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From: bllklly@uwmacc.UUCP (Bill Kelly)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Napoleon on religion and politics
Message-ID: <410@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Oct-84 14:44:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.410
Posted: Tue Oct 23 14:44:14 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Oct-84 19:05:14 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center
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If you didn't like Washington on politics, consider this quotation from
a rather different general-turned-political-leader I just ran across.

"How can you have order in a state without religion?
 Society cannot exist without the inequality of fortunes,
 which cannot endure apart from religion.  When one man
 is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he
 cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is 
 an authority which declares 'God wills it thus: there must be
 rich and poor in the world: but hereafter and during all
 eternity, the division of things will take place differently.'"
			-- Napoleon Bonaparte

I wonder what relevance this has to the issue of religion in the
presidential campaign.  I'm tempted to draw parallels between
Napoleon's view and Reagan's leanings towards government support
of Christianity.  However, I think Reagan is sincere, not Machiavellian,
about most of his beliefs (religious and otherwise).  That's what
scares me about him.

(Bring back Richard Nixon, a man I can hate, without any silly worries
 over his sincerity!)
-- 

Bill Kelly
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!bllklly
1210 West Dayton St/U Wisconsin Madison/Mad WI 53706

"Life's like a jigsaw...you get the straight bits, but there's plenty
 missing in the middle." -- Xtc