inkbluesky

From a book review at the L.A, Times, ‘Head and Heart: American Christianities,’ by Garry Wills

He points out that “[b]elievers in America as a Christian nation do not much like Jefferson the Deist. But they like his Declaration of Independence because of its reference to ‘the laws of nature and of nature’s God.’ Though this was not a legislative document, it is more useful to them than the supreme legislative document of the United States, the Constitution, which . . . does not mention God at all.”

Even in his own time, “Jefferson attracted lightning,” Wills writes. “That is why he is the person most talked about in the area of religious freedom. . . . Physically, Jefferson towered over the minute Madison by almost a foot. Symbolically, his stature is even greater. But this deflection of primary attention to Jefferson has given an advantage to those who oppose or minimize the separation of church and state, since Madison is the best defender of that constitutional innovation — more consistent than Jefferson, more radical and more influential. Jefferson revered the First Amendment. Madison wrote it.”

As president, Madison, like Jefferson, declined to proclaim days of prayer or fasting, was skeptical of military chaplaincies and even opposed allowing churches to incorporate themselves, reasoning that the grant of corporate status, with its protections and written bylaws, violated the separation principle.

In searching the net you’ll find quite a few made up quotes by Jefferson used by folks of a certain dogmatic persuasion to give more weight or historical authority to their arguments then is due.  When you’re arguments rely on dubious information you’ll get the usual cadre of people with a follower mentality, yet even then you’ll have built you’re movement as it were. on a rickety foundation. Rewriting history suggests a weakness to the dogmatist’s premise, a fear of the truth and a condescension for those that would follow them. Sometimes it has taken centuries, but the truth eventually catches up to these manipulators and their followers either end up bitter and in  denial or feel like they’ve been used.

say when 

“It sucks”, “They suck”, and “they’re evil” are all good adjectives as far as they go (which isn’t very far), but whatever happened to the clever retort, the imaginative insult -

I can’t listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.
- Woody Allen on Richard Wagner

The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”
- Bette Davis

Mr Eliot is at times an excellent poet and has arrived at the supreme Eminence among English critics largely through disguising himself as a corpse.
- Ezra Pound on T. S. Eliot