1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Being in love.
2. What is your greatest fear?
Dying (not death, because by then I'll be dead).
3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Jealousy.
4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Dishonesty or abuse.
5. Which living person do you most admire?
Daniel Dennett
6. What is your greatest extravagance?
I don't think I really have any great extravagance. Maybe my computer?
7. What is your current state of mind?
Relaxed and thoughtful.
8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Altruism and faith.
9. On what occasion do you lie?
Rarely, but if my lie can save a lot of grief, by avoiding an unnecessary confrontation about something stupid, I might.
10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
My gut.
11. Which living person do you most despise?
Hmm, so hard to choose: Kent Hovind, Kenn Hamm (all those creationist dumbfucks), and televangelists. And Rasch187.
12. What is the quality you most like in a man?
Honesty, humor, friendship, intellect.
13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Awesome beewbage. Heh. Nah, humor, honesty, straight-forwardness, intellect, friendship.. I look for the same qualities in both guys and girls, to be honest.
14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
"Fantastic", "super", "In a minute"
15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
For now, music.
16. When and where were you happiest?
I don't know. Maybe when I was in Ireland in 2002 and was entangled with a girl from my high school, or one summer in 2003 I think, where we were a bunch of people in a summer house where I played guitar and we all sang and stuff. I liked that.
17. Which talent would you most like to have?
Better song-writing skills.
18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Physically, I'd trim up. (Already on it)
More cosmically, I'd like to be able to have a better overview of a situation during, instead of after it happens.
19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My education, my music skills and the website I ran in 2004-2007, which I was very prolific on. (www.edb-tidende.dk it's dead in the water now though)
20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
I would come back as a young version of myself and try to change things up, see what would happen if I made different choices.
21. Where would you most like to live?
With a loved one. Don't really care where.
22. What is your most treasured possession?
My mind. Of things outside myself, then I think the things I can't replace. The data on my computer, pictures, documents etc. I think. All other "possessions" can be replaced. They're just things. I would say friendships, but that's hardly a possession.
23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Depression, then everything sucks. Been there, no fun.
24. What is your favorite occupation?
Playing music, engaging in reasonable discussions, masturbation. (at the same time)
25. What is your most marked characteristic?
I say my mind. I'm a pretty straight-forward, no-nonsense kinda guy. Other than that, I don't know. Other people are better judges of that than me.
26. What do you most value in your friends?
Honesty and humor.
27. Who are your favorite writers?
Frank Herbert, Neal Stephenson, William King, Scott McGough.
28. Who is your hero of fiction?
Randy Marsh. Heh, or Rorsharch and Dr. Manhattan. Randy epitomizes the human condition, weak, narrow sighted and everything. Rosharch represents a view of the world in black and white, which I like the concept of; and Dr. Manhattan represents the way the world is and he is basically intellect personified, which I also like.
29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
This requires me to know a lot of history. I don't, because I don't care much about it. I identify with me, because I am me, no one else.
30. Who are your heroes in real life?
The four horsemen, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens.
31. What are your favorite names?
Lisa, Cecilia, Michael, Jason, off the top of my head.
32. What is it that you most dislike?
People lying to me or in general who are dicks to me. I have no interest in these people.
33. What is your greatest regret?
Two things, I think. Not doing anything about the girl I had a serious crush on for most of my elementary school until high school; and not realizing that Computer Science was not for me earlier, instead of fucking around there for two years.
34. How would you like to die?
I'd rather not.
35. What is your motto?
"Don't be a dick" is something I can stand by.

>> ^peggedbea
the point thats being missed is that its a gigantic industry, linked to every other imaginable gigantic industry. it must support a massive infrastructure, education, salaries and insurance and liability costs of millions and millions of people. who do deserve to get paid. it is subject to all the other whims and manipulations of markets, inflations, corruption, bad management, human error and bad politicking. etc etc etc.

Do you know how many different people, from how many backgrounds, working with how many billions of dollars of equipment it takes to construct a computer which performs 3,000,000,000 operations a second? The computer industry is much larger and more complex than the healthcare system.

not only that, it is intimately entangled into every single persons life. from the joys of birth to the tragedy of death and everywhere in between. it is subject to bad decisions, catastrophic accidents, ignorance and arrogance of every single person.

As opposed to say, the civil engineers who built the Golden Gate bridge, of which millions of cars travel across (safely) every day? Or the Boeing 757s built by aerospace engineers, which take billions of people around the world to never-before-seen destinations safely, and at 500 miles per hour?

its huge. too big. and too important. and there is no solution. but the path we are currently on is completely unacceptable and unsustainable. and its time try something else.

As opposed to the genetic engineers who splice genes to create hybrid plants resistant to disease, or the agricultural engineers who develop the technologies to provide millions of tons of food each year to feed the 300,000,000 Americans in this country? That big or that important?

but an engineer will never have to cut a premature infant out of a dying mothers womb in a hallway while the father watches in horror. an engineer will never have to ask a mother to sign the paperwork so her sons organs can be harvested. and an engineer will never get beaten up by scared, mentally retarded man twice his size while trying to provide care.

What do you think an aerospace engineer things each time one of their plane crashes? Or a civil engineer thinks when the buildings they designed fell on 9/11? Or the chemical engineer when the drug they designed accidentally kills a thousand people?

Your argument is absolutely vacuous.

There are two reasons why healthcare has been a complete failure not only in the US but worldwide:
1. Healthcare is too intertwined with politics
2. Healthcare providers are not as smart as you think.

are suggesting reading a "how to" website will give you all the information you need to be a doctor?

i think this statement very clearly illustrates the problem i have with you.
all your hyper argumentative bullshit is lacking one thing. relevant life experience. the kind where wisdom and intimate knowledge and understand outweighs any number of words you can plug into google together and read about. maybe one day when you grow up you will understand this.

i could google causes of inflated healtcare costs all fucking day until i found 1 single point that agreed with me. the problem with your fda scenario is that its doing what every other argument is doing and that is talking healthcare down to a singularity.

the point thats being missed is that its a gigantic industry, linked to every other imaginable gigantic industry. it must support a massive infrastructure, education, salaries and insurance and liability costs of millions and millions of people. who do deserve to get paid. it is subject to all the other whims and manipulations of markets, inflations, corruption, bad management, human error and bad politicking. etc etc etc.
not only that, it is intimately entangled into every single persons life. from the joys of birth to the tragedy of death and everywhere in between. it is subject to bad decisions, catastrophic accidents, ignorance and arrogance of every single person.

its huge. too big. and too important. and there is no solution. but the path we are currently on is completely unacceptable and unsustainable. and its time try something else.

last thing, an engineer may deal with some hardcore serious precision and smarts. but an engineer will never have to cut a premature infant out of a dying mothers womb in a hallway while the father watches in horror. an engineer will never have to ask a mother to sign the paperwork so her sons organs can be harvested. and an engineer will never get beaten up by scared, mentally retarded man twice his size while trying to provide care. apples do not equal oranges. nor would i attempt to say one is more valuable than the other.

(...)it's about accountability. No one in government gets their job without either being elected, or being employed by someone who was elected.

How can anything be less accountable than govt? Govt is a monopoly, businesses usually have competitors. Businesses have to earn money, govt gets money through taxes. I think your logic could work if govt were small and transparent (I'd like that to be the case). When it's formed by so many agencies and departments, operates with such volume of convoluted laws and regulations, employs so much resources and so many people, this accountability you're talking about just isn't there or is extremely sluggish, I doubt anyone truly understands what happens in every level of our govt, and there's no way any majority of voters can keep track of all this. Its one of the reasons govt expands: So it can get away with abuse through obfuscation.

If you're desillusioned about banks, I hear ya. Banks would compete a lot more for your money if govt wasn't into banking, tieing up the market with so many regulations and stifling any incentive to compete. People and banks in general would be a lot more responsible with their money, because there wouldn't be any morally backwards federal institutions promising to bail them out, they wouldn't automatically trust any bank or investor just because a govt agency says they're OK.

I just don't think it's possible to have a market that is both unregulated and beneficent to ordinary people.

I don't think it's possible to have a market that is both highly regulated and productive.

Who are these ordinary people you think the market wouldn't benefit? People are generally required to be more productive in a free society than in a govt regulated society, so I guess you're talking about mostly unproductive and unadaptive people? Why should they be benefitted at all, specially at the expense of others?

With freedom comes responsability. Our society grew accustomed to being irresponsible because of govt slowly taking away many of our freedoms. Besides, in a growing and productive economy, the general improvement in quality of life leaves whoever is left behind a lot better off than most people in a stifled underdeveloped economy.

I also don't think we can count on charities to take on the problems of the poor adequately (...) People are too selfish to really worry about it.

Yikes, to me that phrase sums up a whole lot of misunderstanding about the nature of charity. What is the alternative, let the govt take care of poor people? By definition, that's not charity, I mean, you're not doing charity if you *must* pay taxes. If you're obligated to provide charity, then it's a duty, like as if you owe money to poor people, they can *demand* money from you. So, morally, you're either responsible for their condition or for pulling them out of it. Doesn't that feel backwards to you? Charity only works if it's voluntary.

If you think society is obligated to help poor or unproductive people, then you have a twisted understanding of how a society should work. Talk about moral hazard.

I'll be writing off Keynesians as being quacks if we wind up in a situation with high unemployment and high inflation, unless we have some sort of supply shock (e.g. OPEC decides to stop selling oil to us), or we wind up scaring the world into dumping the dollar before we recover.

How nice of you, cutting the keynesians so much slack. Deep down I think you know the world will dump the dollar before we recover because keynesians miscalculated how screwed up our economy is and how screwing up the dollar won't do us any good whatsoever. To me, keynesians are quacks already because they didn't see this blatantly obvious result to their policies. Reality will just confirm this when it happens.

It's not that government gets a free pass, it's that a corrupt government happens because of businesses influence.

I TOTALLY AGREE ABOUT GOVT BEING CORRUPT DUE TO BUSINESS INFLUENCE, YAY! If govt were smaller and didn't have any stake in the economy, businesses wouldn't bother entangling themselves with govt in the first place.

It's like back in the day, when the state and the church were in bed together, all sort of things would go haywire, society would lose freedoms of expression, religion, sexuality, the state would legislate morality and persecute dissidents, etc. Today we all know better: State and church should be separated. Society has yet to realize that the *state* and the *economy* should be separated for very similar reasons as well.

I guess what I don't understand is why you would trust government with nuclear missiles, police, courts, etc. but not control of currency.

When you talk about currency, you're actually talking about govt establishing a monopoly over the currency, which is completely unnecessary and detrimental to society, that shouldn't happen to begin with. It's like you asking me why I don't trust govt dictating who I can or cannot marry.

I cringe at the entire conservative "we must make policy about maximizing business growth, period" philosophy of governance. Mine is "we must make business growth beneficial to society".

So, society is a helpless victim to businesses, and you want govt to step in and help out. Even though govts, throughout history, with tyranny, warfare and welfare, have caused much more damage in terms of property and lives than any private business ever could.

Are you sure you know who the bad guys really are?

>> ^longde:
Very succinct and TRUE summary of the situation.
What was new to me was the explanation of the Israeli justification of assymetric casualties. Great sift.


i disagree with that justification.
you would think that for a people that suffered so greatly in so many terrible ways would at LEAST have the cognitive understanding what they are perpetrating on another people.
the term "jewish people" is not an entirely representative statement.there are many jewish nationalities.which particualr jewish tribe was promised isreal by the british empire?khazars,newly converted.
does that make them any less jewish?of course not.
i only state these things to lend context to an otherwise entangled situation.
before the amended balfor declaration 3 million lived in jerusalem peacefully,christian,jew and muslim,that changed with the balfor declaration.
so i do agree with his premise on the wrongs of empirialism,and its long-lasting affects.
but i heartily disagree with his justification for it assumes that all jews are the same.they are not.

What legislation is he talking about? Are churches in the UK tax exempt? Are there any churches in the UK which pay taxes to avoid gov entanglement?

im going to tell you just one of my many many cop stories.


so, theres a victims assistance cop that comes into my job peridiocally for rape and domestic violence victims. he wanted to date little ole me for some odd reason. i am a snob and would never ever date a cop, but i was horribly curious and had lots of questions. so i told him i would go and he could call it a date if he felt like it, but i was going to call it an interview.... im terribly uninterested in any sort of romantic entanglement with a fucking pig. i flat out told him i didnt date outside my species. in his arrogance he thought this was charming.

so bea gets a babysitter, and gets all cuted up.. cop takes her to a baseball game. because beas LOVE baseball games.

then out for drinks the interview is conducted. i decide just because he is a victims assistance cop doesnt make him any less of an asshole and that he is desensitized (by necessity of course) to extremely horrible things.
my heart hurts for humanity.

he tries to date me again... i tell him im sooo not interested.
...oh but im so cool so he just wants to go have some beers and hear stories of my fascinating adorable life.

so whatever, i am fascinating and adorable and i do like to talk about me. so off we go again. all of that was LIES he just wants to talk about himself somemore (clearly we are incompatible!) and try to get me to go home with him so he can tell all his buddies that he got the feminist dyke hippie chick in CT to let her guard down and fuck his brains out.

the night progresses and its more and more apparent that my vagina makes me stupid and less than him. and that im like some sort of goal. i feel as if he made a bet about where this would go and hes trying hard to win. i also realize hes a fucking idiot.

he seems to have absolutely no clue why any woman wouldnt want to fuck him right then and there. i find this is a sign that he most likely is terrible in bed. so im ready to go, he tries to stick his hand up my shirt.
i say "um fuck no dude" so he pins me to a wall forcefully and squeezes the shit out my tits and one hand is heading south for my lady part. i grab his hand and squeeze, he leans on my tighter and there it is... big mean forceful hand on my puss. i push him off of me with all my strength and wish i had a fucking shank on me.

FUCK NO DUDE.
im about to punch him in the face but remember hes a cop and i would probably go to jail. so i spit on him instead and storm the fuck out of there.

so.... the victims assistance cop is a date rapist. hooray the irony.

oh and a few months later he calls me up for a booty call. wtf?!!??


edit: also, all the cops and paramedics i have ever known regularly drink and drive. hizzah!

From Wikipedia: "He died on November 23, 1998 at the age of 35 after his rope failed while performing a "controlled free-fall" jump from the Leaning Tower rock formation in Yosemite National Park. The failure was investigated by the National Park Service with assistance from Chris Harmston, Quality Assurance Manager at Black Diamond Equipment. Harmston concluded that a change in jump site angle probably caused the ropes to cross and entangle, leading to the rope cutting by melting.[2] Miles Daisher, who was with Osman when he made the jump, stated that the ropes used in his fatal jump had been exposed to inclement weather — including rain and snow — for more than a month before the fatal jump, but that the same ropes were used for several shorter jumps on the previous and same day, THIS WAS SAID TO BE HIS LAST JUMP BEFORE HE RETIRED"... Yes, yes it was.

What i mean is, perhaps the confusion is in the word. Are people arguing about the religious sense or the traditional and legal sense?

Marriage is (primarily) a religious ceremony - contrary to the opinions of some above. It was performed by religious officials of varying types far earlier than the first 'code of law' existed. The earliest codes of law and forms of government were religious in nature. It all has its roots in religious practice.

Later, the marriage relationship acquired greater legal and civil ramifications. Therein lies the conflict. The gay community wants access to the legal/civil benefits of 'marriage'. Cool. But at the same time people of faith are concerned over legal entanglements which are very likely to result unless protection is supplied.

Once you expand 'marriage' to include same-sex you open up religious organizations to potential legal prosecution at a variety of levels. It has already happened for various reasons. Such 'lifestyle lawsuits' have a risk of becoming commonplace.

There is a fringe that is serious about suing churches, people, and businesses in order to advance the 'gay agenda'. They do not represent most average 'gay' people. Average gays just want 'gay marriage' thanks. But the radical fringe isn't will not go away after 'gay marriage' laws pass. They'll keep on going because they have social, political, and monetary goals they want to advance.

These radicals may not initially be able to force churches to marry gays. But they're a movement, they are patient, and to them gay marriage is not an END - it is a 'first step'. They will use litigation as a pry bar, forcing others to spend millions defending themselves. A few concessions here... A few there... All under the auspice of 'lifestyle litigation' justified by the fact that churches perform marriages, and are discriminatory against gays.

All we need is a simple law that gives gays a civil union which provides the legal rights they're after - is seperate from marriage - and that also has specific language built in that gives churches protection against legal action. So far that law hasn't ever come up. When it does I'm sure it will have a much better chance of passing.

I wonder about a few things:
1. How many kites can fly on each ground station (that gets it's power cable, etc).
2. How close together can you bunch up ground stations?
3. What sorts of aviation restrictions would this generate for airplanes flying nearby?

If this works the way I understand it from the talk, (1) would probably be 1 kite per station, to avoid any wires entangling, unless they figure out a way to avoid that altogether.

If kites in the same general area behave in the same way while airborne (same area means several kilometers), then there's no reason they couldn't have alot of them up at the same time from the same station. If the winds become less stable, however, and kites started flying into each other's path, you'd get the same entangling problem from (1).

As far as (3), they would certainly need to designate no-fly zones around each of those ground stations, as there will be wires moving around there all the time in unpredictable ways.
This might limit the possible locations for these kinds of stations, as at the moment, the US is quite full of commercial and private airfields, and updating all those aviation maps each time you place a new station would give the FAA a gigantic headache.

Assuming all that can be solved, this technology looks very promising...

EDIT - apologies for giant wall of text.

Really? You must not have read any history books on the period then. Or clicked on the link I gave, and scanned the page.

I'm well aware of where the logo comes from...so what? If Democrats decide to start using Obama's logo from now on, does that mean Obama founded the Democratic party?

As for this:

>> ^blankfist:
I don't think anyone said if the platform is different, then the party is different. Not sure where you got that.

It came from this:

>> ^blankfist:
And there is a huge "break in the identity of the party between Jefferson's party" and the other big government, interventionist presidents you mentioned above (FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Obama). Jefferson believed the government that governs best is the government that governs least. Thomas Jefferson extended Washington's ideas in his March 4, 1801 inaugural address: "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." (cited) None of the recent presidents in either party have been very Jeffersonian.

That's either a non-sequitor, or it's your only substantiated assertion. Otherwise you're just answering my references with a denial of the existence of the references I already provided, and calling sources like Encyclopedia Britannica revisionist.

I meant "identity" in a more superficial sense. The Colony of Virginia was very different from the State we now call Virginia -- but it's still Virgina. Today's Virginia still carries a thread of identity from its colony days that hasn't been broken, that didn't change when West Virginia split off, and that wouldn't change if they decide tomorrow to change the name of the state to Virg. Its history would still start with being founded as an English colony.

Now, if West Virginia, instead of remaining a distinct entity decided to just merge with Ohio, it wouldn't make Ohio's origins become the same as Virginia's, but the acquisition of that territory would certainly be an important chapter in Ohio's history. That's analogous to the situation we have with the Whigs and the Lincoln-founded Republicans.

Now, you revisionist fucker of pigs, do you have a single source that starts the history of the Democratic party with Andrew Jackson, that never mentions the Democratic-Republican party?

I know you love Jefferson, and hate Democrats, but the former begat the latter, even if you don't like it.

^Why would Tim Kaine (or anyone from the Dem Party) want to claim Andrew Jackson as their founder? He was racist, hated Native Americans, was the cause of the Trail of Tears, and ignored the balance of power.

The truth is he was the first Democrat President. He was the original, technical founder of the party. It's simple. There's a loose relationship between the Dem/Repub parties of today and the old Democratic Republican Party of yesteryear.

And there is a huge "break in the identity of the party between Jefferson's party" and the other big government, interventionist presidents you mentioned above (FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Obama). Jefferson believed the government that governs best is the government that governs least. Thomas Jefferson extended Washington's ideas in his March 4, 1801 inaugural address: "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." (cited) None of the recent presidents in either party have been very Jeffersonian. Sorry.

Oh, and my ad hominem attacks, NetRunner? Sorry, pigfucker.

I can't stand the way the question "do you believe in aliens?" is so entangled with "do you believe that UFOs are alien spacecraft visiting the Earth?"

Those are two different questions!

Even at sublight speeds, a civilization that is millions of years old would have spread throughout the galaxy by now. So the question that always plagues me is "are we the first technological civilization?" or "do most civilizations that reach our stage end up destroying themselves before colonizing space?" Because a yes to either of those questions makes it quite unlikely that we'll ever see evidence of an ancient civilization.

Plus I think some of the crazier sci-fi concepts like Von Neumann machines, generation ships, etc. make perfect sense when you think about the nature of an ancient, growing technological species in any way similar to humanity. If they've existed much longer than us, even just a couple thousand years, it's perfectly possible that some UFOs are indeed alien spacecraft.

wow.

2 words... civilian. deaths.

another two:

foreign. entanglement.


i can do this all day.


In reply to this comment by Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Iraq is irrelevant. Presidents can use the military as they see fit and you don't have to agree with them on how they choose to wield it. A lot of leftists hated the Iraq war (or were TAUGHT to hate it would be more accurate) but that's got nothing to do with why America is having problems right now. If Obama had done the same thing then you'd be praising how great he was - but since you hate Bush it is your only ammunition. But ultimately Iraq was very successful at its short term goals. Saddam - check. Terrorist focus NOT on the U.S. mainland - check. Long term its effect is still in doubt. That will depend on whether guys like Obama screw it up.

And Reagan did topple the USSR. You may lack historical perspective, but I being alive and aware at the time observed how Reagan's defense spending forced an already strained Russian economy to come apart at the seams trying to keep up. Russia couldn't make a socialist central economy work and it blew up. Without Reagan's brinkmanship and arms race the Russian economy could possibly have staggered on indefinitely. As it was, it tried to keep up and couldn't. Reagan 1. Russia 0.

Sort of like America's economy today is being strained to the breaking point by socialism. Morons like Obama and his crew just never learn from history - sadly. They labor under the fool's hope that Kenseyian economics just hasn't been given ENOUGH of a chance. Faux-economist poppycock. Like Russia in the late 80s, the US will collapse if it tries to go all socialist. No country can afford it because human beings are greedy, stupid morons and all governments are corrupt cesspits of waste and mis-management. Wise were the founding fathers to design the Bill of Rights to limit GOVERNMENT and not the people. It is then no surprise that Obama thinks that the Bill of Rights doesn't empower government enough. To Obama the Constitution is an obstacle to shoot in the head and dump off a bridge rolled up in a carpet.

1. "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." - Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, unanimously ratified by the US Senate.

2. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." - The First Amendment to the United States Constitution

3. The First Amendment is the ONLY mention of religion in the entire constitution. There is no mention of god in the constitution.

4. The supreme court has clarified the first amendment in the form of the Lemon Test. In order to be constitutional, a law must pass all three of the following requirements:
a. The government's action must have a secular legislative purpose;
b. The government's action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;
c. The government's action must not result in an "excessive government entanglement" with religion.

5. James Madison, principal author of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, was a vociferous advocate of separation of church and state: http://atheism.about.com/library/quotes/bl_q_JMadison.htm

"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not." [Pres. James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, addressed to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1785]

"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." [James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, addressed to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1785]

Madison made these remarks to argue against a proposed law that would have funded churches with tax money (Almost what Bush is doing through the back door with OFBCI). Instead of supporting religion with taxes, Jefferson authored and Virginia passed (with Madison's support) the Virginia statute on religious freedom. This act states:

"[Sec. 2] Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

[Sec. 3] And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act shall be an infringement of natural right."

Under such a doctrine I could not be compelled to contribute tax money to the hiring of chaplains for congress and the supreme court, nor printing religious slogans on dollar bills ("In God We Trust"), nor paying teachers to teach religious slogans ("one nation under God").