The Democrats, as they are wont to do, have put themselves into a logical inconsistency:
Liberals on entitlements: “The Bible says give to the poor!”
Liberals on gay marriage: “This isn’t a theocracy! Keep religion at church!”
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) March 17, 2017
Indeed, the Democrat Party likes to invoke the Bible only when it comes to imposing their agenda onto the populace; otherwise they sneer at conservatives as bitter clingers.
Here are 11 times Democrats have cited the Bible to defend their big government programs.
1. The Democrats are perpetuating the fake news that President Donald Trump’s budget abolishes the Meals On Wheels program and are citing the Bible to support their program. For instance:
You don’t have to be a Christian or believe in Jesus to know that Christians are called to feed the hungry. See Mt 25:35 https://t.co/8B5TgubMUB
— Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) March 17, 2017
The problem is that Powers isn’t even using that Bible citation in the correct context:
In Matt 25, when Jesus talks about caring for “the least of these,” he isn’t talking about the poor in general, but fellow Christians.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) March 17, 2017
But Democrats don’t seem to understand that, as they seem to like citing Matthew 25.
2. Sen. Elizabeth Warren cited Matthew 25 in her 2012 Democratic National Convention speech. The quote that the then-Senate candidate used was: “In as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
“The passage teaches about God in each of us,” Warren said. “That we are bound to each other, and we are called to act — not to sit, not to wait — but to act, all of us together.”
Her speech was lauded by Democrats, such as strategist Burns Strider, who gushed about how “she showcased the compassion, authenticity and comfort of articulating the shared American values Democrats largely derive from a faith in God.”
This was the same convention where the Democrats booed the insertion of God into the party platform.
3. A PAC supporting Barack Obama was formed in 2008 called The Matthew 25 Network. The PAC, formed by Mara Vanderslice, who worked for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, aimed to provide outreach to Christians and encourage them to vote for Obama. As the name suggests, the group was predicated on the following Bible passage:
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
4. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) quoted a nonexistent Bible verse to promote environmentalism. On Earth Day in 2008, the then-Speaker of the House issued a release that quoted a supposed Bible verse that read, “To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.”
“On this Earth Day, and every day, let us pledge to our children, and our children’s children, that they will have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to experience the wonders of nature,” Pelosi’s release read.
If the Bible quote Pelosi cited seems unfamiliar, that’s because it doesn’t exist. There is nothing in the Bible that even comes remotely close to Pelosi’s quote. It only stands to reason that Pelosi would cite a nonexistent quote in support of a day rooted in Marxism and the eugenics movement.
5. Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson quoted the Gospel of Matthew in a 2007 Democratic presidential primary debate. During a lightning round in which candidates were all asked to cite their favorite Bible verse, Richardson said, “The Sermon on the Mount, because I believe it’s an issue of social justice, equality, brotherly issues reflecting a nation that is deeply torn and needs to heal and come together.”
6. Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) invoked the Bible against repealing Obamacare. The grandson of Robert F. Kennedy criticized Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) for referring to the Obamacare replacement bill as an “act of mercy”:
“I was struck last night by a comment that I heard made by Speaker Ryan, where he called this repeal bill ‘an act of mercy.’ With all due respect to our speaker, he and I must have read different Scripture,” Kennedy said as the House Energy and Commerce Committee dove into the details of the GOP effort.
“The one I read calls on us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, and to comfort the sick.
“It reminds us that we are judged not by how we treat the powerful, but by how we care for the least among us,” said the Brookline Democrat and scion of the most famous Massachusetts political dynasty.
“There is no mercy in a system that makes health care a luxury. There is no mercy in a country that turns their back on those most in need of protection: the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the suffering. There is no mercy in a cold shoulder to the mentally ill,” he said, appearing to read from notes.
“This is not an act of mercy. It is an act of malice,” he said.
In other words, Kennedy is suggesting that anyone who is against Obamacare is taking a position that is antithetical to the Bible.
7. Kerry cited the Bible in a 2014 State Department speech calling to combat climate change in Muslim countries. “Confronting climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face, and you can see this duty or responsibility laid out in the Scriptures clearly beginning in Genesis,” the horse-faced buffoon bloviated. “And Muslim majority countries are among the most vulnerable.”
Rush Limbaugh was astounded at Kerry’s statement.
“I don’t believe what I just heard,” Limbaugh said on his radio program. “So it’s okay to cite the Bible. It’s okay to broom the separation of church and state when talking about global warming outreach with Muslims.”
Limbaugh thought it was hilarious Kerry was invoking the Bible to fight climate change while the Left argues that it’s a man-made phenomenon.
“From the left’s standpoint, the utter hypocrisy of this, to cite the Bible as a reason, and global warming as the reason we must reach out and protect vulnerable Muslim majorities? The Bible commands the United States to join Muslim nations in this cause?” Limbaugh said. “Twilight Zone time!”
8. A California state assemblyman used a Bible verse to support a bill mandating overtime pay for farmers in June. “A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit,” stated Assemblyman Joaquin Guzman (D-Kingsburg) on the floor of the Assembly. “A tree is identified by its fruit. Figs are never gathered from thornbushes, and grapes are not picked from bramble bushes.”
The bill was narrowly defeated in the Assembly.
9. In 2015, Hillary Clinton claimed to be “a person of faith.” Clinton was asked at an Iowa campaign event in January how her faith relates to her politics.
“My study of the Bible … has led me to believe the most important commandment is to love the Lord with all your might and to love your neighbor as yourself, and that is what I think we are commanded by Christ to do,” Clinton said. “And there is so much more in the Bible about taking care of the poor, visiting the prisoners, taking in the stranger, creating opportunities for others to be lifted up … I think there are many different ways of exercising your faith.”
Reminder: Clinton is a corrupt, far-left ideologue.
10. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tried to use a Bible passage to argue in favor of Obama’s Syrian refugee policy. Kristof, who has a penchant for spewing moronic statements, continued that same trend when he tried to use Jesus as a cudgel against House Republicans for opposing Obama’s refugee policy in a November 2015 column.
“According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus’ birth they fled to save Jesus from murderous King Herod (perhaps the 2,000-year-ago equivalent of Bashar al-Assad of Syria?),” wrote Kristof. “Fortunately Joseph, Mary and Jesus found de facto asylum in Egypt — thank goodness House Republicans weren’t in charge when Jesus was a refugee!”
Per usual, Kristof missed the mark, as Joseph, Mary and Jesus were not refugees: (H/T: The Federalist)
While it’s true that refugees are people who, like Mary and Joseph, have moved from one geographical location to another at some point in their lives, those who merit the title “refugee” must also have changed geographical locations in order to flee a war, some form of natural disaster, or a political leader who is persecuting them. While Augustus’ decree of a census may certainly have inconvenienced Mary and Joseph, it didn’t rise to the level of persecution. Likewise, when they travelled to Bethlehem, Christ’s mother and earthly father weren’t fleeing from Caesar. They were obeying him. Therefore, to suggest that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were persecution-fleeing refugees in Bethlehem is quite absurd, at least if one subscribes to the notion that you don’t get to change a word’s meaning just because doing so would make conservatives look like morons.
Perhaps the confusion on this point has come from people forgetting the sequence of events in that barely-remembered Christmas pageant and confusing the arrival in Bethlehem with the flight to Egypt. Certainly there are similarities between Syrians fleeing ISIS and Mary and Joseph seeking refuge in Egypt in order to save Jesus from the murderous wrath of King Herod. But I have no doubt that most conservative Christians in America would gladly be Egypt to those Syrians who are fleeing the Herodian bloodlust of ISIS, as long as they had absolute certainty that ISIS itself or an Islamist worldview wouldn’t cross the border with them.
Kristof may want to check his facts before taking cheap shots at Republicans.
11. Channeling Pelosi, Obama himself quoted a Bible verse that didn’t exist in a 2014 speech promoting amnesty. “The good book says, don’t throw stones in glass houses,” Obama said. “Or … make sure we’re looking at the log in our eye before we are pointing out the mote in other folks’ eyes.”
The Washington Times noted that the first half of Obama’s quote is a proverb that does not stem from the Bible. The second half of his quote seems to have been from Matthew 7: 1-3, which states, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged … Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”
The Democrats seem to treat the Bible they same way as the Constitution by cherry-picking the parts that forward their agenda, but when it comes to issues like abortion and gay marriage, they claim that people invoking the Bible and the Constitution are a bunch of religious right-wing crazies. The Democrats and the Left truly embody the “ends justifies the means” mentality.
This article has been updated.