that our heroes face, they never fail to stand up for their right to pursue their dreams. In the US, it is true in principle that anyone, whether their ancestors be European, African, Korean, Indian, or Neil Patrick Harris, can achieve their aims. It’s on all of us to create a nation where this is true in fact as well.

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Was the US founded on Christian principles?

No. No it wasn’t.

Pharyngula links to the webpage of the Family Research Council, which currently holds a poll titled, “Do you believe that America, as a nation, was founded upon Christian principles?” Due to the Pharynguloid influence, “No” is currently leading at 91%, but that’s not the point. The point is that this question should not be asked in the first place.

The US is emphatically not founded on Christian principles. This is explicitly stated in the Constitution, both in the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”) and in Article VI, section 3 (“…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”) In addition, the Treaty of Tripoli, itself a legally binding document, bears these words: “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…”

The United States is a secular nation, not a Christian nation. Any claim to the contrary is founded in ignorance of the Constitution, or in delusion. Check mate, I’m afraid, for the Dominionists.

We’ll see him in court

Word to Pharyngula for running this story: John Freshwater, the lovable Ohio high school science teacher who burns crosses into his students’ arms and generally supports evangelism in the public classroom, is being taken to court for violation of the Establishment Clause.

Freshwater is apparently guilty of far more transgressions than a simple cruciform branding. He keeps Bibles in the classroom, not for his own use, he openly teaches his religious beliefs to students, he taught intelligent design as early as 2003, he distributed Bibles to students, including extras so give to other students who were not present, and on and on. Perhaps most galling, a guest speaking at his invitation imparted this little gem to the students: “they should disobey the law to further their own religion, even if it means going to jail.”

These are the actions of an evangelist, not a science teacher. If even half the above allegations are true, this is an open and shut case. Mr. Freshwater violated the Constitution left and right, and by all appearances is proud of it. It is a sad testament to the condition of some school districts that he wasn’t fired years ago.