Word: jefferson
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...real issue in this election is not the proper role of religion in government but the proper role of government in religion [NATION, Sept. 10]. The notion of separation of church and state put forward by Thomas Jefferson appears in the Constitution only in reference to forbidding government involvement in religion, not vice versa...
Partisanship involves the allocation of temporal power. If Thomas Jefferson's famous wall of separation means anything, it is that neither church nor state will try to influence the power relations within the other. And not just for the sake of the state, which two centuries ago may have been more in need of protection. The modern Leviathan looks after itself quite nicely. Today and for its own protection the church ought to be circumspect about too close an embrace of political power. It jeopardizes more than certain privileges, like exemption from taxes. It jeopardizes the church...
...nemesis, the further he travels from any commendable conception of his role of a reporter and the more he dangerously confuses the public's right to participate in national governance with an animal instinct for voyeurism and gossip of every sort. "When a man accepts the public trust." Jefferson said, "he becomes like a public property." Yet however much Nixon and Belushi may be "public figures" in the eyes of the court, the moral quality of the grouping is disingenuous. As an elected official possessing the actual power to obliterate all our world and representing our nation to other nations...
There is no question that this country has felt a powerful impact from the Judeo-Christian tradition. A great deal of the impact on the founding of this country, on the Constitution, and on people like Thomas Jefferson came from the Enlightenment, which offered a rational, ethical approach to government. If you push that back, it would take you to many Jewish and Christian roots. But it would be a mistake to believe that this country was founded on strict Jewish-Christian faith principles alone, because the Enlightenment influences were broader than that...
Diffrient's chair prompts visionary speculations about the office of the future. Perhaps the executive desk will become obsolete except as a status symbol to sit behind, not to write on. And what of the conference room of tomorrow? How about a congenial grouping of Jefferson lounge chairs, their occupants all watching the displays presented on their individual monitors? -By Wolf Von Eckardt