by Thom Hartmann

The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) called on media to stop inviting Ann Coulter as a guest commentator and strongly condemned her comments that Jews should be "perfected" by accepting the New Testament and that America would be better off if Judaism were "thrown away" and all Americans were Christian.

"While Ann Coulter has freedom of speech, news outlets should exercise their freedom to use better judgment," said NJDC Executive Director Ira N. Forman. "Just as media outlets don't invite those who believe that Martians walk the earth to frequently comment on science stories, it's time they stop inviting Ann Coulter to comment on politics."

Media Matters for America has a complete transcript of Coulter's comments -- and video -- available here [1].

Similarly, Justice Antonin Scalia turned history on its head several years ago when he attended an Orthodox synagogue in New York and claimed that the Founders intended for their Christianity to play a part in government. Scalia then went so far as to suggest that the reason Hitler was able to initiate the Holocaust was because of German separation of church and state.

The Associated Press reported on November 23, 2004, "In the synagogue that is home to America's oldest Jewish congregation, he [Scalia] noted that in Europe, religion-neutral leaders almost never publicly use the word 'God.'"

"Did it turn out that," Scalia asked rhetorically, "by reason of the separation of church and state, the Jews were safer in Europe than they were in the United States of America?" He then answered himself, saying, "I don't think so."

Justice Scalia and Ann Coulter may well benefit from looking back at the photographs that came out of Germany that were all over the newspapers and news magazines at war's end. The photos that can be seen, for instance, at www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm [2] of the Catholic Bishops giving the collective Nazi salute. The annual April 20th celebration, declared by Pope Pius XII, of Hitler's birthday. The belt buckles of the German army, which declared "Gott Mit Uns" ("God is with us"). The pictures of the 1933 investiture of Bishop Ludwig Müller, the official Bishop of the 1000-Years-Of-Peace Nazi Reich. That last photo should be the most problematic for Ann Coulter and Justice Scalia, because Hitler had done exactly what Scalia is recommending - he merged church and state.

Which brings up one of the main reasons - almost always overlooked by modern-day commentators, both left and right - that the Founders and Framers were so careful to separate church and state: They didn't want religion to be corrupted by government.

Many of the Founders were people of faith, and even the Deists like Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson were deeply touched by what Franklin called "The Mystery." And they'd seen how badly religious bodies became corrupted when churches acquired power through affiliation with or participation in government.

The Puritans, for example, passed a law in Plymouth Colony in 1658 that said, "No Quaker Rantor or any other such corrupt person shall be a freeman in this Corporation [the state of Massachusetts]." Puritans banned Quakers from Massachusetts under pain of death, and, as Norman Cousins notes in his book about the faith of the Founders, In God We Trust [3], "And when Quakers persisted in returning [to Massachusetts] in defiance of law, and in practicing their religious faith, the Puritans made good the threat of death; Quaker women were burned at the stake."

Quakers were also officially banned from Virginia prior to the introduction of the First Amendment to our Constitution. Cousins notes: "Quakers who fled from England were warned against landing on Virginia shores. In fact, the captains of sailing ships were put on notice that they would be severely fined. Any Quaker who was discovered inside the state was fined without bail."

Throughout most of the 1700s in Virginia, a citizen could be imprisoned for life for saying that there was no god, or that the Bible wasn't inerrant. "Little wonder," notes Cousins, "that Virginians like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison believed the situation to be intolerable."

Even the oppressed Quakers got into the act in the 1700s. They finally found a haven in Pennsylvania, where they infiltrated government and promptly passed a law that levied harsh fines on any person who didn't show up for church on Sunday or couldn't "prove" that s/he was home reading scripture on that holy day.

Certainly the Founders wanted to protect government from being hijacked by the religious, as I noted in a previous article that quotes Jefferson on this topic. But several of them were even more concerned that the churches themselves would be corrupted by the lure of government's easy access to money and power.

Religious leaders in the Founders' day, in defense of church/state cooperation, pointed out that for centuries kings and queens in England had said that if the state didn't support the church, the church would eventually wither and die.

James Madison flatly rejected this argument, noting in a July 10, 1822 letter to Edward Livingston: "We are teaching the world the great truth, that Governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson: the Religion flourishes in greater purity without, than with the aid of Government."

He added in that same letter, "I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together."

Madison even objected to government giving money to churches to care for the poor. It would be the beginning of a dangerous mixture, he believed - dangerous both to government and churches alike. Thus, on February 21, 1811, President James Madison vetoed a bill passed by Congress that authorized government payments to a church in Washington, DC to help the poor.

In Madison's mind, caring for the poor was a public and civic duty - a function of government - and must not be allowed to become a hole through which churches could reach and seize political power or the taxpayer's purse. Funding a church to provide for the poor would establish a "legal agency" - a legal precedent - that would break down the wall of separation the founders had put between church and state to protect Americans from religious zealots gaining political power.

Thus, Madison said in his veto message to Congress, he was striking down the proposed law, "Because the bill vests and said incorporated church an also authority to provide for the support of the poor, and the education of poor children of the same;..." which, Madison said, "would be a precedent for giving to religious societies, as such, a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty."

Yet now, in 2007, the religious appear to be on the verge of both corrupting government and being corrupted themselves by the power and influence government can wield.

For example, as Reverend Moon has moved more and more into the political realm - from funding activities of both George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush, to funding the money-losing but politically activist Washington Times newspaper, to financially bailing out Jerry Falwell, to setting up numerous charities that now ask for federal funding - we see an increasing and ominous participation of legislators and Moonies. Moon, for example, was crowned by several members of Congress in the Senate Dirksen Office building on March 23, 2004. As the Washington Post noted in a July 21 story by Charles Babington, Moon himself proclaimed to our elected representatives attending the ceremony, "Emperors, kings and presidents . . . have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

Others, like Robertson, who want to use the money and power of government to promote their religious agendas, are making rapid inroads with George W. Bush's so-called "faith-based initiatives," which shift money from government programs for the poor and needy to churches and religious groups.

In some distant place, Adolf Hitler and Bishop Müller must be smiling at Ann Coulter and Justice Scalia's encouragement of the growing conflation of church and state in America. It's exactly what they worked so hard to achieve, and what helped make their horrors possible.

And Thomas Jefferson and James Madison must have tears in their eyes.

Thom Hartmann [4] is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program on the Air America Radio Network. www.thomhartmann.com [5] His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight [6]," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights [7]," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America [8]," "What Would Jefferson Do? [9]," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It [10]," and "Cracking The Code: The Art and Science of Political Persuasion [11]."