re: State and Religion

Stephan is right about religion and the Constitution: the original constitution did not restrict state governments but the central government. State-sponsored religions were constitutional, and did exist. Jefferson was the foremost opponent of them, however. In his Virginia Statute of Religious liberty he wrote that to compel a man to contribute to a cause in which he disbelieves is “sinful and tyrannical.” He requested that his tombstone at Monticello simply state that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virgiinia Statute of Religious Liberty, and founder of the University of Virginia. And that’s what it says.

Stephan is also right that most libertarians seem completely unaware of the actual history of American constitutionalism, especially the Jeffersonian, states’ rights tradition that dominated constitutional thinking until 1865. If they want to educate themselves they should start with St. George Tucker’s book, A View of the Constitution, which is the clearest statement there is of the Jeffersonian constitutional perspective.

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