"Ralph Reed likes to quote Alexis de Tocqueville on religion's central place in American democratic society. The quotations are not always accurate, but he is right about one important thing. Tocqueville, like Benjamin Franklin, believed that religion is essential to the health of republican liberty. However, Reed apparently closed the pages of Democracy in America too soon. Had he read further, he would not have missed Tocqueville's point that it is dangerous for religion to tie itself to political institutions and to topical political controversy." Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), p. 21.