Joel Sassone > Joel's Quotes

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Each of these people has an extreme version of what we call a high-conflict personality. Unlike most of us, who normally try to resolve or defuse conflicts, people with high-conflict personalities (HCPs) respond to conflicts by compulsively increasing them. They usually do this by focusing on Targets of Blame, whom they mercilessly attack—verbally, emotionally, financially, reputationally, litigiously, and sometimes violently—often for months or years, even if the initial conflict was minor. Their Targets of Blame are usually someone close (a coworker, neighbor, friend, partner, or family member) or someone in a position of authority (boss, department head, police, government agent). Sometimes, though, the Target of Blame can be completely random.”
― Bill Eddy, 5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life: Identifying and Dealing with Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other High-Conflict Personalities

“From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.” — George Orwell “The Prevention of Literature,” 1946”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Who will ever forget former attorney general Jeff Sessions’s biblical rationalization for Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents? Sessions turned to a passage from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in which Christianity’s first great proselytizer admonished every soul to be “subject to the governing authorities; because there is no authority except that which God has established.” (A federal judge thought otherwise, however, and ordered the government to reunite the families—thereby deciding that the Constitution, not a first-century evangelist, is a higher authority on the making of public policy.)”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“From a scholarly standpoint, as noted in a 1992 Newsweek article, “the idea of a single ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ is a made-in-America myth.”9 One Jewish theologian stated the problem plainly: “Judaism is Judaism because it rejects Christianity, and Christianity is Christianity because it rejects Judaism.”10 “Judeo-Christian” is slippery because it is more a political invention than a scholarly description. It originated at the close of World War II when Christian exclusivity was too threatening.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Judeo-” is a sop, a fig leaf, tossed about to avoid controversy and complaint. It is simply a morsel of inclusion offered to soften the edge of an exclusionary, Christian movement.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“The single most accurate predictor of whether a person voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election was not religion, wealth, education, or even political party; it was believing the United States is and should be a Christian nation.26 Researchers studied this connection and were able to control for other characteristics to ensure that Christian nationalism was not simply a proxy for other forms of intolerance or other variables related to vote choice.27 They concluded, “The more someone believed the United States is—and should be—a Christian nation, the more likely they were to vote for Trump.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“A MORE INSIDIOUS RATIONALE underlies the Christian nationalist claim about the founders: the myth that only Christians are moral. The argument is that the United States was created by Christians for Christians because only they are moral,24 that Christianity is required for a moral society. There are two falsehoods tangled up in this claim. The first conflates religion with morality, and the second assumes that the founders did the same.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“So let’s look for the answers ourselves, by comparing the Judeo-Christian principles in the bible—the Golden Rule, obedience, biblical crime and punishment, original sin, vicarious redemption, religious faith, and monarchy—with the tenets of the American Constitution, laws, and government. American principles and Judeo-Christian principles are so irreconcilable that we can fairly say: Judeo-Christianity is un-American.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American