From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Aug 11 09:18:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA13273 for chat-outgoing; Mon, 11 Aug 1997 09:18:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rocky.mt.sri.com (rocky.mt.sri.com [206.127.76.100]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA13265; Mon, 11 Aug 1997 09:18:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from nate@localhost) by rocky.mt.sri.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id KAA00620; Mon, 11 Aug 1997 10:18:29 -0600 (MDT) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 10:18:29 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <199708111618.KAA00620@rocky.mt.sri.com> From: Nate Williams MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: "Joel N. Weber II" Cc: jmb@freebsd.org, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FTC regulating use of registrations In-Reply-To: <199708110951.FAA12121@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu> References: <199708110951.FAA12121@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu> X-Mailer: VM 6.29 under 19.15 XEmacs Lucid Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Joel N. Weber II writes: > (The > Constitutional question of separation of church and state is pretty > much taken care of by giving the vouchers to the parents and not > directly to the schools, although some people still consider it > unconstitutional.) > > My understanding is that the Constiution doesn't actually demand > a seperation of church and state; it's just htat some liberals would > like you to believe that. The 'separatation of church and state' that is touted by some many folks is simply the fact that the 'state' can *NOT* show any favortism to any one 'church/religion'. It doesn't mean that the religion is inherently bad, or that any religious symbols must be barred, or that we should ignore the fact that for most people religion is an important part of their life. IMHO, ignoring and even being antagonistic to church/religion was not the original intention of the statement. The original founder's of this nation where here because of religious persecution. The religion they practiced was not the 'official' religion of the state, and so were driven out. Their religion was *very* important to them, but didn't want the same sort of events to occur in their new country. Unfortunately, the 'separation of church/state' has become more of an issue of 'not allowing anything religious', instead of what I believe to be the original intent of 'not encouraging a specific religion'. > Furthurmore, I think that the original arguement was that we wanted > to prevent the government from affecting the churches, not hte otherway > around. You hit the nail on the head. Nate