The ACLU and the KKK: both anti-Catholic?

The Nov. 24-30, 2002 edition of the National Catholic Register has an article by Wayne Laugesen on two new academic books which argue that conventional wisdom's understanding of "the separation of church and state" -- the understanding promoted and defended by the ACLU -- originated in the Ku Klux Klan.

The books are Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State by American University professor Daniel Dreisbach, and Separation of Church and State by U of Chicago law professor Philip Hamburger.

The two authors, working separately, came to the same conclusions, as Laugesen writes: "the First Amendment set out to protect religion from government, not government and society from religion."