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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Donavan, I was teaching the Declaration of
Independence and Constitution before you were born. Also American
History. That doesn't mean I haven't changed my views over time, but
your version of these documents and events isn't going to do it.
There are some current and well researched biographies of Franklin, John
Adams, and Thomas Jefferson which you might appreciate. I'll be most happy
to loan you any you want to read.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Sue </FONT></DIV>
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style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=donovanjarnold2005@yahoo.com
href="mailto:donovanjarnold2005@yahoo.com">Donovan Arnold</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=suehovey@moscow.com
href="mailto:suehovey@moscow.com">Sue Hovey</A> ; <A
title=nickgier@adelphia.net
href="mailto:nickgier@adelphia.net">nickgier@adelphia.net</A> ; <A
title=godshatter@yahoo.com href="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com">Paul
Rumelhart</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, August 26, 2007 9:45
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vision2020] and speaking of
religion in public places</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Sue,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I invite you to read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety and
come to the conclusion that the Constitution and nation is not derived and
linked to God in its creation. And as I stated earlier, it is not possible for
someone to believe in God given unalienable rights if they don't believe in a
God. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I believe we studied a different version of US History. As I was taught,
the US was still at odds with Britain for many decades after the Revolutionary
War. The British attacked our ships, our ports, our land, took our men and
forced them into combat against their enemies. They even tried to kill several
of our Presidents and ransacked Washington DC and burned down the White
House.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I don't believe that the Constitution is the word of God, as you
mistakenly seem to present my view. But I believe the men that wrote it were
attempting to put his word in it. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Best,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Donovan<BR><BR><B><I>Sue Hovey <suehovey@moscow.com></I></B>
wrote:</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>While a great many people believe in the Bible
as the inerrant word of God, I have NEVER before met anyone
who believed the U.S. Constitution was somehow some sort of
later revelation. Certainly the Constitution promotes the
ideas of equality, unalienable rights, freedom of speech, freedom of
religion, freedom from an unfair trial far beyond any hint of those freedoms
that might be found in the Bible. That's probably because they
aren't found there. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Few women will tell you the Bible embraces
equality between male and female. The Constitution as a living
document may reach that point someday. The framers of the
Constitution blew it at the outset when they invited John Adams
and neglected to invite Abagail. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And those "fat, balding men" were often
found to be hiding from each other--Adams and Jefferson did a bit of that;
but not one of them was hiding
from British authorities--when they started writing the
Constitution the war was long since over and the United States of America
was an entity under its own rule. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have long believed, and I think this belief
is fairly common: separate the Constitution from Christianity, and you still
have a Constitution, capable of being upheld and believed in by any
citizen--Christian, agnostic, or athiest. Their religious ties may be
entirely separate from their belief in the legitimacy of the
Constitution. Neither does the Constitution depend for its legitimacy
on the idea it is tied to religious faith. </FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And Donovan's argument otherwise "is a
message of sound and fury signifying nothing."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Sue </FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=donovanjarnold2005@yahoo.com
href="mailto:donovanjarnold2005@yahoo.com">Donovan Arnold</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=nickgier@adelphia.net
href="mailto:nickgier@adelphia.net">nickgier@adelphia.net</A> ; <A
title=godshatter@yahoo.com href="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com">Paul
Rumelhart</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, August 26, 2007 12:53
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vision2020] and
speaking of religion in public places</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Nick Gier and his cronies just don't understand what Sali is saying.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The principles of our Constitution are etched from the rock of
Christianity. You cannot remove the rock without removing its
authority. The Constitution is meaningless if it doesn't have Christianity
as a bases of its authority, derived only because of Christianity.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Who says all men are equal? Who says you have unalienable rights? Who
says you have the right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom
from unfair trial?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Those rights are not granted to men by men, they are granted to men
by God, the Christian God. And that is what gives the US Constitution its
authority, its greatness, and truthfulness. Otherwise, the Constitution
was written, and the rights granted us within, are not real rights, or
moral principles of God's justice, but in fact, just something a bunch fat
balding rich guys wearing white wigs came up with on a hot sweaty day
in July at the turn of the 18th century hiding from the British
authorities. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I believe certain rights are given to us by God, and that many of
those rights are engraved into the Constitution. If you don't believe this
too, then the only thing giving the Constitution, and your rights are men,
men who decide arbitrarily what rights you have and don't have at any time
or place. It makes the Constitution a document that is enforceable only by
the threat of a gun and the will of the powerful men that yield it.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Best,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Donovan</DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR><B><I>nickgier@adelphia.net</I></B> wrote:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">Good
Morning Visionaries:<BR><BR>Bill Sali just doesn't learn. He doesn't
care about accuracy, because he's still spouting the nonsense about
abortion and breast cancer.<BR><BR>Here is my response to Sali's rant in
the Lewiston paper this morning. I'll post it on his DC website and mark
once again "please answer," but I don't expect one because he has yet to
answer a previous one about Muslim democracies.<BR><BR>I would like to
join Sean in denouncing the quotation from Washington as false and
referring readers to my published essay "Religious Liberalism and the
Founding Fathers" at
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/<BR>foundfathers.htm.<BR><BR>I would also
like for Sali to explain to us how basic Christian principles differ in
any substantial way from Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu principles.
He should be warned that pronouncements from the extremists of these
faiths will be not be recognized by their coreligionists.<BR><BR>When
John Adams spoke of the principles of Christianity, he, just as did many
of his contemporaries, meant basic moral principles. In a letter to
Jefferson in 1813, he states: "Yet I believe all the honest men among
you are Christians, in my sense of the word." Both he and Jefferson
rejected religious conservatives such as Sali and denied the Trinity and
the deity of Christ.<BR><BR>Sali is also doing a selective reading of
Ben Franklin. He also rejected the deity of Christ and the Trinity and
stopped going to church because of Sali-type preachers. <BR><BR>In
debates about the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, Franklin objected
to the specific biblical references in the following statement: office
holders were required to "acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament to be given by divine inspiration." Franklin failed to
convince delegates that this would exclude Jews and Muslims.
<BR><BR>Please read my essay "Tolerance for Islam in the Early American
Republic" at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/<BR>AmericaIslam.htm for some
striking proclamations about the acceptance of Muslims in America, even
as the Muslim Barbary pirates=terrorists were capturing our
citizens.<BR><BR>These early Americans would be shocked at Sali's
ignorance and intolerance.<BR><BR>Nick
Gier<BR><BR>=======================================================<BR>List
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communities of the Palouse since 1994. <BR>http://www.fsr.net
<BR>mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com<BR>=======================================================<BR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>
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