Reply #149: Yikes.

[Quill Pen]

>>>To this day, Jewish people are over-represented in financial industries. They accomplished this not through some conspiracy but because they actually earned the trust of others.<<<

Actually, they accomplished this by force. Throughout much of history, Jews were not permitted to own land. Hence the "over-representation" of Jews in finance, mercantile and academic professions.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the "founding fathers" were largely unconcerned with religion in the design of early American policy; they were wealthy businessmen who wished to remain that way. Their aim was to create a free-market nation, liberated from the "tyranny" of the extremely rich and powerful influence that churches in Europe held. Simply put, the money that customarily siphoned into churches in Europe, these guys wanted to skim for themselves and their compatriots. Note that the Constitution as originally crafted preserves and even makes provisions for slavery -- which a nation built strictly on Judeo-Christian tenets would not allow. As far as I know, John Adams, a minister by training, was the only professed Christian of the lot. (From David McCullough's biography, "John Adams.")

From http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/myth.html:
>>>In a letter to Horatio Spafford in 1814, Jefferson said, "In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes" (George Seldes, The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey Citadel Press, 1983, p. 371). In a letter to Mrs. Harrison Smith, he wrote, "It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest" (August 6, 1816).<<<

A nation founded by men raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition (though not professing Judeo-Christian faith, with very limited exceptions) is not the same thing as a Judeo-Christian nation. Consider that the population of black slaves in America in 1790 (the first census), was 698,000, or roughly 20% of the full U.S. population at the time. They didn't come from a Judeo-Christian background, at all -- what about their influence? What about the influence of millions of other immigrants over the next 200 years? And, for crying out loud, what about Native Americans? The Native American population of what we call America today outnumbered whites by roughly two to one in the 1770s.

Currently, the Wiccan religion is the fastest growing in the U.S.; its numbers double about every 30 months. 25% of Americans do not identify themselves as Christians. We still collect and spend their tax money.

Judeo-Christian nation, my ass!