What say you of this quote?

He was half right.

Moral, yes. Religious, no.

I'll re-write it for today:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled. Avarice, ambition, revenge, gallantry, and most of all greed, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people, and therefore flawed. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

It means eventually our Constitution or system of government is not going to work any more because too many laws are being written and passed because too many people legally try to get away with doing the wrong thing, just because they can. Laws are being created, written and re-written with greater and greater detail in them because somebody (or a lot of somebodies) got in trouble, and were able to get out of trouble with a slick lawyer because they exploited a loophole in a law. Here are just 2 examples off the top of my head: Why do we have "elder abuse" laws? People already know that it's wrong to beat up 90 year old ladies and cash their SS checks. But we have special laws for that. why? How about "hate crimes" against homosexuals? Why are they so special that they need their own law? Not meaning any offense to gay people, but, when you hurt or kill someone its already a hate crime period it shouldn't matter what the reason is. People looking out for their own greedy behinds, or those people with an agenda to push, or looking for a slick legal way to create a monetary or political benefit for their own will eventually paralyze our system because these people are not acting in everyone's best interest if they are looking out for #1. This is what he meant when he said our system wouldn't work if the people weren't moral and religious, because back then, morals and religion went hand in hand.

Thankfully Thomas Jefferson was around to constrain Adam's worse moments.

John Adams didn't foresee the religious terrorists that would develop.

How many Christian terrorists have struck in the last few weeks?

It's crap. I'm an atheist and in the military where I swore to protect the Constitution of the U.S.

Christians have their bible and I have the Constitution.

I say, "Hear, hear!" Without internal restraints, no external laws will make a nation moral enough to govern themselves. William Burke once said, "A man's passions forge his fetters".

Uh-huh. Perhaps John would care to explain why non-religious countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Japan have considerably less crime than the US, less murders, better education, better teen-pregnancy and abortion rates, better health, better productivity...

The facts show Mr. Adams was incorrect.

Peace.

It would be an interesting explanation for the current mess the legal system is in, seeing as there are so many immoral folks out there.

It was President Adams' opinion. Nothing more.

Sounds like a good arguement for keeping religion out of government!