Filed under: American Principles

Introduction I

The 2012 first edition blog of the above book picked up over 9,000 repeat users.  Directly and indirectly, we were able to answer several hundred questions.  Encouraging responses came from many.  Perhaps the most exciting was an email from Judge Robert Bork's secretary.  

 

As reported in the Ames (Iowa) Tribune, a March, 2008 legislative proposal for union contract negotiators that would make it even harder to fire harmful teachers caused "grave concerns" among school administrators.  Margaret Buckton, chief lobbyist for the Iowa Association of School Boards, said, "Attempts to remove a teacher can last years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars."  "Grave concerns" is right.  Documented in the Restoring Education Central to American Greatness book, a significantly higher percentage of public school teachers send their children to private schools than do non-teacher parents.  They see the harmful impact that secular absolutism is having upon students' minds and values.  Power-hungry ideologues are now soliciting and ruining a new generation of Americans "with words calculated to destroy the youthful faith in their heritage" (Grand Jury Presentment, 11th Judicial District in and for Story County, Iowa, December, 1968).  Undoubtedly, restoring education central to American greatness is now the greatest singular need in America.

 

The Founding Fathers knew from history that centralized power left unchecked leads to tyranny.  They instituted the Second Amendment to keep guns in the hands of the general public to discourage the use of guns by radical politicians, but this does not keep them from being habitual truth-trashers.

 

To justify taxpayer funding, American history and the Judeo-Christian influence upon the Founding Fathers must be unabashedly taught.  Only with this knowledge can new generations of Americans identify truth-trashers and prevent the deceptive advance of oppressive government.  Those demanding curriculum diversity that undermines the absolutes gleaned from history (traditional American foundations) can pay for their own schools and seek a following, just as must other separatist groups.  The demand of traditionalists is based upon the justification for any education tax being placed upon Americans in the FIRST PLACE.  No other argument is needed, but it must be firmly and uncompromisingly imposed.  "A house divided against itself cannot stand" (Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858).  A nation cannot survive if its citizens continue to fund revisionist morality and anti-American rhetoric masquerading as education.

 

Subjects Covered By

Restoring Education Central to American Greatness

 

Part I: Government

Chapter 1

  • Immortal Principles Central to Liberty and American Greatness

Chapter 2

  • The Sovereignty of Man under the Impartial God of Creation over Government

Chapter 3

  • Man May Prosper in Freedom If He Chooses to Honor the Will of Creation’s God

Chapter 4

  • America’s Civic Religion and the Deeper Personal Faith of Our Nation’s Founders

Chapter 5

  • Government by Written and Permanent Law

Chapter 6

  • Defilement of the Judiciary

 

Part II: Education

Chapter 7

  • Academic Freedom and Teacher Tenure History

Chapter 8 

  • Consequences of the Unionization of Government Teachers

Chapter 9

  • The Education Nightmare

Chapter 10

  • Education That Is Profoundly American

 

Part III: Liberty and Responsibility

Chapter 11

  • Appeasement Will Not Work

Chapter 12

  • Our Strategy for Victory: Political Action—Citizen Power

 

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Responsible Citizen Self-rule and Liberty

By placing their faith in the principles advanced by creation's God for education, Americans achieved liberty from brutal rulers and the history of big government.

 

Benjamin Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania to the second Continental Congress and signer of the Constitution of the United States, wrote this 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…  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!"*

John Quincy Adams, America's sixth president:  "The law given from Sinai was civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code; it contained many statutes… of universal application--laws essential to the existence of men in society [of the United States], and most of which have been enacted by every nation which ever professed any code of laws."**

To justify taxpayer-funded education, instruction must detail the civil and moral absolutes found in the Ten Commandments but rightly avoid controversy of religious codes that are the domain of church denominations.  The depth of spiritual conviction of these absolutes is spelled out in the Creator-based Declaration of Independence, religious liberty (First Amendment), and the Bill of [human] Rights law.  Citizen equality as sovereigns under God over government is demonstrated when randomly chosen citizens serve as the supreme court for judgment of guilt or innocence in criminal trials conducted by government officials.  The above values are the design, and the Constitution is the tool to implement that design.

 

The preamble to the Constitution, "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."

 

"Our investigation indicates that the main reason for youthful rebellion and the attitude of carelessness in student morals is their loss of confidence in the wisdom embedded in their heritage.  Failure to dearly implant these truths detaches future generations from past experience, the very basis of education" (Grand Jury Presentment, 1968-69, Problems in Higher Education, the Eleventh Judicial of Iowa).

 

First-amendment-rated-e-for-everyone-225x300

*http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/ben-franklin-quotes-1.html

**http://quotes.practicalmanliness.com/john-quincy-adams/138/

 

 

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The Sovereignty of the American Citizen

Those among us who choose to exchange declining relationships and health for the temporary excitements of moral revisionism is one thing.  Exercising that diversity in private is their right.  Those demanding the right, however, to take over behavioral curriculum in taxpayer-funded public schools is another.  The war they have imposed, by pressuring liberals in government, must be confronted and won.  America is a Republic!  The "living Constitution" idea of changeable decrees imposed by liberal judges (1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision) always becomes despotism because power in the hands of man, over time, becomes corrupt.

 

"Our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.  And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.  Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority. And the preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks, is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country" (John Adams, Vice-President under George Washington, and second president of the United States, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1766 from The Works of John Adams, …by his grandson, Charles F. Adams, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 10 volumes).

 

The sovereignty of man under the impartial and higher authority of creation's God over government is traceable from the Bible to the Magna Carta, 1215, signed at the point of a sword by a frightened king.  It is likewise traceable to the English Bill of Rights, 1689, signed by a would-be brutal king.  We then have the God-honoring American Declaration of Independence, 1776, the War of Independence, and then the Constitution highlighted by the First Amendment and the Bill of [human] Rights which details what servants in government must never be allowed to violate.

 

The Common Law jury system, resting final authority in the people, came alive in America on March 4, 1789, the date Congress set for the start of the new ConstitutionThis is the most important feature of the American Constitution.  George Washington became our first president under the Constitution on April 30, 1789.

 

Revelations of the American Judeo-Christian heritage are singularly qualified to foster personal responsibility, citizen self-government and prosperity.  People do not steal the fruits of other men's labor.  The community helps those few who are not able to work or are indigent for other reasons.  Reputations for honesty do not rest in the words of evil gossips.  Taxpayer-funded educators support the character of the traditional family.

 

God does not control men; He protects those who will listen.  By applying God-honoring interpretations of Scripture and being sensitive to His Spirit, man becomes self-controlled (Hebrews 13:18-20).  "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths" (Proverbs 3:5-6). 

 

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The First Amendment is the Most Important Amendment

The most important of all the amendments to our Constitution is the First Amendment:  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

 

In the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision, the Supreme Court majority discarded the principle for control of government by law (government limited by laws instituted by citizen sovereigns).  They displaced it with control of government by man (top down authoritarianism).  Quoting Alexander Hamilton:  "Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions, a government of FORCE [changeable decrees by authoritarian man], and a government of LAWS [governments that derive 'their just powers' from the consent of the governed], the first is the definition of despotism--the last Liberty" (Tully Papers, 1794).  These two approaches to governing society have been at war against one another throughout human history.

 

The Everson v. Board of Education decision clearly compromised "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…" The judges altered the Constitution at the core of its meaning.  Power-hungry judges and politicians, along with fellow travelers in education, the media and monopoly union bosses, are now working overtime.  They are leveraging the judge-created right that empowers liberals to impose government establishment monopoly in public education, preventing the competition of ideas by moral religions.  The power to impose false renditions of truth upon  captive government classrooms and poison youthful minds is being used to confuse, marginalize and rule new generations.

 

"For many years psychologists and educators have recognized the processes by which thought and behavioral patterns acquired in youth become the basis for adult motivation.  In modern times thoughtful observers have become progressively aware that moral, social, and political concepts implanted during the time of mental immaturity not only participate in the conduct of later life, but, once acquired, such concepts become dominant and often unalterable in the adult" (Story County Grand Jury, in and for the 11th Judicial District of Iowa, 1969).

 

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The First Amendment

The most important of all the amendments is the First Amendment.  This is demonstrably true.  It was not until secular militants were leveraged by the 1947 Supreme Court's Everson v. Board of Education decision that the role of moral absolutes ceased to be standard in government schools.

 

On September 25, 1789, Congress requested unanimously that President Washington proclaim a national day of thanksgiving and prayer.  This is the same Congress that on the same day approved the final draft of the First Amendment to protect the people's rights to religious freedom from suppression by government administrators, judges and legislators.  President Washington proclaimed on October 3, 1798:  "Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor…  Now, therefore, I do recommend… that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed…  And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions… And to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."*

 

The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to emphasize the proper use of the Constitution as a tool to protect and uphold religious freedom.  This freedom enables the religious denominations to compete in public, including education.  This, in turn, sharpens the importance of moral absolutes in the minds of citizens who are the sovereigns under God over government.  For most of our history, the Judeo-Christian basis for citizen self-rule has been vigorously taught.  Non-denominational prayers and the Pledge of Allegiance were practiced in classrooms.  For several decades now the moral religions, most directly Christianity, have been under systematic attack by liberal judges.  Americans can agree with the following quote as long as any conflict between amendments to the Constitution are reconciled by having the First Amendment, in its original meaning up until 1947, upheld as supreme.

 

"A constitution, like any other document, is to be read as a whole.  The court, in the language of the lawyers, 'will take the instrument by its four corners' and read each part in the light of the rest.  Since written constitutions come into effect through popular assent, the meaning intended by the people would be sought by the courts.  The common understanding of the words at the time the language was employed is therefore of cogent significance.  This consideration, however, will not prevent the application of the terms employed to conditions arising later and not contemplated at the time the language was adopted…  There is an ancient rule of statutory construction, coming down through Blackstone, that in seeking the true meaning of legislative language the court will take cognizance of the 'old law, the mischief and the remedy.'  The rule is useful in constitutional construction" (Rosco Pound, Dean of the Law School of Harvard University, Volume III, National Law Library, P. F. Collier & Son Publishers, New York, New York, 1939, 23-24).

 

*http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/GW/gw004.html


 

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Part Eight: Grand Jury Presentment of "Problems in Higher Education"

Portions of the Presentment of the Grand Jury for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa follow, with words added for clarification in brackets.  Supplemental ideas are italicized.

 

Most Important Educational Change Needed

 

1.  Regents' policy changes which will sufficiently define and implement the elimination of moral pollution by faculty and paid speakers will by all suitable means encourage "moral… improvement" (Constitution of the State of Iowa, Article IX, 2nd School… Sec. 3).

 

2.  There is a need for increased emphasis on the American ideal at all levels of education.  We believe this ideal needs to be a continuing emphasis from kindergarten through maturity.  Our revolutionary concepts are a most exciting and important subject.

 

It seems rather clear that the nerve center for society, the power for social revolution, is inherent in the adult electorate rather than in the schools, and that the radical missionaries should be sent to the electorate, not to the captive audience of youthful minds.

 

The idea… that the people of this land should not be trusted with the complexities of education is absurd.  The greatness of America places the educational and political emphasis under the control of the people.  This approach is much safer than providing a haven [tenure guarantees] for… teachers.

 

Our soldiers have been dying for this ideal.  Education, as never before, should clearly teach it.  Even in imperfection, it has achieved greatness for Americans unparalleled in history.  Every individual is important, and the mature public make the decisions over government--something that atheistic, humanist-based governments do not and cannot provide.

 

Right of Taxpayers to Control Education Challenged

 

Who has academic freedom, the parent/taxpayer or the teacher?  Is the parent, who once had academic freedom, now to be deprived because a teacher was hired?  Most agree that anyone can teach what he pleases on his own, but must not [take advantage of his own] academic freedom by robbing taxpayers of their freedom to direct public education in the public's interest, based upon the learning process and established knowledge.

 

Problems Compound If Not Corrected

 

No single level of education should be considered in a vacuum…  But it is going on!  The students of colleges are, after all, the graduates of American elementary and secondary schools.  We, the adults and teachers of today, are the graduates of high schools, colleges, and universities in the recent past.  Not only are various levels of American education interrelated, but the problems also feed back upon one another to produce a complex of relationships that affect us all and must be handled wisely.  In professions such as medicine or architecture, failures soon become apparent and are corrected.  A faulty experiment impacting the socio/political mindset may not be detected for two or three generations, when it is too late to reverse and avoid disaster.

 

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Reaction to the Grand Jury Investigation on Higher Education

Restoring educational traditions central to American greatness provides the sure basis for strong families, prosperity and limited government for, by and of the people.  Many people are in the dark about the God-rejecting worldview now being imposed upon captive student classrooms and as a result, they do not join in opposition. 

 

It was my privilege to chair a Grand Jury for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa that investigated activities at Iowa State University and made several recommendations for changes in higher education.  As noted in a previous blog*, the God-rejecting worldview in American education must be exposed.

 

"Ames, Iowa--(AP)--The Grand Jury wants 'moral pollution'… 'and defamation of our country' (in the Humanities curriculum) stopped" (Denver Post).

 

With a prestigious media network, political, religious and social studies courses, statewide extension offices, and an adult education outreach, universities possessed (and still possess) immense power to shape public opinion.  The president of the university and campus radicals did everything they could to discredit the Grand Jury's work.  Initially, however, news of the Presentment was unimpeded.  The university president and all members of the Iowa Board of Regents except one were out of the state during Christmas break when the Presentment became public.

 

Except for the coverage in the Des Moines Register and a few radical student publications, most news reports were accurate.  Those who were critical were very spirited in their objections.  A January 8, 1969, Des Moines Register headline read, "ISU President Lashes Out at 'Distorted' Report by Jury."  Later, the Iowa State University Press published a book for the Iowa Civil Liberties Union entitled Freedom in Iowa.  This publication showered ISU President Robert Parks and the liberal presidents of the other two universities in Iowa with honors and attacked the work and reputation of several Iowa leaders, past and present, including myself.

 

The Grand Jury Presentment itself was well documented.  One news article reported that the Iowa Civil Liberties Union had decided they would not sue the Grand Jury.  Another paper reported that an ongoing effort had failed to get the new judge, Harvey Uhlenhopp, serving the Eleventh Judicial District, to dismiss the Presentment.  Within two years, Judge Uhlenhopp was elevated to the Iowa Supreme Court.

 

I was concerned that some reporters and editors would misrepresent the Grand Jury Presentment.  Consequently, reporters were told that I would respond to inquiries in writing only, and this brought their interest to a halt.  I personally received approximately one hundred letters from citizens, all of whom praised the jury's work.

 

I was later told that an Iowa State University administrative vice president was briefing the incoming extension course attendees and denigrating the work of the jury.  Eventually, a county extension officer attending one of the on-campus short courses stood up and strongly criticized the vice president's presentation.  His practice of criticizing the jury report ended.

 

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*http://davidanorris.posterous.com/the-healing-of-citizen-paralysis

 

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The Beginning of a Grand Jury Investigation

It was my privilege to chair a Grand Jury for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa that investigated activities at Iowa State University and made several recommendations for changes in higher education.  This study of higher education is even more relevant now than when adopted December 23, 1968.  With the imposition of teacher unions and tenure laws, radicals in the soft sciences now dominate lower-level public education.

 

News reports had made it clear that drugs, immorality and disrespect for constitutional authority had become an ongoing part of the academic menu in our universities.  With about six months left in our term, I suggested to the county attorney, Charles Vanderbur, that the jury investigate what was going on at Iowa State University.  He said, "Dave, I'll do anything I can to help you."  He provided us with tape recordings of campus presentations by radicals.  After hearing the first tape, the jury members gave the go-ahead to undertake the investigation.  The jury's main concern was the education environment and its impact upon the behavioral patterns and decision-making ability of students.

 

My challenge as the foreman was to obtain unanimous agreement for significant recommendations from three Republican and three Democrat jurors.  Several legislative directives for changes in the administration of Iowa's colleges and universities followed the release of the study.

 

Because of tenured radicals embedded in the system, the impact of the Presentment faded within four or five years.  The Grand Jury report received nationwide media attention, and requests for copies of the Presentment came from government officials in Iowa, California and Washington, DC.

 

"As one of the tens of thousands who admire the action of your Grand Jury, I wish to commend  Foreman Norris and his jury for their courageous and true Americanism in focusing public attention on the perverted minority… who would destroy what we have… in America and deliver us unto our enemies" (E. Allen, Burlington, North Dakota, letter to the Nevada, Iowa Journal).

 

"OUT IN IOWA… The jury's report said 'there is a need for increased emphasis at all levels of education of the American ideal.  Our soldiers have been dying for this ideal.  Education as never before should clearly teach it.'  So say we" (from the Boston Record, printed in the Ames Daily Tribune).

 

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A Suggestion For Our Friends In the Judiciary

Looking to the future, at such time as the American people elect Senators and Representatives who are committed to reining in supremacist judges, a plan for "such exceptions," provided for by the Article III, Section 2, should be at hand.  

 

By the authority of Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, the representatives we elect to Congress "shall have power… to constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court." Article III, Section 1, reads:  "The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."  Article III, Section 2, reads:  "The Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under the regulations as the Congress shall make."

 

Congress has limited the courts several times in the past.  Provisions in the Constitution were predetermined to aid in doing just that, regulating the balance of power with necessary exceptions.  These should also be the talking points until necessary corrective change is achieved for today.

 

The following exception would be effective.  Any future court decisions reflecting upon the first ten amendments that are not clearly linked to their meaning, as understood prior to 1947, would be classified as a Supreme Court Interim Opinion or some similar designation.  Going back to 1947 is a heavy lift, but it only applies to future court decisions that hinge upon the so foundational basis for "government of laws, and not of men."  Categories of law that are not related to the first ten amendments would be exempt from the Supreme Court Interim Opinion requirement.  If the legislative branch does not pass laws to solve the problem dealt within a Supreme Court Interim Opinion within a specified period of time (for example, three years), the court decision would expire regardless of the ramifications.

 

Adoption of the Supreme Court Interim Opinion requirement by Congress blends with the legislative and judicial separation of powers without undermining judicial independence, and it is consistent with the constitutional system of checks and balances.  Our representatives in Congress would then bear responsibility for treatment of the problem, and the Supreme Court would be shielded from the bleeding of reprehensible engineering imposed by unelected judges.

 

Going back to the 1947 precedent requirement is a logical time for instituting the Interim Opinion requirement.  It was in 1947 that the Supreme Court majority twisted and undermined the citizens' First Amendment protections from government-established authoritarians.

 

Stare decisis is no excuse for preserving court precedents.  Stare decisis is legal talk for an everyday practice that we all follow.  It simply means that once a decision is implemented, it should be supported for a considerable period of time to see if, in fact, it is helping or, at a minimum, not doing harm.  When a law is proven to be harmful, that law should be reversed.  The practice of preserving court precedent was never intended to be a mandate for national suicide.

 

If there is a better approach than instituting a Supreme Court Interim Opinion requirement for restoring sanity to the judiciary, then have that approach be the public goal.  Determining a better approach is the duty of conservative lawyers and judges, who are better situated to frame a solution.  The recommendation needs to be reasonable and would require an ongoing, nationwide sales campaign until it is successful.  This would best be determined by a citizen Congress composed of conservative lawyers, law professors and judges, convened to make recommendations for restoring the rule of law.  The Congress should involve participants from every state, be privately funded, and meet in secret for the same reasons the Constitutional Convention met in secret.  This Congress would compare in importance to the decision-making phase for the judiciary conducted by the Constitutional Convention.

 

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The Supreme Judge

The Declaration of Independence, unanimously adopted by Congress, made four specific references to political reliance upon Higher Authority.  This was not done hesitatingly.*

 

~  Higher authority is the resource that feeds the branches of liberty, "the laws of Nature and Nature's God"

~ "That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…"

~ "Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions…"

~  "With a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence…"

 

A liberal judge says we make mistakes, but this discussion is not about mere mistakes.  Liberty-loving Americans need to be blunt about this.  What we are talking about is the colossal error of rejecting the universal and impartial Laws of Nature and creation's God that reversed thousands of years of authoritarian exploitation and human deprivation.  We have a National Day of Prayer.  We have paid chaplains in our Congress and military to emphasize the importance of faith.  When the Supreme Court comes out, the crier yells, "God save America."  This was made even more explicit when in 1954, "One nation under God" was added for the invocation of the Pledge of Allegiance.  It is time to expose the fascistic exclusivity of the pagan religion demanded by liberal-minded judges, educators and politicians.

 

John Adams, a preeminent lawyer and Founding Father had something to say about the Author of liberty.  Benjamin Rush wrote in a letter, "I sat next to John Adams in Congress, and upon my whispering to him and asking him if he thought we should succeed in our struggle with Great Britain, he answered me, 'Yes, if we fear God and repent of our sins.'"**

Goddesslibertywatchingdeclaration-of-independence-signing-300x201

 

*For a review of the harmful laws imposed by unelected judges, see Chapter 6 in Restoring Education Central To American Greatness and "High Courts and Misdemeanors" by R.P. George, at http://touchstonemag.com/archives/print.php?id=17-08-026-f.

**Benjamin Rush, "Letters of Benjamin Rush", L.H. Butterfield, editor (NJ: American Philosophical Society, 1951), Vol. I, 532-536, to John Adams on February 24, 1790 (http://www.partyof1776.net/p1776/issues/Sins/contents.html).>

 

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