America was founded as a "godly" nation, but not a Christian nation. Our core values with respect to human rights are predicated on the belief that "a Creator" endowed all humans with unalienable human rights and as such no nation has the right to infringe on those rights.

I would add to the individual rights granted by God, those derivative rights that natural flow from our human rights... some of them are captured in the Constitution as "Civil Rights" and others in our economic ideology that recognizes "property rights" (as a nation we often tread on property rights through taxation). Government has a right to tax people to support its cost, but it does not have an inherent right to take someone's property and reassign it to someone else out of "equity or even "compassion". Certainly, people should be generous and compassionate, but government does not have the right to define that or take someone's property without their consent for reasons unrelated to the citizens collectively agreeing on how to fund government.

Inherent in a "godly" nation that recognizes individual rights is the core value of tolerance. God clearly has the power to do as He wishes as demonstrated by The Flood and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. However, for the most part God tolerates sin and if he tolerates it, then the message to a "Godly" people is they should do likewise. Herein lies a problem. Marxism and other belief systems don't tolerate other beliefs.

So, how does a Godly nation founded on the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution deal with people that embrace violence and coercion as a means to enforce conformity and orthodoxy. I am not suggesting that Christians have not attempted to do the same thing, but as you write that behavior is not one endorsed by Bible or our Godly values... but while our system embraces people's right to their own individual belief systems, what happens when they try to impose them on others... whether those beliefs are grounded in religion or secular ideologies.

Tolerance is perhaps one of the most important virtues for a "nation of immigrants" to embrace and yet in a world of identity politics nothing captures intolerance better than the Palestinian attack on women and children on October 7 in Israel. Arguing that Palestinians have a legitimate "beef" with Israel is totally different than justifying the killing of innocent women and children.

How do we as a nation, deal with people that belief violence against women and children is okay?

The third core value is integration. In order for our nation to be strong, it must be able to stand together. We need to form a common identity. For that to happen, we need to embrace integration as MLK preached. Integration begins with outlawing institutional and systemic racism. It progresses to social integration. And eventually to biological integration. As a tolerant nation we accept that we have groups living among us that are "separatist" movements... be they the Jewish Hasidic Community, the Christian Amish community, or the Nation of Islam and even groups like the KKK. Those groups are the antithesis of our core values, but tolerance of their behaviors as long as they don't violate our laws and infringe on the rights of others are the price we pay for being the kind of country where people have individual rights.

We were founded as a "godly" nation and we should all hope to hang on to that association. Once you take God out of the picture then a society is no longer accountable to a hire authority, instead it drifts toward an authoritarian government not accountable to anyone other than those who control the reins of power. In some cases, it can "the mob", the military, or a "strong" man. Let's hope we continue to demand our leaders submit themselves to the Godly values expressed in our founding documents.