No offense meant but how long did you lurk before signing up to think this teaches FReepers anything?
I've never seen that specific quote posted before. It does show how Hugo Black was an ideologue who did not scruple to quote Jefferson out of context.
No offence, but I'm happy that I evidently won't be the only undiplomatic poster in FR.
To answer your question, I posted 10 minutes after stumbling on FR after years of knock-down drag out discussions of the issue in other message boards. I posted because my FR keyword search returned an anemic total of five posts relating to the issue. I probaby should have tried more keywords.
I predict that my participation in FR is going to be short-lived anyway. This is because I have found it frustrating to try to address the historical material concerning the Court's treasonous interpretation of the establishment clause in length limited posts. In fact, I had to rip out much of my first post to get things to fit. And it's probaby time to wrap up this post and start again.
Many FReepers need lots of teaching.
Thomas Jefferson also wrote the following in a 1808 letter to the Reverend Samuel Miller:
"I consider the government of the U S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the U.S. Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general [federal] government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority."
Note this letter was written six years after the letter containing the "Wall of Separation" statement.