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US LEGAL FRAMEWORK JAMIE RASKIN EXPLAINS Brian Tyler Cohen: GLOVES OFF: Jamie Raskin hits Trump where it hurts MOST PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ashBPmx5sP4 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
GLOVES OFF: Jamie Raskin hits Trump where it hurts MOST Brian Tyler Cohen Aug 19, 2024 3.1M subscribers ... 803,033 views Class with Jamie Raskin 00:00 Intro clip 00:21 Is America a white Christian nation where the Bible is supreme and superior to the Constitution? 01:39 The demographic argument 04:07 Looking back to the American Revolution 05:23 James Madison on the separation of church and state 07:23 What the Constitution says about religious freedom 13:35 Louisiana’s law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms 14:22 Comparing the Ten Commandments to the Bill of Rights 16:56 Are we a white nation? Looking at the Civil War 21:08 This fallacy is debunked 22:06 Check out Democracy Summer 22:55 Preorder Brian’s new book: Shameless 24:06 Q&A start: On “separation of church and state” not being in the Constitution 27:53 On the contradiction of Republicans hiding behind Christianity while enacting an agenda antithetical to the teachings of Christ 31:48 How can the courts justify the precedent-defying Ten Commandments law in Louisiana? 36:24 What is the link between Christian nationalism and fascism? 38:05 Next up on Class: America is not a democracy but a republic, and therefore voting rights and free speech are not protected 38:50 Conclusion Order my new book SHAMELESS: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/s... Subscribe for more and follow me here: YouTube (español): / @briantylercohenespanol Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36UvEHs Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0066rKC... Twitter: / briantylercohen Instagram: / briantylercohen Facebook: / briantylercohen Patreon: / briantylercohen Newsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-up/ TikTok: / briantylercohen Suit by JB Clothiers: https://jbclothiers.com/btc Transcript Intro clip 0:00 Christians get out and vote just this time you won't have to do it anymore four more years you know what it'll be fixed it'll be fine you won't have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians I love you Christians I'm not Christian I love you get out you got to get out and vote that was Donald Trump telling an audience that they wouldn't have to vote Is America a white Christian nation where the Bible is supreme and superior to the Constitution? anymore while pandering to an audience of Christians between that between Republicans passing laws mandating that the Ten Commandments be shown in classrooms abortion bans and even Mike Johnson calling the separation of church and state a misnomer Christian nationalism is clearly on the rise by Republicans which brings us to a very timely episode of class with Jamie Rasin where the congressman here will debunk right-wing constitutional fallacies and fever dreams and today he's going to take on this notion that America is a white Christian Nation where the Bible is supreme and superior to the Constitution so Congressman floor is yours well that is the of white 1:00 Christian nationalism uh and we have seen it rear its ugly head in a lot of places including on January 6 2021 um we get lots of manifestations of it in Project 2025 and of course Donald Trump's outbursts encode that basic message that we'll get through this democracy thing quickly enough and then we'll get back to having the right people rule so what we're going to look at today is the fallacy that America is a white Christian Nation where the Bible is dominant and supreme to the Constitution but I want to look at both parts of it that America is a Christian Nation and that America is a white Nation let's start with um the the claim The demographic argument that America is a Christian Nation and there's only one sense in one sense only in which this is even arguably or even weakly true which is in the purely demographic sense where it could be said well you know America has 332 Mill ion 2:00 people and more than 200 million of them um are Christian therefore if you've got nearly two-thirds of Americans who are Christian America's a Christian Nation and you could you know perform a similar operation with race and say you know of those 332 million people something around 70% of those people uh are white maybe 63 or 64% would Define themselves on the census as only white and not white and something else but in any event a majority of the people would call themselves white in some sense um and therefore it's a white Nation well you know if you want to use that kind of demographic circular reasoning that tautology um and that does something for you I suppose you can go ahead and say it but of course um there's nothing uh which freezes the population either in terms of religion or race and um it's predicted that America won't be a majority white country in 25 years and I 3:02 guess even in that narrow uh limited demographic sense it wouldn't even be true but all of that is really beside the point because um although they sometimes will hide behind that tent uh we know that when they say America is a Christian country or a white country they're making an assertion about the nature of our social contract and about the nature of our Constitution and it's just wrong um oftentimes it's wrapped in historical claims those claims are overwhelmingly wrong as well and then when those constitutional assertions are converted into political and moral claims well uh at that point the normative argument um clearly becomes a uh a racist one so let's let's go back to the beginning and let's look at the nature of the American Revolution and then the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution to see whether 4:03 there's any basis for this claim that America is a Christian country well to begin with the um leaders of the Looking back to the American Revolution American Revolution the intellectual and political leaders people like Thomas Jefferson uh and Benjamin Franklin and John Adams and James Madison and Tom Pay uh these people were Enlightenment liberals who wanted to rebel against centuries of religious Superstition State imposed religion religion controlled government uh and theocracy they were opposed to centuries of religious Warfare between the Catholics and the Protestants uh which were every bit as bloody and vicious as the wars between uh the Shia and the Sunni uh today in the Muslim World um and they wanted to oppose uh holy Crusade Inquisition Witchcraft Trials the whole 5:03 apparatus of religious persecution which they wanted to leave um in the Middle Ages and did not think belonged in a period of modern democratic Enlightenment and so they set about creating a government that radically separated church and state and um as James Madison on the separation of church and state Madison would put it in his famous remonstrance against um religious taxation that left matters of Faith to each individual to each man and woman to decide for himself or herself what their relationship to God would be without the government intervening and getting involved and compelling people to worship a particular way or pray a particular way or pay taxes or tithes to particular churches and religions and so on so um the Declaration of Independence um does does not mention 6:00 the word god it does talk about um a Creator and the dominant themes of the Declaration of Independence are that we are endowed by our creator with life liberty in the pursuit of happiness uh and unalienable rights um and that the only um legitimating principle for government is the consent of the Govern the people themselves that the right to rule does not come from God or come from a church but it comes from the consent of the Govern the people ourselves and all men of course we would translate it today as all men and women uh but all men are created equal so you have in the Declaration of Independence the elucidation of the basic themes of equality Liberty and freedom and democracy the consent of the Govern as being the essential legitimating principles for governance and that was the basic concept of the Declaration of Independence which of course set forth a bill of particulars um against the king who claimed to rule with divine right 7:06 and an established church um but the American Revolution wanted to topple all of that that becomes clear when we get to the constitution of course there were um iterative drafts between the Declaration and the Constitution there were articles of Association there were Articles of Confederation again none of What the Constitution says about religious freedom those mention God much less Christianity or an established church and when we get to the Constitution the Preamble is is anchored in the Democratic principle itself we the people in order to form a more perfect union establish justice ensure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense promote the general welfare um and preserve to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty do hereby ordain and establish the Constitution of the United States and you see what's happening there the government the Constitution um are both founded by the people 8:01 themselves and before that point um human beings had been ruled by kings and queens and Lords and uh Emperors and empresses and Zars all of them ruling by divine right they got their power directly from God our for fathers and for mothers flipped the whole thing upside down and they began not with God and the King but rather with we the people so that was the basic structure of the democratic public philosophy that's Advanced inside uh the Constitution and then of course article one establishes that all legislative power rests with the people uh not with a monarch or even with a President Who somehow has uh higher Consciousness and communion with God and remember the presidency was only added to the Constitution later it was not there was no president in the Articles of Confederation but the idea was we needed somebody to keep things going between 9:01 sessions of Congress and to act with energy to implement the laws and the will of the people but the principal job of the president was to take care that the laws are Faithfully executed but not to act as a king not to be uh above the Constitution or above the people now I know that all of that has been thrown into doubt by the Neo monarchical hallucinations and rulings of the Roberts Court now which does seem to want to elevate the president who they imagined was going to be Donald Trump but I think they're getting their comeuppance right now uh because democracy is resilient and strong but I digress but in any event um the president like the Supreme Court also operated simply as manifestations of the public will and then the structuring of checks and balances uh within a system of representative government but the key passages that actually talk about religion are of course in the First Amendment and in article 6 and that's 10:04 what everybody needs to know and that's pretty much the beginning and the end of the story I mean we can spend a lot of time going through the case law and seeing how the Supreme Court has spelled it out over the centuries but look what you get in the very first amendment Congress will make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof no establishment of a church that's a radical break from England and from all prior governments nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof it's up to you it is your individual right of conscience that matters in a society based on Democratic Freedom or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances so the first amendment is all about sovereignty of mind your intellectual freedom to make your 11:02 own decisions about what you believe what you say whether you want to assemble how you want to organize yourself in terms of uh the politics of society but it begins with religious freedom that you cannot be compelled to worship a particular way to participate in a particular church or any church at all to pay taxes for ministers or imams or rabbis um none of that is acceptable so that's the first amendment but then you got to go to article six where the point is made um you know even more forcefully uh by the founders um and if you go to article six it says the senators and representatives and the members of the several State legislatures and all executive and judicial officers both of the United States and of the several States shall be bound by oath or a affirmation to support this constitution a principle 12:03 we've encountered before when we looked at section three of the 14th Amendment explicit language saying if you engage in Insurrection having pledged to uphold and defend the Constitution you can never hold federal or state office again the the passage that um that Mega and this Supreme Court have wanted to read out of the Constitution but any event um it goes on to say but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States no religious tests for public office so what do we have no establishment of religion religious liberty of conscience and freedom and freedom of thought and no religious tests for public office can ever be created um at the federal or the state level okay that would seem to be overwhelming textual reputation of the claim that we 13:06 are a religious country or we are a Christian country or we are a Christian country of a particular denomination and all of American History um incorporates and encodes an elaboration of these basic principles now I'm not saying it's always been easy it hasn't it's always been a struggle it continues to be a struggle it's going on right now with respect to the Ten Louisiana’s law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms Commandments um I think Louisiana just adopted a law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom which is a head-on collision with the Supreme Court decision rendered in 1980 called stone versus Graham which struck down a state law mandating the posting of the Ten Commandments in every classroom um although that case the Ten Commandments 14:00 displays were supposed to be paid for by private money which the court majority uh quickly ruled was totally irrelevant that didn't sanitize it in some sense that made it worse that attempted Alibi by saying oh it was paid for by private money but of course the display itself was very clearly an endorsement of a particular religious test and yet this Ten Commandments thing is uh sweeping Comparing the Ten Commandments to the Bill of Rights the red States Brian uh um and uh you know we've had members come into the house Judiciary Committee and say oh we should go ahead and endorse The Ten Commandments just like Texas just endorsed The Ten Commandments Louisiana just endorsed The Ten Commandments and I said you know the Ten Commandments have been doing fine for Millennia without an endorsement from the house Freedom caucus or the House of Representatives um no they say the Ten Commandments are the Cornerstone the foundation of the Bill of Rights really the the first commandment is thou shal have no other God before me the first amendment is 15:05 that there shall be no establishment of religion and freedom of religious worship right so how is that religious directive in a particular monotheistic religion the basis for saying there should be religious freedom if anything um our framers in their irreverent way set up a First Amendment which directly collides with the first commandment and most of those Commandments or a lot of those Commandments um are of a theological nature and uh have nothing to do with anything that you would find um in the Bill of Rights that would be an interesting homework assignment for all of our readers take out the Ten Commandments and take out the first 10 amendments uh the Bill of Rights and compare them um and see if they really match up one for one I don't think so I ended up going to the rules and saying if they're going to make the House of Representatives vote on The Ten 16:03 Commandments we should have to vote on each commandment separately and not get away with the Omnibus package and you can't vote for any commandment you've ever violated yourself because then you'll be taking the name of the Lord in vain in violation of the third commandment so um this is precisely what the framers didn't want us to do they didn't want people to get together in the House of Representatives or the US Senate or a state legislature or a school board and start fighting about religion like everybody has the right to worship as they please but that's not what public space is for and government is for uh we do not live in a theocracy and we do not live in a Christian Nation we live in a nation that is built on the principles of constitutional democracy and freedom for everybody and just as that applies in the religious context it applies in the racial context except it's a little bit more complicated there Brian because we Are we a white nation? Looking at the Civil War 17:00 were one would say a nation built on white supremacy um and for that proposition you can go and read The Dread Scott decision in 1857 and Dread Scott was a slave an enslaved human being who was brought into free territory and then tried to bring uh a suit uh against his master for his freedom Dread Scott versus Sanford um and yet a pro- rist pro-slavery Supreme Court ruled that there was no federal court jurisdiction under article 3 where you need to have uh diversity meaning um a citizen from one state suing a citizen from another state and the Supreme Court held that uh that an enslaved person an enslaved African person or his progeny could never be a citizen within the 18:00 meaning of the diversity jurisdiction Clause why well it was an argument actually about original intent and original understanding that under the original contemplation of the founders said the Supreme Court uh this was set up as a white man's compact the Constitution was for white men only and the African slave had no rights that the white man was bound to respect so that would be a more plausible argument before the Civil War that this was uh a white man's Nation but the Civil War changed all of that and the 13th amendment abolished slavery and the 14th amendment established equal protection and due process and established that everybody born in the United States is a citizen of the United States in the 15th amendment banned race discrimination in voting now um it worked for a while under reconstruction then there was terrible racist backsliding um in the 19:01 southern states and the so-called Redemption um with the repeal of reconstruction and the war on reconstruction and a lot of the political rights and voting rights certainly that were gained uh by the emancipated black population were lost at that point and only to be recovered after uh the modern Civil Rights Movement took place uh nearly a century later later but in any event constitutionally um we are not a white supremacist country um we are a country that in the Reconstruction process and with those amendments tried to purge the filth of Dread Scott and white supremacy from the Constitution and to take positive action to extend rights to people who had been denied rights for so long that has been an historical struggle that's what the Civil Rights Act was all about in 1964 that's what the Voting Rights Act was all about in 1965 and it's still a seesaw struggle 20:05 today and we have again a right-wing Supreme Court which in cases like Shaw versus Reno 1993 Miller versus Johnson um has been dismantling majority black and majority Hispanic congressional districts and State Legislative districts saying you cannot have a bizarrely drawn majority black District but of course if it's a bizarrely drawn majority white District it's totally okay that is unequal protection and those are some of the kinds of inequalities that have been uh reintegrated into the law through a right-wing Supreme Court and today of course the equal production Clause does work best uh for white people challenging affirmative action or having to endure the indignity from their perspective of living in a majority black congressional district then it works for the intended beneficiaries of 21:01 the 14th Amendment but still I would say we've made tremendous progress um basically through the struggle of the people that's still going on today and the vast majority of the American people embrace the real constitutional ethos This fallacy is debunked that emerges from the Reconstruction period which is that we are not a white supremacist Nation we are not a white Nation we are a nation of immigrants and We're a nation of people who were brought over uh as enslaved human beings but are now obviously a central part of the political social and cultural fabric of the country um so these issues continue to be fought about but it cannot be said with a straight face that we are uh a a white Christian Nation and we know when they say that that's a statement of their aspiration and ambition it's not a Statement of Constitutional reality well that is another constitutional fallacy debunked I've got questions Congressman but first uh just a quick note we always try to use this opportunity for these classes to promote a cause that the congressman is working on so as always um 22:05 Congressman can you speak about democracy summer well so we've got more than a thousand young people across the Check out Democracy Summer country who've been deeply engaged in this campaign and of course everybody's been re-energized and revitalized by KLA Harris's candidacy and by the courage and the heroism and the patriotism of President Biden who has passed the Baton to a new generation and uh the reason that democracy summer exists is to organize this onrush of enthusiasm and participation by all of these young people so we're getting people registered we're getting people plugged into the campaigns all over the country and if you want to help us out in democracy summer uh please follow the instructions up on the screen and you can get in touch with us and we're uh raising money and we're raising volunteers and it's very exciting to see what's going on all over the country and we've got one more this time time the congressman was kind enough to allow me 23:00 to promote my upcoming book which representative Raskin himself actually wrote the forward for we've heard here about a little bit about how Republicans present themselves as constitutionalists all while acting in direct opposition to the Constitution itself embracing Christian nationalism for example my book Shameless discusses exactly that point how Republicans rely on their historic branding to give themselves cover to behave in conflict with their branding you've written a fantastic book it's completely readable I just digested it in one day and um it's impressive how you expose the intellectual Hollow of the magga position and show that uh it has no uh anchor in reality it's got no real anchor uh in our history it's a twisted and deform view of American society and uh I'm very proud to be able to endorse your book and encourage people to go out and read it well I very much appreciate that and of course for those watching watching to pre-order which is a great way to support this 24:00 series my work you can click the link right here on the screen or in the post description or check out briantyler cohen.com Q&A start: On “separation of church and state” not being in the Constitution book okay to the questions here uh Congressman so much of the push back to the idea of separation of church and state is that the actual words separation of church and state aren't actually in the Constitution what's your rebuttal to that well I read the words that are actually in it in some sense those words are even stronger there shall be no law respecting and establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof um it doesn't really say anything about having a thriving buoyant religious sector but the idea of separation of church and state gives religion its due by Thomas Jefferson he's saying we want not only a powerful secular state that is not wasting its time trying to interpose itself between people and their God and their sense of the infinite and the supernatural um but um Jefferson is 25:04 saying religion can have a very positive meaningful influence in people's lives and it doesn't help for the state to get involved there's some beautiful language about this by the way I printed out before I came um Madison's uh Memorial and remonstrance against religious taxation which I mentioned before there's a a beautiful question he says during almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial in other words we've been trying official establishment Christian churches for 15 centuries what have been its fruits says Madison more or less in all places pride and indolence in the clergy ignorance and cility in the Ley in both Superstition bigotry and persecution in other words the churches don't have to go out and compete by having better theology so they get 26:01 puffed up on their own arrogance and their laziness ignorance and cility in the Le when people are compelled to go to church then they are turned into docile puppets of the state and church unified in that way and then Superstition bigotry and persecution I think that Jefferson and Madison those guys had a lot of Hope for the progress of religion I mean Jefferson made his own uh it was later called Jefferson's Bible he never called it uh a Bible but I I think he called it the philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth and he excised from the Bible everything that he thought was based on Supernatural beliefs or Superstition or Miracles and he said let's just stick with the moral preachments of Jesus Christ which he endorsed and so that became his Bible he literally used uh glue and uh scissors to create you know 27:01 Jefferson's Bible I think there's only a handful of copies of it left but they believe that religion should be a human Enterprise that's evolving but it doesn't need State intervention anymore than we need State intervention telling people what to think about morality or ethics or politics that's not the proper role of the state and religion should evolve and the state should evolve but they should be kept separate and a lot of sociologists will say the reason why America has the most dynamic flourishing religious sector of any of the Western countries is precisely because we've kept the state out I think it was uh cathop poot the nation writer who said she favors religious prayer in the schools because it will be sure to turn all of the kids off from religion she's an atheist and she's saying uh that's the shest way uh to alienate everybody from the religious cause can you speak on the dichotomy On the contradiction of Republicans hiding behind Christianity while enacting an agenda antithetical to the teachings of Christ between Republicans hiding behind Christianity to enact an agenda that is actually wholly antithetical to the 28:04 teachings of Jesus like whether regarding their refusal to fund food stamps Medicaid which overwhelmingly helps the elderly and the disabled the child tax credit which just as of this recording was just again voted down by Republicans vilifying immigrants and refugees when Jesus himself was a refugee how do you square these blatantly contradictory ideas well and of course that's a debate within Chris Christianity and within religion and so but I'm happy to enter into that discussion because it's so interesting but of course from a a constitutional and secular perspective um you know there are people who want to use Christianity for repressive purposes they're people who want to use Christianity for Progressive humanistic purposes there people who want to use Judaism or Islam for authoritarian and repressive purposes and people who want to use those religions for humanistic and liberal purposes right and uh that of course 29:04 makes sense from an Enlightenment perspective because a religion is a human construct it from a secular perspective those religions don't come from God they are man-made and so they can be used for corrupt purposes or humanitarian purposes but you your point is correct I mean we've got great uh Progressive liberation thinkers within Christianity I'm thinking about my friend Reverend Barber um who says that Jesus Christ was championing a philosophy of love and solidarity with the poor and you know quotes the passages everybody knows about how you know it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for uh a rich man to enter Heaven and so on um so that wing of Christianity of course would denounce the Jerry fwell Wing which organizes itself around contempt for gay people hatred of 30:05 the lgbtq community uh the subjugation of women uh the violation of women's procreative and reproductive choice and so on but that version of authoritarian Christianity has been Central to the authoritarian dictators and strong men all over the world I mean if you look at Victor Orban who was held up as the hero by right-wing magga forces and by Donald Trump and I think he just had a slumber party a few weekends ago over at Donald Trump's maral Lago spread um you know that's all about right-wing Christianity putting women back in their place stripping women of reproductive Freedom bashing gay people bashing immigrants and so on and there are great Christian theologians and Scholars who say that's totally antithetical to who the real Jesus was there's a great book by Gary Wills um called what Jesus meant that would really seem to take that position 31:07 uh as well but here's the great thing in American constitutional do democracy we don't have to enter into doctrinal conflict uh on an internent basis within particular religions that's for the religions to fight out I mean the reason why you've got like the Baptist convention and the Southern Baptist convention and the Methodist and the southern meth Methodist and the African Methodist you know AME Church um is because they all had splits over secular political subjects like slavery and civil rights and abortion and should gay people be allowed to be married and the religions can slice and dice themselves a million different ways the government doesn't have to be involved in that now How can the courts justify the precedent-defying Ten Commandments law in Louisiana? eventually The Ten Commandments case will make its way to the Supreme Court and at any other point before the last few weeks I would have assumed that it would just go the same way as like you mentioned before stone versus Graham uh 32:02 in 1980 which was nearly identical case in Kentucky which already adjudicated this issue but after this Court's immunity ruling I legitimately don't know how this court would rule although I can say with some certainty that uh there would at least be two votes in favor of Louisiana so what would the argument to justify that be given how blatantly and nakedly unconstitutional it actually is it depends on how far back they want to roll American constit discourse and understanding I mean they could go back to the point I was mentioning before about how the 14th Amendment through the so-called due process incorporation process applies the no establishment of religion principle not just against Congress which is what is stated textually but then through the 14th Amendment also against the states somebody like Clarence Thomas doesn't like that Doctrine I think that Scalia and ranquist may have been Skeptics of that Doctrine too so they might just go and say well Congress can't set up a 33:01 religion or a church but the states can and so if the states can actually establish a church under that reading certainly they can engage in the far lesser violation of people's civil liberty of just imposing uh the tenants of one particular religion in a public school classroom so they might try to make that argument they also could make the argument that okay even if the no establishment principle app lies against the states this is not an establishment because we are going to defy Define establishment as only setting up an official church and if Louisiana doesn't officially you know set up the Catholic Church as the Church of Louisiana but just puts up Ten Commandments um well that would be okay after all the Supreme Court has carved out other little exceptions there's one that affects our routine in Congress called Marsh versus Chambers uh which says that Congress can 34:01 uh have a chaplain and open uh our daily sessions with a prayer um and it's not because um you know the First Amendment doesn't operate it's simply because uh they say the original Congress did that and did not view it as incompatible with the First Amendment um query whether or not that's true uh um and the way that those of us who are much stronger First Amendment establishment Champions have tried to reconcile this is to say well that mini little moment of silence or meditation is one that's got to be open to people from every religious denomination not just Christians but Muslims and Jews and unitarians and um but also others who will memorialize the day I remember when I was in the state Senate in Maryland um we had the same practice and uh I 35:03 brought in priests I brought in uh rabbis and I brought in also musicians who thought that they had songs that they could play that would uplift and solize the proceedings and so I think that makes it a little bit better um but in any event they could carve out an exception and say the posting the Ten Commandments does not constitute an establish l m or a real endorsement especially if it's just a silent display you can imagine something like that but people who grew up when there was school prayer and things like Ten Commandments on the walls will tell you that it's all about sticking it to the minority groups the people who don't agree with or don't participate in worship the same way the majority group that controls the school board does it and um there are lots of cases where where um you know Catholics are in the 36:00 minority and they bring a suit against a Protestant practice or Mormons are are in the minority and they're bringing a suit against a Protestant practice or a Catholic practice or different you know groups are treated like The Outsider like the scapegoat and so many of these religious impositions are really about the majority sticking it to the minority What is the link between Christian nationalism and fascism? group which I guess leads me to the last question here and this is something that that's reared its head quite a bit lately that's really come into the Zeitgeist so what is the link between Christian nationalism and fascism because so often it feels like they're kind of one and the same as they present themselves in this country today well you know um it would be interesting to bring in some historians to discuss that connection uh in the 20th century but um the rightwing Catholic and Christian parties uh were generally very supportive of fascist 37:04 movements in the last century and in some sense it's almost hard to disentangle them if you're looking at uh Franco in Spain or musolini in Italy and of course the Catholic Church um has uh apologized for its uh involvement um in um facil facilitating fascism and not speaking out strongly against Hitler um you know whose birthday was observed in uh the the Catholic church in Germany and whose birthday was announced regularly um so there's a long history of uh Christian anti-Semitism that definitely exploded uh in the last century and anti-Semitism was one of the critical currents in fascist totalitarianism that Hanah arent identified in the origins of 38:02 totalitarianism and of course rearing its head as recently as Charlottesville for example Congressman what can we look Next up on Class: America is not a democracy but a republic, and therefore voting rights and free speech are not protected out for in the next episode of class yes uh in our next session uh we're going to take on a fallacy that is just Ablaze all over the land um coming from uh the the magga Republicans which is that America is not a democracy but a republic and therefore equal production does not cover the voting rights of the people and the one person one vote principle um and the first amendment in the freedom of speech do not protect the rights of students in public schools or public employees in the workplace and so on but we're going to take this claim that we're not a democracy we're a republic and then all of the implications which they say follow from Conclusion that distinction so you'll all be armed with exactly what to say the next time a republican push is this uh this claim that actually we're not even a democracy we are a republic and of course to watch that episode please make sure to 39:04 subscribe to this channel um the link to subscribe is right here on the screen and also in the post description as well as the links for democracy summer and my upcoming book Shameless I'm Brian teller Cen I'm Jamie Raskin and make sure to check out Brian's book Shameless it's really fine this is class with Jamie Raskin

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