"Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is defending Infowars host Alex Jones in the wake of the nearly one billion dollar civil judgment against him for defamatory claims he made on his radio show about the parents of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, arguing that he is facing “political persecution.”

But while she argues that “freedom of speech” should allow Jones to avoid the consequences of defaming those kids’ parents – even as it inspired his followers to harass them and allegedly pee on the child victims’ graves – her most famous intern, Milo Yiannopoulos, is telling his followers on Telegram that the U.S. should ban blasphemy and “institute meaningful penalties for insulting, irreverent or contemptuous language about Our Lord.”

While Greene was arguing for such an expansive definition of free speech that includes immunity from deliberate defamation, someone from her office was saying that the U.S. should ban free speech when it comes to criticism of religion and God.

“Christian nationalism will succeed only if we are honest about the profound structural failures in the American system, and are prepared to do something about them,” Greene’s intern, Yiannopoulos – who identifies as ex-gay – wrote on the rightwing social media platform Telegram. “This will involve the commission of some pretty gigantic offenses against ‘American conservatism.’ For a start, we must be prepared to say that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are hopelessly broken, because of course they are.”

“You will know America is serious about saving itself, and that it has absorbed the scale of the undertaking, when you see a president adding his signature to revivified blasphemy laws, which will prevent the open promotion of sedition, institute meaningful penalties for insulting, irreverent or contemptuous language about Our Lord, and moreover restore to general society an understanding that words matter, they carry consequences, and they may not be capriciously and arbitrarily redefined by mentally unstable graffiti artists with PhDs,” he wrote.

“The wide disputational berth granted by the First Amendment and the destructive potentialities of the Second are privileges that can only be granted to Christians…. No other belief system produces individuals capable of responsibly wielding such daunting, awesome freedoms.”

“You cannot grant these powers to the citizenry without also requiring that every elected official and federal employee is a churchgoing Christian and that the nation explicitly identifies itself with Jesus Christ and governs in a manner informed by the Church,” he wrote."

Mr. Yiannapoulus would do well to reflect on how many murderers and mass shooters have been, or at least have professed to be, Christians, and how few have been atheists or agnostics. Or perhaps he blindly accepts assertions, like this one from Ken Lambert in the Catholic Business Journal Daily, (https://www.catholicbusinessjournal.com/contributors/ken-lambert/the-link-between-atheists-agnostics-and-mass-shooters/) that "The best and most proven way to avoid being a mass shooter is to live some kind of a religious life. Have religion, church and faith in your heart and in your life. If you believe in nothing greater than man, or greater than the earth, then you are more likely to perpetrate these terrible and fatal crimes." Lambert massages figures to conclude that only 4 out of 69 mass shooters between 1998 and 2013, when he wrote, were Christians. He asserts that "Only about 16% were people who had a current, significant religious worldview/belief structure", and over half of these were Muslims. Thus, he concludes, only 6% were Christians. But what exactly is "a current, significant religious worldview/belief structure"? Doesn't everyone have " a current, significant religious worldview/belief structure"?