Filed under: Abraham Lincoln

Old European Secular Philosophy vs God

The old European secular philosophy includes secular humanists and other atheistic sects, such as the followers of Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Professor John Dewey and Fabian socialist John Maynard Keynes. Their agenda is obvious.  It is the elimination of God as well as a moral foundation for law.    

 

Their belief is expressed in the Humanist Manifesto:  "No deity will save us; we must save ourselves."  The first Humanist Manifesto, written in 1933, was published with thirty-four signatories including the educator John Dewey (Paul Kurtz, tenured radical professor, State University of New York at Buffalo, Humanist Manifesto II, 2).

 

Without exception, rejection of creation's God and freedom

for religious competition over the broad spectrum

of private and public life gives rise to moral revisionism.

 

The religious presupposition for the secular humanist mind-set comes from Charles Darwin's book Origin of the Species.  Those who adopted Darwin's God-rejecting assumption about the origin, meaning and purpose of life have no dependable standards upon which to establish human equality, morality or representative government.  Truth, for them, is what man himself chooses at any given time and circumstance.  Standards are based on wishes, perceptions and mortal goals rather than on established knowledge, objective facts or principles.

 

According to Darwinian militants, "There is no fixed limit or perfect form of knowledge and, that on the contrary, truth is always tentative."*

 

The Bible is stamped with a Specialty of Origin, and an immeasurable distance separates it from all competitors.**

W. E. Gladstone

 

"The attempt by the rulers of a nation [France] to destroy all religious opinion, and to pervert a whole nation to atheism … [and] to establish atheism on the ruins of Christianity [is] to deprive mankind of its best consolations and most animating hopes, and to make a gloomy desert of the universe" (James D. Richardson, citing Alexander Hamilton from October 3, 1789, in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897, published by Congress, 1899, Vol. I, 64).

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*John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education Transition (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 306.

**Halley's Bible Handbook authored by Henry H. Halley and published by Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (republished since 1924).


For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

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The Paper Trail of Our Constitution II

In 1776, on February 28, George Washington acknowledged a poem written in his honor and sent to him by Phillis Wheatley.  "To His Excellency General Washington"   was the title.  This occurred before the Declaration of Independence was completed and accepted by the Continental Congress.  Who was Phillis Wheatley?  She had been captured in Senegal/Gambia at the age of seven or eight and sold in Boston to John and Susanna Wheatley.  They treated her lovingly as a daughter and taught her to read and write; she even learned Latin.  An accomplished poet, she was an admirer of the minister George Whitefield and a strong supporter of independence from Great Britain.

 

The Northwest Ordinance passed in 1787 by the Continental Congress was helpful as the new constitution was drafted.  It specified the requirements of territories seeking statehood.  The ordinance declared:  "The fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, which form the basis whereon these republics, their laws, and constitutions are erected; to fix and establish those principles as the basis of all laws, constitutions, and governments, which forever hereafter shall be formed in the said territory: to provide also for the establishment of States, and permanent government therein, and for their admission to a share in the federal councils on an equal footing with the original States, at as early periods as may be consistent with the general interest."*

 

Also known as the Freedom Ordinance, the Northwest Ordinance is a rock-solid example of the nonsectarian religious predicate embraced as constitutional law.  When the Articles of Confederation was replaced by a new constitution, the Northwest Ordinance was passed again and became effective under the Constitution.  George Washington signed the Northwest Ordinance back into law on August 7, 1789.  The ordinance also prohibited slavery in any new state, and Article III specified that "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education, shall forever be encouraged."**

 

"During this same period of time (July 17 to August 7, 1789), the same men who had implemented the Northwest Ordinance were writing the First Amendment to the Constitution [prohibiting government officials from interfering with religious freedom, printing press and education competition]."***

 

In 1792, James Madison, in his Essay, Who Are the Keepers of the People's Liberties?, said, "Although all men are born free, and all nations might be so, yet too true it is, that slavery has been the general lot of the human race.  Ignorant--they have been cheated; asleep--they have been surprised; divided--the yoke has been forced upon them.  But what is the lesson?  That because the people may betray themselves, they ought to give themselves up, blindfold, to those who have an interest in betraying them?  Rather conclude that the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united."  Madison served as the fourth president of the United States and is considered to be the principal author of the United States Constitution.  In 1788, he wrote over a third of the Federalist Papers, still the most influential commentary on the Constitution.  James Madison wrote the first ten amendments to the Constitution, also known as the Bill of Rights.  

 

The Declaration of Independence condemned slavery, but it took a war to make it enforceable.  On January 1, 1863, near the end of that war, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that reversed its momentum.

 

"The consequence is, that happiness of society is the first law of every government.  The people have a right to insist that this rule be observed; and are entitled to demand a moral security that the legislature will observe it.  If they have not the first right, they are slaves; if they have not the second right [moral security], they are, every moment, exposed to slavery" (U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, Lectures, 1790-91).


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Phillis Wheatley

1753? - 1784

 

*Education Resources Information Center website, ED285786.  Teaching about the US Constitution and the Northwest Ordinance.

**http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Webster

***David Barton, Education and the Founding Fathers (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 1993), 4.

****http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation...

 

Image from http://evolutionofpaper.blogspot.com/2010/02/african-american-literary-firsts...

 

NOTE ~ more information on Wheatley at http://www.enotes.com/his-excellency and http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/whea-phi.htm

 

American Principle Six: The Written Constitution Established By Americans Is a Tool For Governing

Governments derive "their just powers

from the consent of the governed."

Declaration of Independence

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We, the people, have as our guide God-honoring principles for directing the use of government power.  When, during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln dedicated the field where thousands gave their lives at Gettysburg, he concluded, "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth" (The Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863).

 

Americans established government when covenanting to share a small portion of their God-given rights to use force and keep thieves out of the corncrib.  It is the tax revenues provided by the people that give government its power.  

 

The tool is to be used in ways to achieve the goals spelled out philosophically in the Preamble:  "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare [meaning common needs that do not conflict with or hamper the development of the work ethic and personal self-reliance] and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

 

Some delegates to the Constitutional Convention believed these principles of the Declaration of Independence for guiding government action would prevail without amending the Constitution because many states had already adopted a Bill of Rights.  Obviously the delegates did not anticipate the pervasiveness of the federal judiciary as it has since developed.  Ultimately the Founding Fathers at the state level made a most significant contribution by insisting that the nation's Constitution be amended by a Bill of Rights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A full discussion of these vital American Principles can be found in my book, Restoring Education Central to American Greatness.

 

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Our Hands Are Tied ... By Teacher Unions

The loss of citizen control over what our nation’s youth are taught in the behavioral studies hinges on two teachers’ tenure contract paragraphs demanded by union bosses when negotiating with local school boards.  The first devastating paragraph provides teacher tenure guarantees that supersede the authority of school administrators to replace employees.  The second harmful paragraph makes it a crime to disclose bad teacher performance to the public or to other schools that are considering hiring the teacher until costly and lengthy legal proceedings have approved such disclosure.

Professionals like medical doctors, engineers, plumbers, and airline pilots—vital to our society—do not have tenure guarantees.  Yet what is being taught to America’s youth is of even greater importance.

The unionization of teachers and accompanying tenure law have enabled a small cadre of radicals to enforce their attacks against God in education. Newt Gingrich stated:  “Those who want absolute proof you cannot teach American history honestly and accurately without reference to God, go to the Lincoln Memorial and read where in Lincoln’s second inaugural, March 1865, he referred to God fourteen times and used two quotes from the Bible.”

Benjamin Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania to the second Continental Congress and signer of the Constitution of the United States, wrote about the First Principle in his Articles of Belief:  “ I believe there is one supreme, most perfect Being …  Also when I stretch my imagination through and beyond our system of planets, beyond the visible fixed stars themselves, into that space that is [in] every way infinite, and conceive it filled with suns like ours, each with a chorus of worlds forever moving around him; then this little ball on which we move, seems, even in my narrow imagination, to be almost nothing, and myself less than noghing, and of no sort of consequence … That I may be preserved from atheism … Help me, O Father!... For all Thy innumerable benefits; for life, and reason … My good God, I thank thee!”

Benjamin Franklin, “Articles of Belief,” in The American Ideal of 1776, ed. Hamilton Albert Long(Philadelphia:  Heritage Books, 1963), p. 5.

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Proclamation of Thanksgiving

This proclamation set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving.  It sets apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise."

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By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

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Fantasy vs. Reality

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In the middle of a hillside surrounded by beautiful homes was a swampland that absorbed the surface water coming down from the properties above. This swampy area was filled with dirt and resulted in serious flooding below it. The goal of the neighbors living below was to solve the problem without an expensive lawsuit. The developer of the swampland was confronted with the truth. Knowing the historic consequences of rejecting truth, the developer agreed with reality. At considerable expense, he provided a large trench to collect and reroute the water away from the development. His acknowledgment of the timeless laws of creation’s nature caused him to solve the problem and avoid the consequences that come when truth is rejected.

Policies consistent with the truth provide significant benefits for states and nations as well.

Ideas for decision making have one of two origins—either materialistic and mortal or a basis upon reality of everlasting truth, according to God’s design.  The Word of the God of creation and creation’s nature has strangely disappeared from the lexicon of public education.  Conversely, those who persist in the fantasy of revisionist morality (moral relativism) and a central government that compromises the people’s right to be fully informed have, in fact, ignored the irreversible laws of creation’s nature.

William_blackstone

William Blackstone

1723-1780

Author of Commentaries on the Laws of England

 

William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England were used by Abraham Lincoln and by students of law into the 1920s.  Blackstone said: “Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws [principles] of his Creator …  These laws laid down by God are the eternal immutable laws of good and evil … This law of nature dictated by God Himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other.  It is binding over the entire globe, in all countries, and at all times:  no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.”

 (William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765, 38-40)

 

 

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