We simply cannot trust the voices that have become prominent in recent court decisions, in order to accurately interpret the true spirit and original intent of the First Amendment. There has been an extreme liberty taken in selectively “interpreting” our forefathers’ intentions. We MUST study the spiritual and political commentary, as well as the societal backdrop of ALL of the founding fathers, from the earliest roots of America until the actual birth of the new nation.

Jefferson, himself, understood the importance of rightly interpreting law as it was originally intended, when he asserted that...

“On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” #24

And likewise:

"A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering." #25

Justice Joseph Story, nominated by James Madison to the Supreme Court, and founder of Harvard Law School added that ….

“The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all instruments (documents) is to construe them according to the sense of the terms and the intention of the parties.” #26

Justice James Wilson, one of the first original Supreme Court Justices, one of only six men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and co-author of America’s first legal commentaries on the Constitution, stated that…

“The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.” #27

And Noah Webster warned about the effects of interpreting the language of any writing, without discerning the common knowledge of the period in which it was written:

“In the lapse of two or three centuries, changes have taken place which in particular passages …. obscure the sense of the original languages … The effect of these changes is that some words are … being now used in a sense different from that which they had (and thus) present wrong signification or false ideas. Whenever words are understood in a sense different from that which they had when introduced … mistakes may be very injurious.” #28

All four of these founding fathers (and many others) understood the abuses that could arise when officials do not take the time to carefully study the background of the ordinances they are appointed to interpret. With societal changes, misinterpretation comes easily when decades or even centuries have passed between the period the law was written and the period in which it is being interpreted.