A National Day of Prayer to ‘the Thing’

You are not signed in as a Premium user; we rely on Premium users to support our news reporting. Sign in or Sign up today!

We know that it wasn't a gaffe when President Joe Biden declared this a National Day of Prayer without even mentioning God. This wasn't a random press conference or a casual brush with the press. Those barely happened when he was running for office, and they sure don't happen now. No, Biden's tame writers crafted this statement, and he approved it.

So now we'll have to rethink an incident from the campaign trail. Remember March 2020? Joe Biden seemed ready to say: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

In the Beginning, There Was the Thing

Instead, Biden told a crowd of supporters something else: "We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created, by the, you know, you know the thing."

Back then I commented:

What if Biden remembered, once he'd launched into that famous phrase, that it mentioned the Creator? And that sent the gears and pulleys, racing gerbils and tethered crows of his Rube Goldberg-intellect slamming into reverse. "Can't mention the Creator — that will offend too many atheists. And they're the core group in our party!" ...

Instead, Biden invoked a much more important concept. The nebulous, undefined, in fact undefinable thing that's the source of human dignity, our desire for justice, and the reason we seek to grant all people equal protection under law. It can't be the God of the Bible, who demands too much from us. Instead it's a kind of materialist-spiritual, square-circle, self-contradictory ... thing. The kind of thing that doesn't and can't exist.

Now it appears that my less charitable interpretation turned out to be correct. (Note to self: That usually happens. Perhaps man is fallen ... .)

Read the Rest at The Stream.

Have a news tip? Submit news to our tip line.

We rely on you to support our news reporting. Please donate today.