2010-07-19 10:29![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineI know I shouldn't pay attention to Caribou Barbie, but watching her (and, by extension, a very vocal and visible population of historical revisionists) get put down by the Founding Fathers (via Juan Cole) has perked up my morning a bit.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1777 Draft of a Bill for Religious Freedom:
"... that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right...."
TJ again (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82):
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
And, once and for all, for all the folks who insist "America is a Christian nation!" No, it frankly and explicitly is not.
The US Senate, full of founding fathers, and the Adams government, approved the Treaty with Tripoli (now Libya) of 1797, which included this language:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion...."
That would be pretty bloody unequivocal. Saying otherwise is simply and factually wrong.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1777 Draft of a Bill for Religious Freedom:
"... that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right...."
TJ again (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82):
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
And, once and for all, for all the folks who insist "America is a Christian nation!" No, it frankly and explicitly is not.
The US Senate, full of founding fathers, and the Adams government, approved the Treaty with Tripoli (now Libya) of 1797, which included this language:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion...."
That would be pretty bloody unequivocal. Saying otherwise is simply and factually wrong.
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