Palin and Jefferson.

There's a sort of strange revisionist history that suggests that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, when in reality it was founded as a secular government with a separation between church and state. My guess is she simply accepts the alternative history, the one that gets voted down 9-3 by the Texas School Board.

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the montebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus." - Thomas Jefferson

I love the word montebanks.

Irony: Jefferson Nickel / In God We Trust

Has anybody noticed that Jefferson (the origin of separation of church and state) is kindof frowning facing the "In God We Trust"? I think it's odd. A US president on a government coin next to a religious motto. Apparently putting "United States of America" on one side of the coin and "In God We Trust" on the other side qualifies as separation of church and state these days.

Quote: Thomas Jefferson

“This, too, is but a branch of our moral duties, which are generally divided into duties to God and duties to man. If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to-wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D’Alembert, D’Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.” — Thomas Jefferson letter to Thomas Law Poplar Forest, June 13, 1814.

A good point to be sure.