"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..."
Our Founding Fathers and many of our most famous historical figures firmly believed that our rights could not be preserved if the general population did not believe that they were the gift of the Divine Creator...and that the principles of democracy itself were drawn from the Bible.
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion...Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
John Adams
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness...The mere politician...ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert?...And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds...reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail, in exclusion of religious principle."
George Washington
"Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country."
Alexis De Tocqueville
"No free government now exists in the world unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country...Its foundations are broad and strong, and deep...It is the purest system of morality, the firmest auxiliary, and only stable support of all human laws."
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania; Updegraph v. the Commonwealth, 1824
"The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country."
Calvin Coolidge
Can democracy endure if individual rights are no longer perceived to have a sacred origin? If they are not to be held sacrosanct, can the populous resist the temptation to rewrite them to suit an unbridled and capricious attitude toward morality?
Regards, Shuckins/Leggern
