Snapshot · The Ben Shapiro Show
Political scientist Donald Lutz catalogued 15,000 founding-era political sources and found the Bible was the single most-cited document, accounting for roughly a third of all citations.
Where this was said
At 16:27 · chapter starts 14:30
Trump's Religious Liberty Commission issued a draft report calling the 'separation of church and state' a legal error, and Shapiro agrees — at length. He walks through Thomas Jefferson's 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, John Adams's letter to the Massachusetts militia ('Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people'), and George Washington's and James Madison's views on religion undergirding republican government. The Establishment Clause, Shapiro argues, was meant to prevent Congress from mandating a single denomination — not to excise religion from civic life. He cites political scientist Donald Lutz's study of 15,000 founding-era political sources, which found the Bible was the single most-cited document, with Deuteronomy cited most frequently of all. Shapiro — himself Jewish — insists that not knowing the New Testament makes you illiterate by Western standards, pointing to references in Shakespeare, Dickens, Hugo, and Dostoevsky.
Political scientist Donald Lutz catalogued 15,000 founding-era sources and found the Bible — not Locke, not Montesquieu — was the most-cited document, accounting for roughly a third of all citations. Deuteronomy topped the list because it answered the founding question: how do you govern a nation?
Of all founding-era political texts, the Book of Deuteronomy was cited most frequently because it addresses how to govern a nation under moral law.
The Texas State Board of Education didn't mandate church attendance. It added David and Goliath, Adam and Eve, the parting of the Red Sea, the Psalms, and the Book of Job to the K-12 literary canon — alongside the Quran, Elie Wiesel, and Anne Frank. If you find that controversial, you don't understand what a civilization is.
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Harold Ramis recounted that during Caddyshack filming, storms kept the cast cooped up in a Florida hotel for days, during which they partied and did drugs all day and night.
In the 1820s, China accounted for 25% of global economic output, making it the world's largest economic machine — a historical precedent for its current AI superpower ambitions.
66 Americans held hostage at the US Embassy in Iran were released after 444 days, within hours of Reagan's inauguration.
In the first round of the secret arms deal, 508 TOW missiles were transferred from Israel to Iran in exchange for hostage releases.
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Despite all the missile sales, only 3 of the 7 American hostages held by Lebanese terrorists were ultimately released.
The CIA supply plane that blew open the scandal was flying at only 2,500 feet in broad daylight when it was shot down on October 5, 1986.
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