Schooling Rosie O'Donnell of The View

Rosie O'Donnell is amazing. In less than three full weeks as co-yenta on The View, she has succeeded in offending almost eighty percent of the U.S.; and shown, beyond any reasonable doubt, she is confounded by high school civics. She believes that Christianity is as dangerous to America as Islam. That her churlish comment was greeted by applause from the studio audience goes a long way to explaining the popularity of programs like The View, and professional twitters like Ms. O'Donnell. It also defends the thesis that democracy is not a good thing. For those of you who missed it, here is Ms. O’Donnell waxing nescient:

"Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state. We're a democracy here."

That statement is so fundamentally wrong, it hurts to think about it. First off, the U.S does not have a ‘separation of church and state’. The phrase “separation of church and state” is nonexistent in the Constitution. Look it up if you don't believe me, I'll wait. What the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment does offer is the freedom to practice religion without government interference. In other words, religion is protected from politicians’ meddling in it, not the other way around. Any citizen, religious or otherwise, has the right, nay the duty, to meddle, redress, or otherwise participate in government. When politicians meddle in religion you end up with theocracies in the Middle East or seventy-four dead in Waco.

Secondly, the U.S. is a Republic, NOT a democracy. The words are not interchangeable. Democracy means mob rule and the founders were vehement that the U.S. not become a democracy.
According to founding father James Madison:

“Democracy is the most vile form of government. Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”