This time a number of GOP N.C. House members pushing a resolution stating that the North Carolina and its schools and local governments can establish an official religion. The resolution acknowledges that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…) prohibits the establishment of a state religion but then claims that that doesn’t really matter:

SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.
SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

Words matter. Hopefully, every adult knows that. And certainly every politician should know that. And there’s nothing politically positive that comes from pushing something that amounts to saying “we don’t really believe in the First Amendment.”

It doesn’t matter in the least that this is only a resolution. The political inanity doesn’t stop there though.

“It has gotten people to get out their Constitution and read it,” said sponsor Rep. Carl Ford, R-Rowan.

Yes, it’s called the Fourteenth Amendment, which applies the First Amendment to the states. One would hope that a state lawmaker would be aware of that. And this isn’t exactly a new development: The U.S. Supreme Court has applied the establishment clause to the states since 1947 (Everson v. Board of Education).

The resolution does necessarily raise the question as to which other provisions of the United States Constitution the resolution’s backers don’t think the state should honor — as several commentators have noted, you can put any other right at the end of Section 2. This is also the exact same argument that was used in the South during the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to avoid desegregation. Getting into such topics almost certainly wasn’t Ford & company’s aim, but they came up with the wording and went there voluntarily. Ignorance of American history is no excuse.

If the GOP hopes to continue winning election in North Carolina and the country at large, it’s got to do better than this.

Bonus observation: What exact does establishing a state religion even mean?