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I know most people won't believe this because they are convinced Obama was a Muslim with terrorist ties out to destroy America, but he swore on the Bible both times. Never the Koran.
I question why we need to swear an oath on a book anyways. Why not have the person swear an oath on the state constitution, city flag, state flag, US constitution, or US flag?
And yet, the point still stands. People at the time fully understood that the First protects religions other than Christianity, whether any actual voters were Hindu/Muslim or not. (We know that the First intended to protect Deists, who are not defined as Christian, and Jews.)
I never denied that was the philosophy behind freedom of religion but not the intended practicality. The philosophy is not really what this is about. It was never intended or under the context to apply to masses of foreigners bringing the foreign religion and participating as citizens and government officials.
Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence") is a fallacy in informal logic . It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.
I never denied that was the philosophy behind freedom of religion but not the intended practicality. The philosophy is not really what this is about. It was never intended or under the context to apply to masses of foreigners bringing the foreign religion and participating as citizens and government officials.
Freedom of and fromreligion was intended primarily to protect Christians, the people who formed the nation, from sectarian state edicts against their doctrine - that being the reason the Pilgrims left England in the first place. It also provided a guarantee against theocracy in general...which would amount to or could lead to the same outcome.
It wasn't ever intended to produce some kind of pluralistic society.
The comments made contemporaneously just showed that it was understood that it WOULD, not that it was ever considered to be likely. Nor desirable, which clearly it was not, given the experiences America had already had with the always-intolerant islam.
Clearly a huge miscalculation made back then. Among other oversights that plague us now.
We all have preferences. I would prefer that no person in the world feel the need to flee his/her native country. But a legal immigrant has every right to run for office. Regardless of religion. And voters have the right to elect that person. Regardless of religion.
I'm not saying they don't just don't claim that was the original intent of the 1st amendment or that it requires it. It did/does not intend or require immigration of muslims and for they to be naturalized, vote and be electable to office.
You're telling me your opinion. Which is not supported by facts. I'm providing you with facts. And you are ignoring the facts.
Why would this be cited in the article I linked to?
Officials in Massachusetts were equally insistent that their influential Constitution of 1780 afforded "the most ample liberty of conscience … to Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians," a point that Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons resoundingly affirmed in 1810.
The true spirit of our Founding Fathers, children of the Enlightenment, bold and free original thinkers!
The Enlightenment was a product of and for Anglos and the people and culture they most knew and understood, and was even exclusionary of other known groups at the time. It remains to be seen if the philosophies are universally applicable to all others if they have their druthers. Plenty of signs so far say it is probably not.
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