"The delusion on the clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists.

The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they believe that any portion of power confided to me (being elected President), will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: For I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

-Thomas Jefferson

Merry Christmas from a secular progressive. Let freedom ring.

Merry Christmas to you all!  

And I will especially be praying tonight to the baby Jesus for you pagans (read:  liberals, secular progressives, whatever name you're currently hiding behind), that you may some day soon see His light, renounce Satan and Obama, and jump on board the Sarah in '12 bandwagon!

God Bless, and Merry Christmas everyone!

PT

charlie445, there will be a special place for you in my prayers.

God Bless and Merry Christmas,

PT

From the first inaugural address:

"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities."

Let me summarize. The five points needed for good government:

1) Benign religions of various forms that inculcate honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude and the love of man while acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence (God) that delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter. (NOT Secular in personal beliefs; only in the construction of government.)
2) Wisdom and frugality
3) Restrain men from injuring one another.
4) Leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement (NOT Progressive)
5) Shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned (Not Progressive)

Merry Christmas just the same.

It must be nice to be able to read what ever you like into the religious text that supossedly guides your life.

God meant this part, but he was only kidding about this part. lmao

If religious people didn't insist on causing wars that kill millions, and passing ridiculous laws that force all of us to cede to their moral standards under penalty of law, whether or not we agree with those standards. If not for those, and several hundred more reasons I can think of, religious people would be great to have around as a constant source of amusement.

Merry fucking Christmas. rofl

....if your god endorces illegal fornicating.

eom

and I have many philosophies, "live for the day" "Do no harm", but nowhere does it include an invisible man that is supposed to be all knowing, but that I only accept the parts of his teachings that I find oonvenient.

You religious pukes are so pathetic, you are only fooling yourselfs. The air of your hypocrisy is so thick, you reek of it.

You just keep telling yourself whatever it takes to live with yourself, and I'll go about enjoying life without any guilt, for I do harm to no one, least of all some fictional character dreamed up by people who thought the earth was flat.

"enlightened by a benign religion"

As in the wish for a benign forms of religion. As in Deism. As in the "rational Christian".  

Not so Progressive?

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." - Thomas Jefferson

"Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual." -Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison, 1784.

"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the
higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." --Thomas Jefferson talking about progressive taxation to James Madison, 1785.

"The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied... Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings." -Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.

"That liberty which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio Gates (1798)

"In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar." - Thomas Jefferson, Answers to de Meusnier Questions, 1786.

Not so secular?

"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." - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82

"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward 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." - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82

"I know it will give great offense to the clergy, but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them. - Thomas Jefferson, to Levi Lincoln, 1802.

"Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle." - Thomas Jefferson, to Richard Rush, 1813

"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." - Thomas Jefferson, to Jeremiah Moor, 1800

"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 civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. - Thomas Jefferson, to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." - Thomas Jefferson, to Horatio G Spafford, March 17, 1814

"He made woman from our rib"

If your Space Daddy made the women folk with one of our ribs, then why aren't we missing a rib? Wouldn't women look rather, ahem, rib-like?

Okay, it's metaphor. Fine. But I've noticed something. We seem to have two chromosomes for sex.

Women are XX. Men are XY.

If men share one sex chromosome with women, and women do not share the Y chromosome, then logically...men came from women.

...opps

-- Modified on 12/26/2010 5:44:40 PM

You confuse progressive taxation with Progressivism. Your last two progressive quotes are non sequitur. Liberty and equal protection are almost antithetical to Progressivism. Jefferson was NOT a Progressive. If you want to view the ultimate Progressive, look to Woodrow Wilson.

You have some good examples of Jefferson’s desire for benign religion. His pointing out religious extremism and abuse does not give rise to a single clue that he was personally Secular. Indeed, he desired a good mix of religious people to best form a government capable of meeting his stated requirements.

you just need to make shit up, or believe the shit that other people just made up 1500 years before they even figured out the world was round. lmao

But progressive taxation is a major tenet of progressivism, is it not?

"Liberty and equal protection are almost antithetical to Progressivism. Jefferson was NOT a Progressive. If you want to view the ultimate Progressive, look to Woodrow Wilson."

I don't buy the definition of Progressivism that's been sold to the public by Glenn Beck. You shouldn't either. The root word of Progressivism is progress.

"His pointing out religious extremism and abuse does not give rise to a single clue that he was personally Secular."

Perhaps you ought to define your terms. If you mean "secular" as something where religion is barred entirely from a society, then we're in agreement. If you mean the real definition of secular, as in this instance, the state saying out of the affairs of religion, then you're wrong.

Whether you're wondering if Jefferson himself was a Christian, then don't worry about it. He was a Deist.  

The only goal here was to disallow you from redefining Jefferson. No matter how many quotes you come up with, TJ was a small government guy. He was for personal liberty and personal responsibility. Maybe you were thinking of Hamilton. You can have AH if you wish but TJ was no Progressive; not by any reasonable person’s standards. You’d rather argue against Glenn Beck without even stating Beck’s position than try to defend your original position.

The goal is not to argue with you because like with most Progressives it is an impossible task since you bring your own free floating definitions to each round; just like you rely solely on your own definitions of "progress". We probably can agree though that any acceptable progress in your camp almost most certainly originates with government.

..."I don't have to define my terms, because you just make up your own terms". Well, I'm more than happy to define my own terms.

But before I do I'd like you to take special note of certain frames you used in your response:

You used the terms: "small government guy", "personal liberty", and "personal responsibility".

All lofty things if defined by their real meanings. Of course, you're applying those terms to say that Jefferson was a modern day conservative, which is utter nonsense.

No matter how you'd like to frame Jefferson, all without any supporting evidence, his own quotes demonstrate that he was in favor of progressive taxation, justice being equally applied, and that church and state should remain separate, all ideas which are at odds with the modern Republican Party.

I would say that "progress" means the bettering of the lives (the living standards) of the most possible people, while maintaining the maximum number of liberties. And I'm not of the opinion that this is likely possible with government.

This video just cracks me up everytime I see it.

I did give supporting evidence, his first inaugural address in my first post. I also addressed your evidentiary Jefferson quotes. I do not think it is appropriate to redefine common and respected terms just to fit my point of view.

Of course Jefferson was not the equivalent of a modern day conservative and I never said so but he definitely was not a Progressive. I also said NOTHING of modern day Republicans. This is a good example of your tactics of attempting to redefine the debate. As previously stated, my only goal was to stop you from labeling Thomas Jefferson a Progressive.

I would normally say I am pleased to see you claim your brand of Progressive goals would not succeed through government action and would also not unduly limit personal liberties, but of course no one believes you.

I thought about bringing up one of the biggest Progressives ever, Woodrow Wilson, and his fondness for eugenics to "better the lives of the most people" but you beat me to it in your new thread.