A conservative values his heritage. For a conservative in the Western world, liberalism forms a part of that heritage. It does not constitute the whole of it.
The Founding Fathers were, on the whole, conservatives. The War of Independence was a conservative revolt against the usurpation of long-standing English liberties: habeas corpus, the presumption of innocence, the right to keep and bear arms, and many others. It was not a revolution of Enlightenment rationalism led by Deists, agnostics and atheists, as the current public-school mythology teaches.
If you want that kind of revolution, you need fast-forward a few years to 1789 and see what the French did. So much for the triumph of reason.
I close with the following quote from John Jay (1745-1829), one of the three authors of the Federalist Papers, a key member of the Constitutional Convention and this nation's first Chief Justice (1789-1794):
Providence has given our people the choice of their rulers: and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, in our Christian nation for our people to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.
John Jay was one of the few fundamentalists, and I find it extraordinarily convenient that you would of course go to him first...
Your understanding of what is taught is wrong. The public school, for which I am a product, does not teach anything in history but consensus history. The beliefs of the Presidents, varying greatly, was relatively negligible to the fact that they were in open rebellion to an what they deemed an oppressive rule.
Nothing, nothing about the founding fathers was "conservative" and I do believe that you win the new award for most ignorant statement on this thread, previously held by TexasChristian.
The founding fathers were RADICAL. Liberal, SECULAR, progressives. To argue this point is to ignore what they were fighting.
Spend some time reading legitimate history on the subject.... and enjoy the plethora of quotes I can add to this fire.
Thomas Jefferson:
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."
- to Baron von Humboldt, 1813
"Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself."
-in his private journal, Feb. 1800
"The priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, are as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore."
- to Story, Aug. 4, 1820
"Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a common censor over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
"Notes on Virginia"
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
"No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever."
-Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the Common Law."
-letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, 1814
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
-letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT
John Adams:
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved-- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
-letter to Thomas Jefferson
"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole cartloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity."
"The question before the human race is, whether the God of Nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
"God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world."
(That appears relatively damning)
". . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."
"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."
Thomas Paine:
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind."
"What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith."
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion."
James Madison:
"It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others."
James Madison, "James Madison on Religious Liberty",
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
- "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
-letter to Wm. Bradford, April 1, 1774
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
-1803 letter objecting use of gov. land for churches
George Washington:
.
"Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society."
- letter to Edward Newenham, 1792
The father of this country was very private about his beliefs, but it is widely considered that he was a Deist like his colleagues. He was a Freemason.
Historian Barry Schwartz writes: "George Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and superficial because he was not himself a Christian... He repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he waited for her outside the sanctuary... Even on his deathbed, Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed no wish to be attended by His representative." [New York Press, 1987, pp. 174-175]
Paul F. Boller states in is anthology on Washington: "There is no mention of Jesus Christ anywhere in his extensive correspondence." [Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 14-15]
Benjamin Franklin:
"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did."
- letter to his father, 1738
". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."
"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England."
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
-in Poor Richard's Almanac
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
"In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the lack of it."
"It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers" (Priestley's Autobiography)
Had Enough? I have more. Please, all I ever ask of you Theocrats is that you pick up a book.
