Comments by "Philip Rayment" (@PJRayment) on "John Adams: American Founder and Second President | 5 Minute Video" video.

@vidyanandbapat8032 Your theology and history are poor. Of course the Judeo-Christian tradition didn't have a free press—the press hadn't been invented then! But the Judeo-Christian worldview did give rise to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and so on. It limited the government. When a Roman emperor massacred innocent people in angry revenge for an uprising, Bishop Ambrose told him off and forced him to introduce a new law that would not allow any executions without a cooling-off period. The Magna Carta was predicated on the principle that even the king was subject to God's law, a principle recorded over two millennia earlier when the God's man Samuel confronted King David over arranging the death of the husband of a woman he wanted. Once the press was invented, Christians started newspapers in various places around the world, giving a voice to the people. They helped spread democracy partly because they involved people in running organisations, and the skills they gained helped them to organise politically. See The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy by Robert Woodberry. No, God was not the God of a few Jewish tribes. He is the creator of the world and humanity. He is everybody's God (there being only one). The Roman Empire adopted Christianity after it had spread widely in the empire. The "archaic Jewish traditions" were part of the Mosaic Law (if not add-ons to that) that were never applicable to Christians, and which became redundant with Jesus. The most obvious example is the requirement to sacrifice animals for sin was no longer necessary once Jesus became the ultimate sacrifice, fulfilling that requirement for all time. Paul was not a Roman, but a very religious Jew with inherited Roman citizenship. The question is not which law emanated from the Judeo-Christian worldview, but which didn't? Common law was based on the Bible. See the three-volume work Christian Foundations of the Common Law by Augusto Zimmerman
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@homanism6438 You ought to see a doctor about that cough. Or a doctor of history. The Crusades were a response to Muslim invasion of Jerusalem, done very reluctantly (and poorly).
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@oscard.fernandezj.3096 Democracy is a poor form of government. But ignoring a theocracy (not a cleriocracy), the only better system would be rule by an incorruptible benevolent dictator. But where can you be sure of finding one of those? So Democracy is the best practicable form of government that we can devise. The other thing to keep in mind—bearing in mind John Adams' comment about the U.S. Constitution being "only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other"—is that such people will, hopefully, not vote in selfishness, but in consideration of others.
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@gabrielluck2354 Not disagreeing with you, but the point remains that the crusades were a response to Muslim invasion, and liberating Jerusalem was one of the main motives, even though that wasn't really what the Easter Christians asked for.
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@oscard.fernandezj.3096 Wrongly attributed to Jefferson, apparently. And given that a mob and a majority are not the same thing, the claim is illogical anyway.
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