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To: Viva Le Dissention
Also, the first says "Congress shall make no law..", the second says "..shall not be infringed." The First was not intended to apply to the states, since there were established churches in some of them. The Second was.
113 posted on 09/20/2002 10:12:07 AM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: Virginia-American
The First was not intended to apply to the states, since there were established churches in some of them. The Second was.

No, at the time it was ratified, the entire BOR was intended to apply only to the federal government. That's clear from every statement made at the time from pretty much everyone on every side of the issue. It was passed at the behest of anti-federalists, who were more or less comfortable with their own state governments, but greatly feared the establishment of a new national government that had what looked like to them, the capacity for unlimited power. They wanted to set some clearly defined limits on what it could and could not do, and they certainly weren't looking to it to protect them from their own state governments.

119 posted on 09/20/2002 10:19:24 AM PDT by inquest
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