As President, Jefferson sucessfully fought to obtain federal funds to send clergy into the wilderness to preach to indians as well. (Where is that in Art. 1, Sec. 8?)

I have seen many of the so called anti-Chrisitian comments assocaited with Jefferson. In general, they are taken WAY out of context. Jefferson was not a Calvinist and did have some not so nice things to say about Calvinism. This is what is misunderstood and leads to the false charge of dieism.

Yes they are. The anarchists and “radicals” are all pro-choice and open borders. Its mostly the Reformers who are pro-life and non-open-borders.

Neither of which are pure libertarian views.

I’ll echo you. I have disdain for at least 4 of the CP’s planks. But I support Chuck Baldwin.

O.W.

And neither will making over-generalizations about a diverse group of people, and ignoring or minimizing examples to the contrary.

I don’t dispute that a good number, very possibly a majority, of the Founding Fathers were fairly religious Christians. That doesn’t change the fact that several key founders (the pen of the Revolution, Father of the Declaration of Independence, Father of the Constitution to name a few) were not. And also, the fact that a “vast majority of Founders were orthodox (small o) Christians” does not support your assumption that they therefore opposed secular government and held your world view (as Christians are not a monolithic group).

I heart Paine. Henry too.

I am not on of them. Clearly, there was much liberal rhetoric. But the liberal rhetoric was not matched by the facts on the ground. This is especially true of the aristocratic and agrarian South. My beef with liberalism is not the political ideas such as separation of powers, etc. Much of that I agree with. The problem with liberalism is that it renders a traditional society completely unable to defend and preserve itself. All tradition, custom, religion etc. must be sacrificed on the altar of abstract philosophical principles. So the issue is not the relationship of church to state per se. The issue is the importance of and actual belief in Christianity. It is very hard for me to view devout Christians such as Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry as primarily liberals. They were supporters of the very thing many liberals most wanted done away with.

BTW, Adam Smith was a skeptic but he kept it pretty toned down as you had to back then. His Theory of Moral Sentiments is a perfect example of an Enlightenment attempt to find universal moral truths without overtly resorting to God.

-Larry Breazeale, Msgt. (ret.) USAF
National Veterans Coalition,
Constitution party…www.nvets.org

I think you are giving “hostility to religion” far too great of an emphasis in classical liberalism. Who could be more classically liberal than Adam Smith? But I’m not aware of any such anti-religion hostility on his part. While a “liberal” attitude towards religion, ranging from anti-dogmatism to outright hostility, may be “classically liberal,” it is not the end-all, be-all, and not nearly as important as hostility to the monarchy, free trade, etc. In fact, you have to cut the anti-religion people some slack here, Red. For in an era of church-state cohesion, one could not easily be anti-state without also being anti-church. These anti-church folks are not the same type of person as the rabid atheists (who make me ashamed to be an unbeliever) that populate TPW and sully every CP thread.

That all not withstanding, your comments were interesting and provided some evidence for your point. But I can’t help but think you’re doing exactly what I said from the onset—presenting the facts in a manner that suits your conclusion, rather than starting out objectively. Sure, you can make an argument that Jefferson was not a classical liberal, but a sensible jury would find him guilty of that charge every single time.

May 13th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Chuck could probably do a good job getting a good part of the Ron Paul voters and even the Mike Huckabee social conservatives to join his bandwagon. There are also a lot of other disenfranchised conservatives out there he would attract as well. He needs to get things up and running though. His website baldwin2008.com should be up and running by now with his issues and viewpoints posted so I can lead people there. But this not so…. This guy is nothing but good for keeping the Ron Paul Revolution/ movement alive into November….”

I don’t know who said this, but it was not me.