The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

1. “Now this is the command: Do to the doer to cause that he do.” ~Ancient Egypt (c. 2040–1650 BCE)6 2. “Don’t do yourself what you disapprove of in others.” ~Pittacus of Mytilene, Ancient Greece (c. 640–568 BCE)7 3. “Never do ourselves what we blame others for doing.” ~Thales of Miletus, Ancient Greece (c. 624–545 BCE)8 4. “To those who are good (to me), I am good; and to those who are not good (to me), I am also good; and thus (all) get to be good.” ~Laozi, China (sixth century BCE)9 5. “Do not impose on others what you do not desire others to impose upon you.” ~Confucius, China (551–479 BCE)10 6. “What I disapprove of in the actions of my neighbor, that—as best I can—I will not do.” ~Herodotus, Ancient Greece (fifth century BCE)11 7. “If people regarded other people’s families in the same way that they regard their own, who then would incite their own family to attack that of another? For one would do for others as one would do for oneself.” ~Mozi, China (c. 470–391 BCE)12 8. “Do not do to others the things that anger you when you experience them from others.” ~Isocrates, Ancient Greece (c. 436–338 BCE)13 9. “We ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him.” ~Plato/Socrates (fifth–fourth century BCE)14 10. “One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self. This, in brief, is the rule of

Variations of the Golden Rule in other religions.