A “National Day of Prayer”? “One Nation Under God”? “In God We Trust”? I’ve heard people claim that they’re proof that America was founded on Christian principles. If the speaker acknowledges freedom of religion at all, he invariably means that everyone must be free to practice his religion.

Thing is, all three of those were forcibly injected into politics in the 1950s, riding a wave of fear of The Commies and The Bomb. The Founding Fathers had nothing to do with them, and the majority would likely be appalled at today’s America.

The Founding Fathers were great men of their time. Not perfect — some were slave-owners, and none expressed any belief in the equality of women, or even of the people in general (landowners were the only ones qualified to vote, to them) — but they got a lot right too. One of the things they got right was insisting on the separation of Church and State, and we really ought to pay attention to the life-lessons they based that on… before we’re forced to re-live them.