Pax on both houses: Founding Fathers: Religion, Education And The Descent Into Oligarchy

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.” —Thomas Jefferson

"The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of the Church from the State.”
Founding Father James Madison, 1819, Writings, 8:432, quoted from Gene Garman, “Essays In Addition to America’s Real Religion”

“No one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”
George Washington

“The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
~1797 Treaty of Tripoli signed by Founding Father John Adams

“The legislature of the United States shall pass no law on the subject of religion.”
Founding Father Charles Pinckney, Constitutional Convention, 1787

When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.”
~Founding Father John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785

“No religious doctrine shall be established by law.”
Founding Father Elbridge Gerry, Annals of Congress 1:729-731

“Congress has no power to make any religious establishments.”
Founding Father Roger Sherman, Congress, August 19, 1789

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear.”
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

“I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.”
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799

“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 prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: in letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813

“State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the “wall of separation between church and state,” therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.”
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: in a speech to the Virginia Baptists, 1808

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814,

“Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity.”
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791

“I never liked the Hierarchy of the Church — an equality in the teacher of Religion, and a dependence on the people, are republican sentiments — but if the Clergy combine, they will have their influence on Government”
~Founding Father Rufus King, Rufus King: American Federalist, pp. 56-57

“And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
Founding Father James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822

“Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.”
Founding Father James Madison, letter, 1822

“Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by ecclesiastical bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.”
Founding Father James Madison; Monopolies, Perpetuities, Corporations, Ecclesiastical Endowments “

“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obligated to call for help of the civil power, it’s a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780

“In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind.”
Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1771)

“That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.”
Founding Father George Mason, Virginia Bill of Rights, 1776

“It is contrary to the principles of reason and justice that any should be compelled to contribute to the maintenance of a church with which their consciences will not permit them to join, and from which they can derive no benefit; for remedy whereof, and that equal liberty as well religious as civil, may be universally extended to all the good people of this commonwealth.”
Founding Father George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776

“A man of abilities and character, of any sect whatever, may be admitted to any office or public trust under the United States. I am a friend to a variety of sects, because they keep one another in order. How many different sects are we composed of throughout the United States? How many different sects will be in congress? We cannot enumerate the sects that may be in congress. And there are so many now in the United States that they will prevent the establishment of any one sect in prejudice to the rest, and will forever oppose all attempts to infringe religious liberty. If such an attempt be made, will not the alarm be sounded throughout America? If congress be as wicked as we are foretold they will, they would not run the risk of exciting the resentment of all, or most of the religious sects in America.”
Founding Father Edmund Randolph, address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 10, 1788

A general toleration of religion appears to me the best means of peopling our country… The free exercise of religion hath stocked the Northern part of the continent with inhabitants; and although Europe hath in great measure adopted a more moderate policy, yet the profession of Protestantism is extremely inconvenient in many places there. A Calvinist, a Lutheran, or Quaker, who hath felt these inconveniences in Europe, sails not to Virginia, where they are felt perhaps in a (greater degree).”
Patrick Henry, observing that immigrants flock to places where there is no established religion, Religious Tolerance, 1766

Knowledge and liberty are so prevalent in this country, that I do not believe that the United States would ever be disposed to establish one religious sect, and lay all others under legal disabilities. But as we know not what may take place hereafter, and any such test would be exceedingly injurious to the rights of free citizens, I cannot think it altogether superfluous to have added a clause, which secures us from the possibility of such oppression.”
Founding Father Oliver Wolcott, Connecticut Ratifying Convention, 9 January 1788

“Some very worthy persons, who have not had great advantages for information, have objected against that clause in the constitution which provides, that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. They have been afraid that this clause is unfavorable to religion. But my countrymen, the sole purpose and effect of it is to exclude persecution, and to secure to you the important right of religious liberty. We are almost the only people in the world, who have a full enjoyment of this important right of human nature. In our country every man has a right to worship God in that way which is most agreeable to his conscience. If he be a good and peaceable person he is liable to no penalties or incapacities on account of his religious sentiments; or in other words, he is not subject to persecution. But in other parts of the world, it has been, and still is, far different. Systems of religious error have been adopted, in times of ignorance. It has been the interest of tyrannical kings, popes, and prelates, to maintain these errors. When the clouds of ignorance began to vanish, and the people grew more enlightened, there was no other way to keep them in error, but to prohibit their altering their religious opinions by severe persecuting laws. In this way persecution became general throughout Europe.”
Founding Father Oliver Ellsworth, Philip B Kurland and Ralph Lerner (eds.), The Founder’s Constitution, University of Chicago Press, 1987, Vol. 4, p.

“God has appointed two kinds of government in the world, which are distinct in their nature, and ought never to be confounded together; one of which is called civil, the other ecclesiastical government.”
Founding Father Isaac Backus, An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, 1773

“The American states have gone far in assisting the progress of truth; but they have stopped short of perfection. They ought to have given every honest citizen an equal right to enjoy his religion and an equal title to all civil emoluments, without obliging him to tell his religion. Every interference of the civil power in regulating opinion, is an impious attempt to take the business of the Deity out of his own hands; and every preference given to any religious denomination, is so far slavery and bigotry.”
Founding Father Noah Webster, calling for no religious tests to serve in public office, Sketches of American Policy, 1785

These are hardly the words of men who allegedly believed that America should be a Christian nation governed by the Bible as conservatives constantly claim. On the contrary, the great majority of the Founders believed strongly in separation of church and state. So keep in mind that this country has survived for over two centuries under the principle of separation and it is only now when conservatives are attempting to destroy that very cornerstone that we find America becoming ever more divided and more politically charged than ever before. If this right-wing faction has their way, America as we know it will cease to exist and the freedoms we have enjoyed because of the Constitution will erode.

The Founding Fathers had a vision of this nation and trusted that the people would protect that vision and improve upon it. Now is not the time to fail them. Because the day the people fail, so does America.

“It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.”
Founding Father James Monroe, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817

“A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”
Benjamin Franklin

“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it, there should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.
Founding Father John Adams

“[T]he tax which will be paid for this purpose [education] is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson,

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, (A)nd if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson,
“If virtue & knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslav’d. This will be their great security.”
Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, February 12, 1779

Washington, in a letter on immigration, said broad-based ownership would insure “the happiness of the lowest class of people because of the equal distribution of property.”

Adams favored “preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue (by making) … the acquisition of land easy to every member of society.”

Jefferson wrote to Madison that “legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.”

Even Alexander Hamilton, favorite of the moneyed interests, argued that few people wanted to be wage laborers only, and he believed, like Henry Ford centuries later, that a strong middle class was needed to become energetic customers of businesses in the entire economy.

Washington gave tax incentives to New England cod fishers to rebuild their fleets after the Revolutionary War on the condition that the captains and the crew sign contracts ensuring broad-based profit sharing among all workers. He also favored grants of substantial land to veterans of the Revolutionary War to make them into self-sufficient property-owners. Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase to allow for more land ownership by citizens. The founders also sought to outlaw primogeniture, the practice whereby all property was inherited by the first-born son, the underpinning of feudal economies throughout Europe.

James Madison “the daring depravity of the times.The stock-jobbers will become the praetorian band of the government, at once its tools and its tyrants, bribed by its largesse, and overawing it by clamors and combinations. Substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty, leading to a real domination of the few under an apparent domination of the many.”

James Madison “History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”

We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition…
George Washington

Thomas Jefferson saw it coming: “Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.” Jefferson added, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance.”

Andrew Jackson 7th President warned “Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.”

Abraham Lincoln saw it coming: “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my Country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw it coming: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”

Thomas Jefferson also saw this: “It is a very dangerous doctrine to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions,” It is one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” The Supreme Court has recently enabled the Oligarchs via “Citizens United” and by encouraging more even Voter Suppression efforts.

John Adams The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

James Waterman Wise, an author, art dealer and lecturer who warned against Nazism before Hitler came to power.

“If fascism comes, it will not be identified with any “shirt” movement, nor with an “insignia,” but it will probably be “wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution.”

Rush Limbaugh.
“Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.”

Jerry Falwell.
“Good Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.”

Ronald Reagan.
“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles.”

Ronald Reagan.
“Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal.”

Mike Huckabee.
America has to import so many workers because “for the last 35 years we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce.”

John McCain.
“[Sarah Palin] knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America. . . . And, uh, she also happens to represent, be governor of a state that’s right next to Russia.”