Rick Santorum spoke at the iPledge Sunday prayer gathering where he explained to the audience that our Founding Fathers knew that our right came from God and that is why they explicitly protects our rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
But by "happiness," Santorum declared, the Founders didn't mean "enjoyment" but rather doing what God has commanded and serving His will:
First Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Everson used the metaphor of a wall of separation between church and state, derived from the correspondence of President Thomas Jefferson. It had been long established in the decisions of the Supreme Court, beginning with Reynolds v. United States from 1879, when the Court reviewed the history of the early Republic in deciding the extent of the liberties of Mormons. Chief Justice Morrison Waite, who consulted the historian George Bancroft, also discussed at some length the Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by James Madison, who drafted the First Amendment; Madison used the metaphor of a "great barrier."[2]
Justice Hugo Black adopted Jefferson's words in the voice of the Court, and concluded that "government must be neutral among religions and nonreligion: it cannot promote, endorse, or fund religion or religious institutions."[3] The Court has affirmed it often, with majority, but not unanimous, support. Warren Nord, in Does God Make a Difference?, characterized the general tendency of the dissents as a weaker reading of the First Amendment; the dissents tend to be "less concerned about the dangers of establishment and less concerned to protect free exercise rights, particularly of religious minorities."[4]
These "patriots" don't even understand the founding principles of their own nation.
The founding fathers really did mean individual happiness and Americans were free to choose what that meant to them, something the religious fanatics in America like anywhere else in the world always seem to have a hard time grasping.
