THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION - A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS

For those of you who remain blissfully ignorant, The Heritage Foundation is a group of ne’er-do-wells who believe that they know better and more than all the historians and Constitutional scholars in the US about what the American government was, is, and should be.

It is this group that engineered Project 2025 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025), with the objective of making America a Christian totalitarian state, rather than, as its name would suggest, concerning itself with the actual heritage of the United States.

This country was inhabited by tribes of Native Americans when the first Pilgrims and other assorted settlers landed, and nary a one of these tribes practiced, or had even heard of, Christianity. They had their own religions and practices, and it is only because of the Christian (and, coincidentally, Muslim) belief in converting those who would or could be converted, or killing off anyone not disposed to convert (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus), that this country came into being. The Native Americans lived peacefully among themselves until settlers brought disease and religion into this country. But the Heritage Foundation seems to have forgotten about that portion of our heritage as easily as it forgot the parts in the Bible about “thou shalt not kill” and ”love thy neighbor as thyself.”

After a century or so, some of the more intellectual members of the early history of this country got together, first to draft the Declaration of Independence, which officially, along with a bloody war, freed us from the rule of the British king, and subsequently to draft our Constitution, which explains in pretty significant detail how the government of this newly founded country would and should be run. Because, of course, there was much involved in this, and because some previously unforeseen events occurred, the Constitution was updated with the Bill of Rights, and then the Amendments, each of which had to be ratified by two-thirds of the states that existed at the time.

The Heritage Foundation, in its failure as historians, seems to have forgotten about: how we properly elect our government’s leaders; that we have three CO-EQUAL branches of government – Executive (the President), Judicial (Supreme Court), and the Legislative (Congress); that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; 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.” In its zeal to run a Taliban-style Christian country – which is not mentioned in either the Constitution or the Bible – the Heritage Foundation has tossed aside the rules, just as the mad Mullahs of Iran and Afghanistan have, so that they can unfairly elect puppets who will do their will, rather than the will of the MAJORITY of the people who live in this country.

The interesting thing is that they so easily found a puppet to fulfill their deepest desires. Dump*, was just the Elmer Gantry they needed to front for them: a weakminded, not-too-bright dupe, who was made to believe that every subliminal suggestion they made to him was his own, is all too happy to proceed with the plan. He knows as little about history – history in general, as well as that of the US – and ethics as they do. And, ironically, he is as non-religious as they will claim that they are religious, although if they were, they should have some morals and ethics. They have none, however, and found that this Dump, void of religion and brains, whose sole thought is for his own personal wealth and comfort, was eager to participate in their plan, as long as it enriched him personally.

During Dump’s first “administration,” they’d been caught off guard, and had no firm plan in place; however, during the Biden Administration, they made it their mission to set in stone a plan to take over the US and scrap the Constitution, and since Dump’s second “administration,” have taken pains to follow each step in the written version of Project 2025 (If you have not taken the time to read it, please do; it always helps to know the other guy’s playbook.) and we have been the unwilling victims of it.

We have, since 1788, when the Constitution was ratified, been following it, and despite disagreements on certain policy issues, we have always been able to have civil discourse (except for the actual Civil War) and vote our policies into place. And, as I once told my poli-sci professor, we have swung like a pendulum over time because policies work for a time, then need to be tweaked, but we have gotten through. Whether or not many people know this, we have actually had Economists on opposite sides of the spectrum win the Nobel Prize in Economics, because each had proposals that worked, to a degree. But we have done all this within the confines of the Constitution, and with respect for one another as individual human beings.

Project 2025 and its “mastermind” (very loosely interpreted), the Heritage Foundation, have decided, in their uninformed religious zeal, to do away with all that. They have decided that respect only belongs to certain denominations of Christians (note, Mr. Vance, that your Catholicism is not one of the approved denominations); that the Constitution is just so much blather and need not be bothered with; that international law does not apply to them; that starting world wars and the economic downfall of the planet at large is of no consequence because they are doing “God’s work” and will go to heaven because of it. Of course, we have yet to see a “rapture” prediction that came to pass. I think the god they believe in – spelled E G O – is at odds with the God who is mentioned in the Bible (He did not write the Bible; it was written about Him and His works), because the biblical God, while displaying his wrath to the dissenters, was looking to make us better human beings. As I wrote in a d’var torah last August, many of the biblical laws were reactive, rather than proactive, because God was watching the way we humans behaved and was looking to improve us as people, thereby insuring our survival on this planet. But some people stopped listening at “Go, ye,” and have forgotten everything that we were supposed to have been taught, and decided that the only way to get what they want is to take it. “The Art of Negotiation,” for them has become the art of cheating and deception.

In any event, it is our job and responsibility as voting citizens of the United States of America to have our say, and that say is had at the polls and “…peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In other words, get out to the March 28 “No Kings” protests, and have your peaceable say. Carry a big sign with a copy of the Declaration of Independence (the only official US document that mentions the abuses of kings) on one side, and the American flag on the other, and keep a copy of the First Amendment on your person, in case you are stopped by an officer who insists on violating your Constitutional rights. Let’s make it clear to the “Heritage” Foundation and to MAGA and to this sorry excuse for an “administration” that we DO NOT approve of what they are doing, that it must stop, and that in November, we are all going to VOTE to have them removed and prosecuted for their various violations.

* A serendipitous conjunction of the first letter of his first name and the last three letters of his surname.