Thomas Jefferson

Americans United for the Separation of Church is sounding the alarm on the Republican "faith based" initiatives. This initiative completely violates the Constitution, particularly since to date ONLY Christian organizations have been given money.

There is no ambiguity in the line our Founding Fathers drew separating Church and State. Our Founding Fathers were very outspoken in their ideas. For example, Ben Franklin very specifically gave his opinion of government funding of religious institutions:

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."

— -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780, quoted from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 93.

So what would Ben Franklin say to our tax money going to Congressional earmarks for: (info from an Americans United letter)

Jefferson is my favorite Founding Father. Primarily because he was much more radical than contemporary historian and political pundits like to paint him. He represents everything American. He was simultaneously amongst the biggest successes and the biggest failures of his time. He had extremely high ideals which he often could never live up to.

My recent home in Forest, Virginia was next to the historical Poplar Forest "retirement" home of Thomas Jefferson. I was in training to be a docent there before being required to move to Atlanta, GA and was given copies of a collection of unpublished letters pertaining to the house that kick started a personal study of all things Jeffersonian. The result was a fascination for the man and learning more about our Founding Fathers.

I can truly say that I don't admire him as much as fascinated by him because he was too much of an idealist for the practical engineering personality I have. But he strove for the best even when his failings were the worst examples of human behavior. For example he wrote in The Declaration of Independence "All Men are Created Equal" yet he always owned slaves.

Even George Washington, whom was much more of a conservative, eventually freed his slaves (upon his wife Martha's death). Jefferson always was in too much debt to afford such luxury of testament of belief. He was forced to sell some of his slaves to offset his debt load, dying with outstanding bills of $100,000 (serious money in 1826) that forced his immediate heirs to liquidate his estate. This from the man who wrote "Never spend your money before you have earned it."