TiC on O'Reilly and Jefferson

Here's a twofer from Talking in Circles, under the heading "bill o'reilly lies about thomas jefferson."

Bill O’Reilly wrote that the “separation of church and state argument” is “bogus” because it “does not appear anywhere in the Constitution.”
(TiC)

The post is lifted (with a head-nod attribution) from the Media Matters website.
Word up: Don't trust Media Matters. Here's the Media Matters version:

Bill O'Reilly wrote that the "separation of church and state argument" is "bogus" because it "does not appear anywhere in the Constitution."
(Media Matters)

And, finally, here's the Bill O' Reilly version:

The anti-Christmas forces are still clinging to the bogus separation of church and state argument that does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he would mock these secular fools and then retire to his Virginia estate for Christmas dinner.
('Tis The Season, by Bill O'Reilly)

TiC and Media Matters are nice enough to provide all the necessary links, I should add. It's like they either can't think well enough to realize that their evaluation of O'Reilly is bogus, or they're trusting that nobody will bother to double-check.

1) O'Reilly's logic, as it comes from the quotation, does not suggest that the "separation of church and state argument" is "bogus" because it doesn't appear in the constitution. He merely states that the argument is absent from the constitution--and he's perfectly correct on that point.
If the critics want to take O'Reilly to task on that point, they should quote him specifically to that effect. Media Matters failed on that point, thus they probably misrepresented O'Reilly's position on the matter.
2) The better argument--the one that O'Reilly probably adheres to--rests in the fact that the early United States allowed considerable public expression of Christianity. There was no thought that the First Amendment would be applied broadly to all state and local governments through the extension of the Fourteenth Amendment. Check the date on the Fourteenth Amendment if you don't believe me.

So, Thomas Jefferson probably wouldn't celebrate Christmas with the same mindset of Linus van Pelt, but O'Reilly makes a valid point in the context of applying federal law to restrict municipalities from permitting a nativity scene.

I think that Jefferson would have come to realize that not all religions may be accomodated in the laws of one nation. If you took a poll today, a large number of people would disagree that it is self-evident that all men are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights--and apparently that's exactly what Jefferson and company believed as they signed the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson would, I think, be flabbergasted that the self-evident has largely gone out of vogue in terms of popular belief.