Wow! and Wow! Is this guy for real?

I've been poking around lewrockwell.com this evening, and I couldn't resist posting this except from a piece Ron Paul wrote back in 2003. It's not often a politician says exactly what I've been thinking.

The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation’s history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for external government. This is the real reason the collectivist Left hates religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state for the people’s allegiance, and many devout people put their faith in God before their faith in the state. Knowing this, the secularists wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our nation’s Christian heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.

I only posted this quote from the end of his article, but you can read the rest of it here.