Like most lieutenant governors, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s main job is waiting around for something terrible to happen to the governor so he can swoop in and claim his rightful position.
Forest announced back in March his intention to run for Gov. Roy Cooper’s job in 2020, and he’s been using his post to stake out a far-right position with a platform that relies on fear, xenophobia, ignorance and everything else Forest has come to stand for since he first won election in 2012.
Last week, while speaking to a conservative group at Cornerstone Church in Salisbury, Forest gave incontrovertible evidence that he is unfit to govern… anything, really, let alone one of the most multicultural states in the South.
The nut quote: “God doesn’t want us to divide our state. He doesn’t want us to divide our nation…. And yet no other nation, my friends, has ever survived the diversity and multiculturalism that America faces today, because of a lack of assimilation, because of this division, and because of this identity politics.
“No other nation has ever survived this,” he continued. “But no other nation has ever been founded on the principles of Jesus Christ, that begin the redemption and reconciliation through the atoning blood of our savior.”
It’s important to remember that Forest is running for governor of North Carolina, and not head pastor at one of those churches where people handle snakes.
Forest’s un-Americanism is self-evident: The entire American experiment is predicated upon multiculturalism, and freedom both of and from religion. He might as well have told the assembled crowd that he planned to quarter troops in their homes.
But his Bible scholarship falls short as well. Forest cites Acts 2 in his ill-advised rant, the story of the Pentecostal gathering in Jerusalem where the tribes of Israel miraculously understood each others’ languages after being filled with the holy spirit.
It’s one of the Bible passages that emphasizes the message of tolerance and understanding that is a pretty central theme to the New Testament. This makes Forest’s citation of it even more perverse.
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