LIBRARY NETWORK ELECTION: Vote for Hanley and Plass

The First Amendment addresses freedom of the press, speech, religion, etc. Censorship does not allow books to be published or circulated. No one is pushing for censorship. We do object, however, to having our tax money used to buy porn for libraries. Let the parents who want this type of material for their own kids go spend their own money to buy it.

McCrea and Meyer have stated that there is a constitutional mandate of separation of church and state. That’s wrong. There is no such verbiage in our Constitution. Thomas Jefferson, in responding to ministers of the Danbury Baptist Assoc., used this phrase as a reference to the spirit of the law. He was saying that we need to protect the churches FROM government interference so that everyone is free to worship as he/she sees fit. He was assuring the ministers that they would be able to worship freely; no government would mandate a state church, as England had done. That’s what the wall of separation was intended to be. The founders believed that freedom of religion was essential to the founding of the republic because they believed that personal liberty came from God. Freedom OF religion was the freedom to decide for themselves about what they believed and about how to worship. Without that freedom and without religion in general, the societal structure would fall apart.

Here’s what Founding Father John Adams had to say: “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private (virtue), and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.” — John Adams, letter to Mercy Warren, 1776

Vote for virtue and for our children.

Vote the Tim and Tom Team.

LYNNE PURSEL

Post Falls