What Would Jefferson Do?
| Ten Commandments Backed by Bush Administration in Court Fight
Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration, saying that religion ``has played a defining role'' in the nation's history, urged the U.S. Supreme Court to permit Ten Commandments displays in courthouses. The Justice Department today filed a brief supporting two Kentucky counties accused of violating the constitutional ban on government establishment of religion by posting framed copies of the Ten Commandments. ``Official acknowledgement and recognition of the Ten Commandments' influence on American legal history comport with the Establishment Clause,'' the administration argued in a brief filed with the court in Washington. |
Remind me again... where is that part of our legal history where we had laws about having "no other gods," coveting a "neighbor's ass," or making a "graven image"? I must not be real good with my history cause I don't remember that part.
And what I do remember, well... I guess it just must be wrong! That part where Madison explained what he meant when he wrote the Establishment Clause? Guess that didn't happen.
And Jefferson explaining what it meant? That must not have happened either, I suppose.
| Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802 |
this must be something I made up too...
| Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814 |
and while we're at it, this too...
| And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823 |
Man... Do I have a creative imagination, or what?
Silly me. All these years I thought Madison and Jefferson had something to do with the separation of church and state! Turns out it was really Moses who wrote it.
Damn. Learn something new every day!
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