Frank Reid wrote:
To respectfully disagree with you, there is no
separation of church and state in the constitution. That
was a creation of the supreme court in the 19 century.
Thomas Jefferson did make a remark about it in one of
his writing. The constitution bars the establishment
of a state religion. The supreme court even has a
copy of the ten commandments on the front of its
building.

The separation of church and state is founded in Constitutional law
and based, in part, on the first ammendment "Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof." So this goes much further than the "establisment
of a state religion."
And oh, by the way, look to the Flushing Remonstrance against Peter
Stuyvesant in 1657 (had to look it up, been a long time) as probably
the first call for separation of church and state in the colonies.
By the way, Jefferson made more than "a remark" about it. In 1779,
Jefferson wrote and instantiated into Virginia law (it became law in
1786) the "Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom" which says, in
part, "that our civil rights have no dependence 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; that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that
religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of
worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and
conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not
withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the
bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his
powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or
propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a
dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his
opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments
of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that
it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for
its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and
will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient
antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless
by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument
and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely
to contradict them."
Frank Reid


Hi Frank,

I love Thomas Jefferson. Thank you for sharing.

What two of us did as vets was to defend the freedom
"of" religion, not freedom "from" religion. It is
a good thing that people bring their morality to government
and not check it at the door. That this irritates
others at times is unfortunate. No one is every going to
get elected on the platform for establishing
parts of their religion on every one else.

Would you not want to have your candidate
thumb through the ten commandments and
say, this one, not this one, not this one,
I like my mistress too much, this one,...?

It would give you a real good indication of how
he would react to situations and how he would
govern.

Just out of curiosity, do you follow the
reasoning of some that Thomas Jefferson's
words should be completely discounted because
he owned slaves?

-T