W. Todd Akin: “I would like to start by quoting a person who I believe is the founder, or at least acknowledged as the father, of the…”

“I would like to start by quoting a person who I believe is the founder, or at least acknowledged as the father, of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson. His words encased in stone on his monument read: ``The God that gave us life gave us liberty.'' It goes on to say: ``Can the liberties of a people be secure if we remove the conviction that those liberties are the gift of God?'' The author of our Declaration well understood that it is impossible to assert that we have inalienable rights and at the same time ignore the person that gave us the inalienable rights, the God that provided those rights itself. This question goes to the heart of what America has always stood for and always fought for. We believe that there is a God that gives basic rights to all people, and it is the job of the government to protect those rights. If the courts come to the decision that we cannot acknowledge God, then we have ripped the heart out of the logic of what makes America, the fact that our rights come from God Himself, and we have thumbed our nose at Thomas Jefferson and our Declaration and our 300-plus years of history. Now we have good reason to fear that the Court will not be content to ignore just the fifth amendment and say that you can take private property from people and redistribute it without a public purpose, but that they may also decide to take the first amendment and turn it upside down and use it as a sword of censorship rather than an oasis of free speech.…”