In support of the statements you cited by JR, let me add something from another fellow who also has a rather high opinion of liberty and religion and how they support each other:
” Religion perceives that civil liberty affords a noble exercise to the faculties of man and that the political world is a field prepared by the Creator for the efforts of mind. Free and powerful in its own sphere, satisfied with the place reserved for it, religion never more surely establishes its empire than when it reigns in the hearts of men unsupported by aught beside its native strength."
"Liberty regards religion as its companion in all its battles and its triumphs, as the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims. It considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.”
. . . . . Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol I, Chapter II, page 44
” Every individual is always supposed to be as well informed, as virtuous, and as strong as any of his fellow citizens. He obeys society, not because he is inferior to those who conduct it or because he is less capable than any other of governing himself, but because he acknowledges the utility of an association with his fellow men and he knows that no such association can exist without a regulating force. He is a subject in all that concerns the duties of citizens to each other; he is free and responsible to God alone, for all that concerns himself. Hence arises the maxim, that everyone is the best and sole judge of his own private interest, and that society has no right to control a man's actions unless they are prejudicial to the common weal or unless the common weal demands his help. This doctrine is universally admitted in the United States.”
. . . . . Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol I, Chapter V, page 64
It’s a funny thing. I’ve always thought of Tocqueville as French, to be sure, but, first and foremost, an American.
Excellent quotes, YHAOS. I was just thinking about re-reading de Tocqueville just the other day. All the best—GGG