Who cares what Jefferson would do?

If we have problems in America, the solution is usually simple, check with the Founding Fathers. Can’t figure out modern health care, check with the Founders. Can’t deal with modern weaponry on America's streets, check in with the nation's Founders. Need to improve education for our kids..maybe a trip to Mt. Rushmore will solve it? Need to fix our airports, increase cancer and genetic research, or fund manned space travel..no problem. Just check in with Jefferson and Hamilton.

Obviously a laughable idea.... but in fact this is exactly what we seem to do!! First of all our Founders, wise as they were, did not speak with a single voice, and they lived in a world that is barely recognizable from our own. So why are they relevant to every debate in America? Mostly because it’s a way for politicians to gain political traction, without having to marshall real debate or real solutions.

This is the confusion that David Sehat explains in The Jefferson Rule: How the Founding Fathers Became Infallible and Our Politics Inflexible.

My conversation with David Sehat:

The Myth of American Religious Freedom

It’s safe to say that the one thing that the left and the right both have in common, with respect to the role of religion in public life, is that they are both wrong. The defining mythology of separation of church and state was never what progressive thought it was, and the Christian influence and power that the right fantasizes about, was never all it was cracked up to me. The truth and the history is far more complex, nuanced and some would argue troubling. David Sehat, in his new book The Myth of American Religious Freedom takes us through the history.

My conversation with David Sehat:

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