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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Krowbar who wrote (26622)	12/7/1998 9:13:00 AM
From: HighTech	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

George Washington: "It is impossible to govern rightly without God and the Bible." John Quincy Adams: Acknowledged from the beginning Americans, "Connected in one indissoluble band the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity." James Madison, father of the US Constitution: "We have staked the whole future of the American Civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future...upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." Samuel Adams, revolutionary organizer: "The right of freedom being a gift of God almighty, ...the rights of the colonists as Christians...may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the Great Law Giver...which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament." (The Rights of Colonists, 1772.) Daniel Webster, statesman: "Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light and labored by its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions - civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely, in the full conviction that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity." (December 22, 1820 at Plymouth, Mass., in celebration of the Pilgrim landing at Plymouth Rock) "Separation of Church and state was not a reaction against religion, but a reaction against the state; and it was not introduced by skeptics, but by Protestants largely for religious reasons. ...it hardly can be said that the separation of Church and state was a victory for secular ideas over religious intolerance, because it was clearly a victory for the Bible over human authority. ...The bishops, formerly responsible to the Roman authority, often served as an effective check on royal power. Now they were little more than a political arm of the state, used to stamp out religious dissent, which was seen as a threat to social order." (Benjamin Hart, historian) HiTech

To: Krowbar who wrote (26622)	12/7/1998 11:39:00 AM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 108807

I realize this all came about in the course of an argument centered on religion. But the point I'm trying to make is that we (or 99% of us) educated citizens think of the "self-evident truth" business as bland statement of social convention. Y'know, "too obvious to require mention". But I think the exact opposite was true. Polite people of the time accepted as "self-evident" that the right of governance was handed down by Divine right across the generations. A fossil I guess of the symbiosis between political and religious Rome. Further "self-evident" back then was that if the people got rowdy, the Gov't had every right to set things straight with, uhm, extreme prejudice. The Declaration contained the truly shocking idea that the citizens had the right to get together and tell the standing Gov't to git outta town!!! Now here is where I am gonna add my own jaundiced, black-helicopter opinion. The only vestiges we have of our ultimate right to revolution are 1) free elections, which provide the "pro forma" gloss of changing government (while we are left to powerlessly admit that the Gov't is much more permanent and entrenched than its two outgrowth Parties). The point X made - Jefferson opining that every so often the USA would have to really clean house - is no longer an option. 2) The right to keep and bear firearms (modern English: own and carry) as the token of our ultimate right to give remiss governors the bum's rush. THIS is what the 2nd amendment is about - not some watered-down recruitment aid for the National Guard or something. I just wonder which "self evident truths" of oour day will be mainstreamed 100 years from now.