Democracy is never in greater danger, than when self-appointed spokespersons for a deity decide to re-regulate religious dogma, to suit their own selfish designs and turn religious freedom into religious tyranny. This is the imminent danger with which deceitful minions of religious despotism now threaten the United States, under the guise of securing religious freedom via an entrenched uniformity.
The outright untruths of a Catholic cabal, in league with their Mormon Republican Presidential nominee, fly in the face of historic warnings against church/state collusion, by the most outspoken of our nation’s deist founders. Typical was this pronouncement by Thomas Jefferson: “Millions of innocent men, women and children,” he wrote, “since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.” Obviously a majority of our founders agreed sufficiently, to enact a strong Constitutional requirement for church/state separation, as an early order of business.
In the face of the present coercive campaign, what our nation desperately needs, now, are truly good Samaritans at every community and government level, to help us recapture the true spirit of religious freedom, each involved in his or her own belief, yet pursued and practiced tolerantly, together. The honestly sincere Samaritan helps his or her neighbor, in spite of differing beliefs and pursuits.
This is the spirit we desperately need to recapture, if this fragile yet miraculous experiment in ‘E PLURIBUS UNUM’ is to survive and thrive, beyond its present stalemated status.
The question is...: Can we?
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