QOTY candidate, or new wine in old bottles?

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Apr 24 16:08:32 UTC 2013


In reading a HuffPo piece at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/brian-sims-abortion-pennsylvania_n_3141950.html,
I was struck by the phrasing of the last two lines of Bryan Sims's statement:

"This legislation is about advancing an ideology of oppression and suppression, even if such a plan means ignoring the oath of office that  each of us swore," Sims told his colleagues during a floor debate in the House of Representatives. "As a reminder, Mr. Speaker, I do believe this has been forgotten entirely by many of my colleagues today: Each of us put our hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. We did not place our hands on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

This strikes me as too eloquent for our times, as if it might have come from the Darrow/Scopes era, but the google hits I see all come back to Bryan Sims.  Could it actually have been uttered for the first time by Sims in this speech?  Might it be a variant of some earlier   rhetorical reversal with different content?

LH

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