Foreign aid

Recently the Supreme Court considered once again whether the Ten Commandments should be publicly displayed in government buildings. And once again Christians have been harping about how America is a Christian nation, and was founded on Christian principles.

Sure, our country was in a sense founded by fundamentalist Christians, but I never understood why anyone would want to glorify a bunch of repressed, murderous thugs. By the time the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written, the Enlightenment had taken hold and the Founding Fathers realized the problems involved with running a country on religious law. If you compare the rough drafts and the final versions of our founding documents, you'll see that prohibitions of state establishment of religion were generalized, and in some cases religious allusions were completely excised. Make no mistake about it, the Founding Fathers were clearly trying to base the country on principles other than Christian ones. Below are some examples of their efforts:

"We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable..."

Original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, June 1776

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

"The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed."

Amendment I, Rough draft of the Bill of Rights by James Madison, June 8, 1789

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

Amendment I, Constitution of the United States, September 25, 1789

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion..."

Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, ratified by the United States in 1797