Quote:
Originally Posted by nickerjones
You do know America was founded by people who were seeking religious freedom and wanted to worship as they please.
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I guess you mean the Puritans when you make this remark--which is at best historically imprecise, if not downright inaccurate. The puritans were not in the least interested in democracy or nationhood, imagining their polity in the forms of small cities that organized around meeting halls and patriarchal religious leaders. If they'd had their way, the U.S. would look like Afghanistan.
The U.S. was "founded" by the framers of the constitution in the late 18th century. If you do a little digging, you'll find that they were not Puritans, and by and large were not even all that religious. Thomas Jefferson was a deist. Benjamin Franklin, inasmuch as he was religious at all, was a deist--though he commented in his autobiography that "revelation" had no meaning for him, leading some to conclude that he was an atheist--though no such term yet existed as far as I know. John Adams was a deist. The list goes on and on--but the core lesson amounts to one of the dirty little secrets of American history: these guys weren't Christians.
I don't want to single you out--the idea that the U.S. was founded by Christians, according to "Christian values" is a common misconception. But it's nonsense. The U.S. was founded by enlightenment thinkers according to democratic secular values. That's why church and state are separate--or, at least, why they're supposed to be. Sadly the secular republican values of Jefferson and Adams have fallen on hard times in recent years.
/rant and back on topic: I think Obama is very impressive--but I think Clinton's lead nationwide should still be a major concern for his supporters. Iowa is traditionally a bellwether, but it's a small state. Edwards won it in 04, but lost the primary. Clinton is still a big favourite.