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[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Fri, Feb 06, 2004 at 11:27:14AM -0500, Shea Tisdale wrote:
> Just some questions and thoughts on this.  Your statement seems awfully
> broad.  Is it equally appalling to you that the country was founded under
> the Christian belief that all men are created equal with Creator endowed
> rights?  

Um, that's not a Christian belief. That's Deist, if anything (the belief
in a Creator) and the idea of human equality is certainly not unique to
Christianity (Islam actually comes closer to this democratic equality than
Christianity, and the various Eastern religions, Buddhism, Taoism, etc. do
an even better job of it). And let's not forget that the same document
that proudly proclaimed the eqaulity of all men spoke nothing of women,
defined the natives as "merciless Savages", and the followup defined slaves
and natives as having the value of two-fifths of a person. Granted, that
was a convenient arrangement directed specifically at determining the
population for election of representatives, but still. 

Sorry, it just irks me when people ignore that this country was founded
by a group of highly educated men who, for the most part, were either
Deist, atheist, or otherwise rightly considered religion a scourge and
men's willingness to do battle over it a sad reflection of the ignorance
of the common. Read some Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson sometime.

And that's true regardless of how many times you read that nonsense that
Ashcroft spouts about how the Founders "had no King but Jesus". Bleah.
Wishful thinking is lovely, but let's not confuse it with the facts.

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