A Different Lesson

There is a bigotry in politics, as well as in religions, equally pernicious in both.  The zealots, of either description, are ignorant of the advantage of a spirit of toleration…   The cry was, these people will be equally the disturbers of the hierarchy and of the state.   …Time and experience have taught a different lesson: and there is not an enlightened nation, which does not now acknowledge the force of this truth, that whatever speculative notions of religion may be entertained, men will not on that account, be enemies to a government, that affords them protection and security.
—    James Madison
From:  “Second Letter from Phocion (1784)”
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