Guess who won her vote?

What follows is a self-typed transcript from the 03 Nov 2004 Talk of the Nation radio program on NPR. This segment was titled “Election Over, Debate over Morals Persist.” The host is Neal Conan. Neal is speaking to George Lakoff, Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at UC Berkeley. They took a call from a listener, Grace from Louisiana. This transcript starts at about 5:48 on the stream from NPR. The emphasis below is mine to highlight something I felt was beyond belief, and the grammar is theirs, but the spelling is mine.

Grace: Hello?

Neal Conan: Hi, you’re on the air, Grace.

Grace: Yes. Thank you. Ah, I am a first time voter, for the first time in 30 years. Uh. In Louisiana we had the, uh, the amendment for, for, uh, towards marriage that we had, uh, in September. And I registered to vote to vote specifically for that issue. And, uh, as you may know, uh, 79% of the population voted for it, and an activist, uh, judge, uh, has, um, is in the courts right now, he said that it was unconstitutional. And that really goes to the, the grassroots of why you have seen the results in this election, is that we, uh, as a Christian most Christians in this nation trust that God chooses the king, and that means the president. And we have enjoyed the luxury of religious freedom in this nation, which is what this nation was the basis of its founding. And we have seen, in recent years, that an oligarchy is forming in this country where activist judges are using preference over principle in their interpretation of the Constitution, uh, assuming that this church, that the Constitution has a separation of church and state. The only constitution in this, in this world that had that clause in it was the Soviet Union. In the United States Constitution, they do not have a separation of church and state. So we have seen the Ten Commandments taken out of the state capital in Alabama, and we have seen, uh uh a uh an increasing attempt to take away the Christian heritage from this country. And, and we are for everyone having their basic freedoms, but we have been seeing our freedoms to express our beliefs threatened increasingly more.

George Lakoff: (interrupts) Free, freedoms are not threatened, but in effect we do have a separation of church and state in our Constitution.

Grace: (interrupts) It’s not in...

George Lakoff: If you read that Constitution very carefully, there is going to be no established religion in this country.

Grace: (interrupts) And the reason for that...

(Crosstalk)

Neal Conan: (speaking over crosstalk) Uh, Grace, if...

(Crosstalk. Grace’s voice fades out)

George Lakoff: In particular, (garbled) wrong about the, the, um uh you know, uh, the way that, uh, your freedoms have not been impugned. In fact, it’s the reverse. The oligarchy in this country, uh, is the Right, the Radical Right, and Bush is part of the Radical Right. This is a radical issue. Uh, he wants to impose a hierarchy in this country, and, uh, this is not, uh, this is supposed to be a democratic country. That hierarchy is a hierarchy of, among other things, financial success, uh, for one thing. Secondly, a particular view, not only of Christianity, but of religion in general, a “strict father” version of Christianity, not a “nurturing” version of Christianity. And most Christians in this country follow the “nurturing,” not the “strict father” model of Christianity. Ah, your model of Christianity is not that of most Christians in this country. And most Christians in this country want a separation of church and state as is given in the Constitution.

Neal Conan: Well, ah, I think we, uh, saw the divide illustrated...

Posted by Jonathan at 02:25 AM, 04 November 2004

Comments