Calvin Coolidge Quotes
We cannot permit any inquisition either within or without the law or apply any religious test to the holding of office. The mind of America must be forever free.
Calvin Coolidge, 1872-1933, 30th President of the United States (Republican, MA), Inaugural Address, March 4, 1925
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Note the absolutism of the word unbounded.
There was freedom of religion for Protestants in early New Jersey. Note that Catholics and Jews were not allowed to hold office. This constitution was in force until 1844 when the prohibition was repealed by new constitution. Under the original constitution, men were convicted for blasphemy. See {621063} .
1st Duke of Wellington. The prohibitions against Catholic participation dated from the time when the Pope and the Vatican tried to support Catholic insurrections in England to return it as a Catholic country which it had been until King Henry VIII had a dispute with the Pope. However, the Catholic attempt to take over England and crush the Protestant Church of England had occurred so long before that there was no practical danger to the then established Church of England. Wellington, an Irish Protestant himself, realized that the law presented no significant protection and caused not only great resentment of English and Irish Catholics, but denied the nation the benefit of their great talents in politics. England took a great step forward and passed the bill.
A conservative Calvinist weekly periodical. There has always been a religious right in America.
Ironically, without the word “wicked” most people would regard the first sentence as a good description of elements of a modern democracy. It illustrates that for the Islamic fundamentalist democracy substitutes the rule of man for the rule of God, freedom of speech allows heresy and blasphemy to to uttered and communicated, and religion which is supposed to inform and direct politics. So what is good for the lover of democracy is the very thing that is bad for Islam. This is not a uniquely Islamic viewpoint. It has been and is held by fundamentalist Christians and Jews as well who would return to Biblical law punishing blasphemy and heresy with death and have religion drive all politics.
Calvin Coolidge was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. A Republican lawyer from New England, born in Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of Massachusetts. His response to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action. The next year, he was elected the 29th vice president of the United States, and he succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative and also as a man who said very little and had a rather dry sense of humor.
