Take me back to the 18th century

It's rather odd, I attended 12 years...12 years...of Catholic school, grades 1 through 12. During that time I learned American history and was taught that, for the most part, our founding fathers were Deists -- that "the Creator" was the equivalent of a watchmaker and the universe a fine timepiece.

The recent rise in claims that our nation was founded on "Christian" principles has, for that reasaon, repeatedly thrown me for a loop. Christ, I find myself thinking, not even the nuns were buying that back in the day.

The Nation's Brooke Allen provides a useful reminder of the true views of the men who wrote Common Sense, our Constitution, the Federalst Papers, and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

In 1797 our government concluded a "Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, or Barbary," now known simply as the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 of the treaty contains these words:

As the Government of the United States...is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musselmen--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

This document was endorsed by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and President John Adams. It was then sent to the Senate for ratification; the vote was unanimous. It is worth pointing out that although this was the 339th time a recorded vote had been required by the Senate, it was only the third unanimous vote in the Senate's history. There is no record of debate or dissent. The text of the treaty was printed in full in the Philadelphia Gazette and in two New York papers, but there were no screams of outrage, as one might expect today.

The Founding Fathers were not religious men, and they fought hard to erect, in Thomas Jefferson's words, "a wall of separation between church and state." John Adams opined that if they were not restrained by legal measures, Puritans--the fundamentalists of their day--would "whip and crop, and pillory and roast." The historical epoch had afforded these men ample opportunity to observe the corruption to which established priesthoods were liable, as well as "the impious presumption of legislators and rulers," as Jefferson wrote, "civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time."

So, although I love the 21st century, with its internets and flush toilets, the 18th century is looking better and better, a time when I could live in a nation founded and led by men who believed in Enlightenment priciples, rather than in the corrupt Christianity expoused by so much of our current political establishment.

It is important, as progressives, that we fight to take back our nation's heritage from the mouth breathers who would have us believe that the Puritans had taken control of the young nation's leadership, rather than the freethinking intellectuals who actually founded it.

We are the children of the revolution, not these swine and greed heads who "would "whip and crop, and pillory and roast."