29th
What was that, Glenn?
“And you know, our founders, if you read their speeches and their documents and their letters to each other, when they founded our country, they all said it would happen if the people turned to God.
“So let’s take them as people who knew what they were talking about. What do you say we give the whole ‘let’s turn back to God’ thing a try and see what happens?” - Glenn Beck
Really? How about the real letters:
“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.”
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823 [via]
And
“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814 [via]
I agree very much with this post but I want to introduce another angle: Should the founding fathers be treated like gospel? (No pun intended.) I can very much accept that we can still go back to writings from the 18th century and derive wisdom from them but shouldn’t we continually try to improve? Thomas Jefferson, non-christian deist and smart guy that he was, had slaves. Shouldn’t we stop for a moment and wonder whether we should be holding such a guy unquestionably up as a model?
But then, if Glenn Beck is really into the Bible he know it’s okay to have slaves as long as they’re not of your own people.
