>>>As far as freedoms, for the last 40 years this country has been busily removing freedom of religion (at least for Christian religions - those that the country was founded upon)
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>>Of course, your belief that that's the case is part of why you're unhappy. I'll point out that at the time of its founding, there were others than Christians here and the Constitution was written specifically to ensure that they had full citizenship rights. It's just not true that this was founded as a "Christian nation."

>That is a nice revision, but the reality was that freedom of religion meant that people were not forced to be in the Church of England. That was about it.
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I'm not sure where you studied history, but your statement is quite wrong. Different colonies were founded by different religious groups: for example, Plymouth Bay by Puritans, Maryland by Catholics, Pennsylvania by Quakers. Some of the colonies were religiously intolerant and required people to adhere to the official religion; others were not, and allowed people to practice their own regligion.

When the colonies united to form a whole, it was clear that specifying a state religion was impractical. Church of England was never a consideration. While the religious freedom guarantee in the First Amendment came a little later, the Constitution makes it clear that there is to be no state religion:

Article VI: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

IOW, it didn't matter what religion you belonged to or didn't; you could run for office.

Note, also, that the oath specified for the president (the only one in the Constitution itself) makes no mention of God: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The US was _not_ founded as a Christian nation.

Tamar