Our founders came from lands where the state imposed religion on its subjects. They clearly set out to form a society in which religion wasn’t imposed on anyone. In the 1797 treaty with Libya, the document emphatically states that the United States isn’t a Christian country. There is no mention of god at all in the constitution – only the declaration of independence, why do you think that is? Many of our founders were Deists and publicly opposed Christianity and religiosity. Yes, many were Christian’s too, but so what? It was suggested by the organizers of the constitutional convention that the proceedings be opened with a prayer, but that motion was quashed.

I have no argument with your practice of religion or your belief in a god that chooses to make its existence a mystery. My point is keep it out of politics and government – it has no place there. You won’t find it in any libertarian discussions of policy. Our principles are based on individual sovereignty in which, from a governing perspective, the entire issue of god and religion is irrelevant.

In the past, i threw in with Republicans and conservative and when they governed, they did things like, say, John Ashcroft having prayer meetings in his office once a week, in the morning, at the DOJ. The assumed moral superiority of the Christian Neo-con makes him/her to be unable to see what real liberty is, you know the kind where you own yourself and can do as you please with yourself as long as you aren’t impinging on another’s natural rights.

Of course I’m a libertarian. The real ideologues are those like Farha of World Net Daily who just about frothed at the mouth during his prime time speech at the Tea Party convention while he quoted bible verse. No self-respecting libertarian would ever throw in with such a vile creature, and if you do so, well have at it, but know that I oppose you, him and all your ilk with every breath I have, just as much as I oppose the progressives. And there is no way that you could call yourself a libertarian.

Thanks for weighing in. Yeah, I had great hopes too. One point that I don’t agree on is that being in favor of liberty (and I mean the kind of liberty where your gay neighbors sit on their porch making out while they do bong hits) has anything to do with being conservative. It seems to me that libertarianism inherits the classical liberal agenda, not the conservative one. Of course, the problem is that these words have been used and abused for so long that they’ve lost their original meaning.

I think part of what we want to do as libertarians is clean up the language and to reassert principles as our guide, not party or even ideology, which I view as different from principles.Ideology’ seems to rely on some ‘revealed truth’, whether it’s Marxism or even some of the claims of classical economists or the Austrian economists. I don’t care if being free works better or not – if we are poorer because of it, I’m fine with it. I don’t think we will be, but that isn’t my reason for wanting to be free.