Just Government Quotes
Note the use of the phrase “against the government.” One of the unique aspects of the American Constitution and The Bill of Rights is that the government is considered a potential and even probable infringer on the liberties of the people. It is almost as though the government was the potential enemy. Modern libertarians state this very explicitly and it is ever present in the views of both the right and left wings of American politics. Most centrists recoil at the thought that some citizens see the government as the enemy, but even in America there have been times where the government has infringed on the rights of citizens only to have the courts or future administrations and Congresses correct the error.
This quotation is one of the most powerful indictments of religion in the political sphere. Historically, religions have supported the status quo in political society even. However, individual clerics have been in the forefront of many if not most of the movements toward freedom and democracy. For example, American religious institutions general supported slavery and legal discrimination thereafter, yet clerics were major abolutionists and major contributors to the Civil Rights Movement. Even today, American churches are the most racially segregated institutions left in America. See {620780} for his view on Christianity in particular.
