In general, I don't see how reducing the Revealed Word of my Lord and Master Jesus Christ to a mere instrument for regulating the passions of U.S. citizens shows either proper worship to Him or the seriousness needed to address the problems which beset our nation.
P.S. I don't think that Petrarch and Samuel Adams have the same idea of "virtue." Think about it. It's also puzzling that the author does not take into account the influence of Roman history, and Latin notions of virtue, upon our Founding Fathers.
P.P.S. John Adams' kind words for Lord Bolingbroke, Hume and Gibbon as a source of "general principles of Christianity" help to prove my point about the deistic tenor of the author's position. "Religious" men in the 18th and 19th centuries -- i.e., in the American context, men both Christian and Protestant -- considered these gentlemen to be quite suspicious, and Deists if not Infidels. Hardly an uncontroversial source for a set of General Principles that we would dare to call Christian.
P.P.P.S. I am not LDS and do not believe in the revealed nature of the Book of Mormon, but I appreciate the author's discussion of God's Providence in the "Religious Addendum." I wonder what the essay would have looked like had he used the Addendum as his starting point instead of making it look somewhat extraneous.
The single coherent, snarky point you made was off topic but I'll address it anyway.
Since we as a people murder about one million souls a year, and have been doing so for about 30+ years, I guess that means that gift from our Founding Fathers is a little frayed around the edges by now. Moth-eaten. Positively ratty.
The gift remains. If you are given an auto and wreck it, it is not the fault of the auto. When a man swears to support and defend the Constitution and later does not, it is no more the fault of the Constitution than marriage is at fault when a man takes wedding vows and later cheats on his wife.