I am currently a Senior at Portland State University. In 2005, after writing a research paper on the Founding Fathers & their opinions on religion's relationship to civic life (let me know if you'd like to read it!), I bought this sticker on RightWingStuff.com. I think that it best encapsulates my sense of how far downward the political landscape has slipped since the 18th century.

Just imagine what labels would be applied to any present-day public official who makes any of the following "politically incorrect" statements:

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"Statesmen may plan and speculate about liberty but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which liberty can stand." — John Adams

"Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert our oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in the Courts of Justice?" — George Washington, farewell address

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." — John Adams

"[i]t will be a desirable thing, for the protection of the Union, [for the general government] to cooperate, as far as the circumstances may conveniently admit, with the disinterested endeavors of your Society to civilize and Christianize the savages of the wilderness." — George Washington, in an address to the Directors of the Society of the United Brethren for Propogating the Gospel among the Heathen (July, 1789)

"[The American Revolution] connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity" — John Adams

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity...And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." — George Washington

"The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the Blackguard [Thomas] Paine say what he will." — John Adams

John Adams predicted that republicanism wouldn't succeed in France because it was "a republic of thirty million atheists."

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net...Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." — John Adams