Just more fuel for the debate:

Found these quotes by George Washington and thought it was amusing:

"As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality."

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"

"I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center."

"Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine." (I just threw that one in there, and can add Jefferson and Madison quotes as needed, for those who still claim that the Founding Fathers created a Christian nation)

"It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it."

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."

An uncommonly moral man who derived his morality from the Enlightenment of reason. A man who exercised power while recognizing and fearing its tendencies to abuse. While everyone has faults, and Washington as much as the rest of us, he was more free of them by virtue of his desire to recognize them than most of us.