One of the Problems We're Having - Michael O'Fallon Tweets

The Problem with Michael O'Fallon’s Tweets

Andy Robles is here to help. That's right, I'm here to help. I think I can help. I'm not a legal scholar or anything like that, but you know, I think I've got some insight, you know what I mean? I think I have the ability to sort of break things down and make them into bite-sized little morsels, you know, that are just so delicious.

I even popped a Xin, just to be sure. I've been doing Spearmint lately. My favorite used to be Wintergreen, but I think Spearmint.

Might be.

Taking over my number one spot. These are really the only ones I like. Peppermint, it's okay.

Citrus, eh.

I do coffee, too, in the morning sometimes when I'm having coffee, but it's really not coffee. It's more like caramel. I don't know. I don't know. But anyway, I've got my Mets hat on, so you know I'm not kidding.

Here we go. I think this is the problem that we're having. This is the problem that we're having. A lot of people like to mock and deride Michael O 'Fallon,.

And they'll.

Say things like, you never want us to do anything, except for, so don't do anything except for ask the Constitution into your heart. And they're trying to be funny. It's a joke, but they're trying to get at something true.

I'm not making a comment on that, for sure. But this is the reason why they say that. Whenever it's something like, what should we do? Because you shouldn't have a Christian nation. You shouldn't be against the homosexuals because that's the trap, whatever.

All this stuff. You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do that. What should we do? Here's where he comes into play. He'll say things like this. He says, America doesn't.

Need a new founding.

That's a shot at Nate and Josh, of course. America doesn't need a new founding. America needs, here we go, this is what you should do, a recovery and a restoration of our founding documents, along with the spirit and yearning to be free that produced those documents.

Now that's the only part I'm concerned with here, but I'm going to read the rest of it, just to give this tweet its fair shake, right? He continues. He says, America would be destroyed by a Caesar. America would cease to be America with an unbound executive.

America would be ravaged by a Napoleon. America would be polarized by a monarchial episcopate. The fear and paranoia created by identity politics have overtaken both sides of the political spectrum. Both sides have been lured into a burn-it-all-down thinking, either by the nonsense of the 1619 project on the left, or the 1945 project on the right.

The calls for a new founding will result in the end of our republic. America will survive if her sons and daughters rise above the polarization, rise above the active measures, and rise above the desire for revenge.

America will thrive if we reject the slimy salesmen of identity politics on the left and the right. America will once again ascend to the greatness if our citizens embrace the promise of America, and what seems like a sunset may actually be a sunrise.

Eloquent.

And poetic.

If nothing else, you have to admit Michael O 'Fallon is eloquent and poetic. Now, I'm very interested in the first paragraph here. America needs a recovery and a restoration of our founding documents.

I agree. I agree. And this is the problem that we're having. I'm a Christian nationalist, and I agree with that statement. Now, I've said before, and I do not take this back, that I think the Constitution.

Could be better.

I think it could be improved upon. That being said, and I think that honestly, all it would take is an explicit acknowledgement of the Lord Jesus Christ. I think that would be enough to improve it, but of course you'd also need the will to carry out what it says and all of that.

I think that's kind of what he's getting at here when he says, along with the spirit and the yearning to be free that produced those documents. Right. The documents aren't enough. You have to actually have the will to enforce the documents, right?

I agree with that. I think the Constitution could be improved upon, but that being said, I think the Constitution.

Is.

You can work with it. You don't actually have to change it in order to create the future that I envision, right? And that many of us envision. We're pro-Constitution, right? I agree with Michael. Listen!

Hear it! Hear it now! March 20th, 2024, 3 .42 PM, Eastern Standard Time. I agree with Michael O 'Fallon that America needs a recovery and a restoration of our founding documents. Our founding documents.

What the documents that when we were founded, what they meant.

When they were founded,.

That's what we need a return to because it was good. I think it could have been improved upon, but it was good.

But here's.

Where we start to hit a little bit of turbulence, right? This is the part where there's a problem. And I think that this problem, many people have identified this problem, but it continues to be a problem.

And here's where we go.

Sideways, because this is also a Michael O 'Fallon tweet. And this is the kind of thing that not only Michael says, I'm not picking on Michael, Michael says this kind of stuff, but lots of other people say this kind of stuff as well.

And this is, these two things are not compatible, where we need a restoration and a recovery of the founding documents, but then he goes and says this.

He says,.

If the United States comes within a mile of enacting blasphemy laws, it will cease.

Man, the Zen just got.

Me there. It will cease to be the United States. Excuse me. Wow. Hold on a second. I need some water.

I didn't have any water, but I got this Zero Sugar body armor, so there you go. There you go.

Zen turned on me. Anyway, where were we? Yes, if the United States becomes within a mile of enacting blasphemy laws, it will cease to be the United States.

And here's the thing,.

A lot of people, you know, when they see this tweet, they'll respond to it and say, you know, you gotta consider God's law more important than the Constitution, and that kind of thing. And I agree, that's definitely.

True, but the.

Problem is that I agree with Michael's tweet here about the founding documents. The problem is, Michael seems to contradict himself here because the founding documents have absolutely been understood at the time,.

But also since then,.

That they allow for blasphemy laws. In fact, many of the states that ratified the Constitution had blasphemy laws, and continue to have blasphemy laws. Legal scholars, and again, I'm no scholar, but legal scholars agree that everybody understood the original.

Meaning.

Of the Constitution.

To allow, to specifically allow for blasphemy laws. Blasphemy laws did not violate free speech as the original founding documents laid it out. It did not. And so the problem that we have here, if we're to believe Michael's tweet on October 19, 2022, then we have to say, well, I guess the United States never started because they had the Constitution, and they had the founding documents,.

And they knew what it meant when they had it, and they.

Had blasphemy laws.

In fact, I found this.

Nice little, hold on, this is not it. I found this nice little article.

Here, and I.

Just thought I'd read a little bit of it. This is from Harvard.

Law Review.

And he says this, Until well into the 20th century, American law recognized blasphemy as proscribable speech. The Black Letter Rule was clear. Constitutional liberty entailed a right to articulate views on religion, but not a right to commit blasphemy.

Let me repeat that. This is what the Constitution means, and it meant it back then, and it means it today.

Constitutional.

Liberty entailed a right to articulate views on religion, but not a right to commit blasphemy, the offense of a malicious reviling of God, which encompassed profane ridicule of Christ.

The English.

Common law had punished blasphemy as a crime, while excluding disputes between learned men upon particular converted points.

You see, we knew how to.

Do this, right? Because people, they throw these scare things at you.

It's like, whoa, whoa, if I disagree with you,.

Like that lunatic the other day.

On YouTube, are you going to put me, are you going to kill me if I disagree with you?

And it's like, no.

No.

If I preach against you,.

Are you going to throw me in jail? Are you going to kill me? How are you going to do it? Are you going to stone me?

And it's like, no.

We.

Know how to do this. We've done it before. In fact, the original founding, the restoration of the original founding documents understood this. This was common law. We understood the difference between arguing and disputing controversial points from blasphemy, from criminal blasphemy.

The article continues. It says, looking to this precedent, 19th century American appellate courts consistently upheld proscriptions on blasphemy. Consistently. Drawing a line between punishable blasphemy and protected religious speech.

That line can be drawn.

And.

The United States used to draw that.

Line. Up until.

The 20th century, this is not like, oh, those guys.

Were idiots back then.

That's the Bronze Age. No, this was up until the 20th century. We understood that we could draw a line between controversy and theology and blasphemy.

This is.

The problem. Do you see the problem that we're having? And so, this is the point. It's like, why is it that the Constitution, this is the problem. The restoration of our founding documents, if he was being honest here, I think he should, I mean, in my opinion, I'm not going to say he's lying.

And I think he's confused. I think Michael's confused. That's what I think. I think Michael is confused. I'm not going to say he's lying.

He's confused.

Because what I think he means is America needs a recovery and a restoration of our founding documents as understood by the Supreme Court since, I don't know, 1950. And this is the problem that we're having.

And this is why everyone and their mother talks about the post-war consensus. Because before the war, everybody understood this. All the judges got this. You can't change what the Constitution means in retrospect.

It meant what it meant. And it still means that. The problem is people lost the will. They lost the will to actually do what the Constitution says you need to do.

They lost the will to actually.

Define things according to how they're actually defined. And they created this new universe.

Where all of a sudden,.

You get this. If the United States comes within a mile of enacting blasphemy laws, it will cease to be the United States.

These.

Two statements don't make sense as written. They're nonsensical as written.

The only way you.

Can make sense of them is if you add an asterisk here and say, as understood by recent courts. That's not how this works. If we're going to recover a restoration of our founding documents, it's the founding documents.

We're not going back to 1950 to see how they understood things. That's how we end up with this trans insanity. That's how we end up with DEI. That's how we end up with civil rights that try to force bakers to make cakes for gay weddings.

That's how we end up with all this stuff. And so, it has to actually be a restoration. I agree. A recovery and a restoration of our founding documents. I agree, but I don't want the asterisk there. I don't want the asterisk there.

I want the actual kind of free speech where we can make a distinction that says, you know what? The free speech that we were talking about is not about reviling Christ. It's not about ridiculing Christ.

That's not allowed. That's not the kind of free speech that we're enacting here. You can debate religion. You can debate points of Christian theology if you want to.

But we're drawing.

A line between there's certain kinds of blasphemy that's punishable, and then there's disagreements that we don't consider blasphemy according to the law. Now, in the religious life, we might consider certain things blasphemy, but we can make that distinction.

And that's the future that guys like me envision, where we can make distinctions. We can hash this out. It's not really new territory. It's territory that we used to understand, that everybody used to understand before 1950 fried people's brains!

And I know this goes against everything you learned in elementary school because that's...me too! I'm not talking to Michael here. I'm just saying in general, my audience. That's what I learned, that blasphemy laws were the most backwards thing and evil thing imaginable.

I'll tell you what I didn't learn. That everyone and their mother understood that blasphemy was not a part of free speech. All the states knew it. The states wouldn't have ratified the Constitution if it prohibited them from enacting blasphemy laws.

Some of these states had established churches! And this is the thing! I could easily see Michael.

Saying, if the state has an established church it ceases to become the United States!

It's It's the same problem. It's the same problem. Here's the same Harvard Law Review, the conclusion. In proscribing blasphemy, 19th century Americans did not flout constitutional guarantees of free speech, free exercise, and non-establishment.

Rather, they conceptualized those guarantees in a way that permitted blasphemy.

Laws.

Free speech and free exercise forbade the government from punishing serious and contentious.

...forbade the government.

From punishing the serious and contentious discussions of religious topics, but anti-blasphemy laws, which targeted only the malicious reviling of God or religion, did not prevent discussion of any subject or the propagation of sentiments.

Now, some of my side might want to make that stronger, but the point is that blasphemy of Christ should not be allowed in our Republic! And so, Michael's statement here is.

Wrong!

This is not correct, Michael. You're.

Confused.

I'm.

The one who actually wants a recovery and restoration of the founding documents. That's what I want. That's it. Nothing else. That's what I want. A recovery and a restoration of our founding documents, and I want the will to actually enforce it.

That's what I want. What am I missing here, Michael? That's what I'd like to know. You're a smart guy. Of this, I do not deny. Tell me what I'm missing. Because, you know, guys like us, we're confused.