Well said Peter

So Jon,

YOU are SUPPOSED to be a “Libertarian” ??

A “LIVE * LET LIVE” person yet you spend paragraoha & paragraphs & paragraphse BITCHING about how I communicate!

YOU SUCK AS A LIBERTARIAN!

So You do not like it the way I am, well “TOUGH!”

IT IS THE WAY I AM!

And AFTER you have served our country as long as I have (10 years) SAVED as many lives as I have, (More than ten lives) Given as much Blood as I have (37 pints & it would be a more only cancer stopped mw.) ridden in a possie, fought dangerous fires, help break up as many fights and you STOPPED as many CRIMES in progress as I have, (6) THEN I MIGHT consider you have the RIGHT to TELL ME NOW TO LIVE!

Until then you can kiss my old wrinked All American, Agnostic, Atheist, Activist Airborne ASS!

And do not bother answering as I am done with you and your fellow Programmed Religious Robots.

Hey Jon,
If I may, I’d like to throw in a couple thoughts on the faith and politics discussion here. Specifically, I’d like to respond to a couple of comments.
Mr. Davidson said, “As a moral and Christian man, I think that the government does have some responsibility in enforcing morality (thou shall not steal) in our society…and the Constitution Party reinforces that belief in a traditional Christian foundation for the country.” I have a response to both parts of this statement.
First it would generally be agreed by all men that the government has a responsibility for enforcing some kind of morality, but the libertarian way of thinking most clearly crystallizes that responsibility. That is, the moral code enforced by a government should be based upon a uniform political philosophy, independent of the moral requirements of any particular theology. The political philosophy of libertarianism is founded on the principles of liberty and self-ownership, which creates a duty to enforce some degree of empirical negative liberty (the absence of forcible interference). Essentially all uniform principles of morality agreed upon across major theologies—such as “thou shalt not steal”—can be derived from and upheld through the enforcement of the philosophy of liberty. Many call these enforceable principles “natural rights,” “absolute truths,” or “fundamental truths.” Whatever they are termed, these principles constitute a general political and philosophical morality that grants government a contract of enforcement, while allowing maximum latitude for the living of one’s moral code based on any individual or group theology. The governmental enforcement of the liberty philosophy does not preclude social or economic enforcement by particular groups of a stricter morality based on theology.
As to the second point on the Christian founding of the nation, I am a Christian man who would like to believe that this is true, but it is a statement to be examined more closely. While a majority of the founders may have identified themselves as Christians, there were quite a few that a Christian would not identify as such. A few of the founders were agnostic, several were Deists, including Jefferson, and quite a few were members of the Free-Mason tradition. While these are similar theologies and they are likely to agree on many important points, to say that they are the same is erroneous. This would be like saying that Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses are Christian. While some members of these similar sects may classify themselves as such, generally in an attempt to be more relate-able, they differ on foundational points of theology. These traditions have much in common and they harmonize well enough that an unschooled eye may be tempted to lump them all into the same class, but to do so would be an injustice to each theology. The advantage of the libertarian philosophy—which is largely derived from the principles of the founders, and certainly predicated upon their example—is that it promotes the harmony and basic ethics of all these traditions while preventing the state from becoming a purveyor of theology.
Now I would like to respond to Blacksand who wrote, ‘”Do not let your politics and your faith get too intertwined” And I agree with that. But I think Im going the other way with it. Youre thinking “Separation of church and state” and Im thinking “Don’t let politics get in the way of faith.”’ (sic).The last two statements in quotes are in fact one and the same. There is a strange, perhaps intentional, paradigm shift that has taken place over the last sixty years or so in the legal and public understanding of the principle of separation of church and state. The term was actually coined by Thomas Jefferson in a letter written in 1802. The original intent of the phrase, expressed in the letter and in the first Supreme Court case where it was quoted in 1878, was to indicate that the state should not interfere with the free expression of religious beliefs except in cases where such expression violated the natural rights of another. The letter actually reads, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” James Madison further expanded on the idea to explain that the separation was intended to allow religion to flourish which it may better do without promotion through legislation. Beginning in the late 1940s, the Supreme Court reversed its perspective on the phrase and through a series of opinions developed the contemporary public understanding of the phrase. It unfortunately has become a weapon for those who find a particular theology distasteful to try to suppress the voice of the offending theology by implying that any association of the expresser with the state implies promulgation on the part of the state. But this is a corruption of the phrase and the intention is in fact to prevent the interference of government or legislation with theology. I actually think that Thomas Paine put it best in his pamphlet that helped spark the American Revolution. In that eloquently written call to action, “Common Sense,” Paine wrote, “As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government, to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.”