"Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute of Religious Freedom, 1779. "Believing 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 to Danbury Baptists, 1802.
I love Jefferson, I dare you to find another man in history that is quoted by opposing views with such frequency. The left and the right , the religious and the not, all quote the man. Oh, BTW, you do know that he was a Deist right. He believed in one God and the moral teachings of Jesus. But as the writer of Virginia’s religious freedom act, he also believed (as I do) that the state has no right to restrain one’s liberty by forcing a religious belief upon them.
That's what I like about the guy. Although he was religious, he was wise enough to know that religion has no place in government.
Jefferson was indeed a wise, I’m afraid men like him don’t exist in government anymore. It seems all the politicians now vote in their best interest and not what is best for the country.
He was wise enough to know that government has no place in religion. He attended church services in the Capitol Building to demonstrate to the Baptists that he supported religious freedom and opposed the Anglican official state religion of Virginia. He is oft quoted because he put so much in writing and excelled at it. He was a poor speaker and preferred to communicate his positions in writing. He played to his strengths and it served him well.
Here is one that he wrote that liberals like yourself choose not to understand but is one that means the most: No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
Obama- the anti Jefferson. Wealth redistribution was un- American in jeffersons eyes and the quote above says it best.
Did you even read the Jefferson quote I provided? He was speaking specifically aginst taxing one person to give it to another. That's not what America was founded for and not what made us great. It was that exact taxation and wealth confiscation by the government that this country was founded to fight. What right do you or any government have to take a mans money and give it to who you see fit to have it.
