Filed under: American Principles

Revisionism In the Soft Sciences

The collective political power of teacher unions, established by legislative and judicial acceptance, has enabled them to prevent curriculum control by elected school boards and superintendents hired to administer the system.  

 

Even though tenure laws enable teachers in the hard sciences (math, engineering, chemistry, physics, and so forth) to get by with dumbed down approaches to learning, the harm done is less than in the soft sciences.  Whether or not the researcher or teacher is a Bible-believer, the conclusions drawn in the hard sciences tend to be the same because proof is determined by observing consistently repeatable and immutable laws of creation's nature.  Misrepresentations are typically exposed and rejected as a result of our free enterprise system, which thrives on competition and the consumer's right to choose from products that come from the hard sciences.

 

In contrast, conclusions drawn in the soft sciences--such as literature, news editing, education strategies, political science, life-origins biology, history, law, social studies, arts, and ecology--differ starkly between creationist and evolutionist instructors.  The differences include the acceptance or rejection of moral certainties, an honest or dishonest rendition of history, and respect or disregard for parental authority and for the Constitution itself.  When an evolutionist instructs a student year after year, the student's ability to separate truth from non-truth and to appreciate the value of moral law and the traditional family becomes seriously impaired.

 

Not surprising, an Ames, Iowa, public school board member complained:  "I know the Legislature likes to talk about local control, but what I am getting [at] is that … we really don't have local control."*

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*Teresa Kay Albertson, "School District Cuts Not as Bad as Feared," The Tribune(Ames, IA), January 18, 2009, A3.

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American Education Philosophy Corrupted

Those who champion the atheistic-secular concept of open-mindedness use it to justify exclusivity for imposing their God-rejecting life view upon captive classroom students.  "Not only must school teachers and principles be 'exemplars of open-mindedness and free inquiry, but severally and collectively, they must be prepared to proclaim their faith in that open-mindedness and free inquiry.'"  Here we must hearken to Dewey:  "The administrator will… realize that public education is essentially education of the public: directly, through teachers and students… in the transformation of society [into a God-rejecting, socialistic society]."*

 

Atheistic-secular demands that "school teachers and principals be exemplars of open-mindedness [in] the transformation of society" undermine the moral foundations of civil society.  The justification for a tax on the people for education, in a representative republic, requires that the curriculum promote foundational moral boundaries.  The constitutions of the Soviet Union, China and Cuba proclaimed liberty.  But in the absence of a moral predicate providing certainties for Constitutional law--such as provided in the American Declaration of Independence and Northwest Ordinance, they rule by what Solon of Athens called "incalculable and changeable decrees."**

 

Prior to the leftist takeover, the National Education Association published God-honoring, character-building booklets for students and parents as recently as 1950.  For example, A Golden Treasury from the Bible, contained twenty-four Bible verses, including Psalm 1; Proverbs 20:1; Exodus 20 (the Ten Commandments); Romans 12; John 3:16, 6:23, 14:1-4 and 15:1-4; 1 Corinthians 13; and Ecclesiastes 12:1, "remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth."

 

In contrast to the old European secular philosophy, the American philosophy of education requires that all prominent views, including the atheistic-secular view, be introduced, but that they are taught in the context of the history of their outcomes.  This is seen in the resolution proposed by both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and adopted by the newly founded University of Virginia (see Chapter 10 of Restoring Education Central to American Greatness).  Their resolution identifies the great need of our day, stressing citizen responsibility and the need for a thorough knowledge of historic American foundations.

 

The education guidelines set forth for the University of Virginia emphasize that "all students shall be 'inculcated' with the basic American principles for government," and, "None should be inculcated which are incompatible with those on which the Constitution of this States, and of the United States were genuinely based, in the common opinion."  The resolution also stated that the faculty had a standard of responsibility and were required to teach affirmatively these unique American principles.  Only after they had done so were they to teach the conflicting principles as such, judging them by the soundness of the American principles that served as a basis.***  These principles are detailed in Chapter 10 of Restoring Education Central to American Greatness.

 

Faithful school boards and administrators take seriously the fact that youthful trust, inexperience and vulnerability to exploitation by the enemies of the family and self-government require that the learning environment be protected.  God has given mankind a wonderful mind to use and explore the universe, with but one exception:  we are not to use our minds to absorb the details and wiles (deceptive snares) of evil (Genesis 3:13; Isaiah 5:15-16, 20; Romans 16:19; and James 1:12-17).

 

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*James Allen Johnson, "A Note on Academic Freedom: Schoolmen Must Declare Their Faith," Phi Delta Kappan, 44:185-88 (January, 1963), in Robert Hoffman, Foundations of American Education (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1970), 192.

**Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 2, The Life of Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939), 118.

***Nathaniel F. Cabell, Early History of the University of Virginia as contained in the "Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph B. Cabell" (n.p.: Richmond, Virginia, 1856), 339.  Repeated in Hamilton Albert Long, The American Ideal of 1776, Your American Heritage Books, 141-44, 147.

 

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The Emergence of Teacher Tenure Law

Teacher tenure law was brought from Europe to America with the founding of the American Association of University Professors in 1915.  Their first president, Professor John Dewey (1859-1952) was a published atheist.  Dewey reminded conferees, "To have failed to undertake these initial demands would have been cowardly."*

 

The abuse of academic freedom and teacher tenure guarantees is rooted in the old European secular philosophy.  John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy point out that, when Darwinian advocates coupled their "origin and destiny of man" theory with the authoritarianism of "German graduate methods [faculty independence]… academic freedom became a cause celebrate [highly controversial]."**  According to Darwinian militants, "There is no fixed limit or perfect form of knowledge and, that on the contrary, truth is always tentative."***

 

The harmful impact of teacher tenure guarantees arises from the use of law (government power) to shelter teachers from accountability to the public for what they teach.  "The obligations of the teacher are direct to truth, and the teacher who, in order to please anybody, suppresses important information, or says things he knows are not true, or refrains from saying things that need to be said in the interest of truth, betrays his calling and renders himself unworthy to belong to the company of teachers."****

 

John Dewey is recognized as a key leader of the Teachers Union, Local 5, which was organized in 1916 as an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in New York City.  The union's principal target was the repeal of the Lusk Laws, statutes that allowed for the revocation of a teacher's license "if he is not of good moral character--or if by act or utterance he shows that he will not support the Constitution of the State or of the United States of America.*****

 

This belligerent breed of social engineers gradually pushed its way into the leadership of government-administered education.  The group also included Professor John Dewey.  He was the first president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and was one of the signers of the first Humanist Manifesto.  He also served as honorary president of the National Education Association (NEA) after it came under leftist control.

 

These authoritarians demand taxpayer-funded tenure guarantees, the means to finance and empower their war against citizen self-rule and liberty.  To achieve their goal, they must have the freedom to turn the minds of students away from the beliefs of their parents and traditional American values.

 

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*John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education Transition (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 310.

**Ibid., 296.

***Ibid., 306.

****W. T. Couch, Academic Freedom (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1995), 1; quoted at a conference titled "Fifty Years After Russell Kirk's Academic Freedom:  The Future of the Liberal Arts in America," Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, February 2-6, 2005.

*****Kheel Center for Labor Management, Teachers Union of the City of New York. Records, 1921-42, Collection Number: 5445, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY, http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/KCL05445.html

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The Enemy of the Foundation for American Law

Phyllis Schlafly's The Supremacists:  The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, published in 2004, documents scores of devastating decisions that flow directly or indirectly from the exploitation and contrivance of Marbury v. Madison and the Everson v. Board of Education precedents.  The harm is compounded by neglect of the Tenth Amendment, which places the authority over laws with the states, counties and cities according to the will of the local body politic:  "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."*

 

The following is additional documentation from Phyllis Schlafly's book.

 

1945-47 (pages 105-6,155-59,175)  Laws protecting Americans from fraudulent disinformation about Communists working in America were overturned.  This, in large part, has led to the arrogance of radical professors and the radicalization of students starting in the 1960s.  Many of these students are now teaching in lower-level, taxpayer-funded government schools throughout America.

 

1953 (pages 17-34)  Judges make war against public acclaim of God, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments and prayer.

 

1964 (pages76-81) Liberal judges cripple law enforcement.

 

1966 (pages 57-64)  Judges overturn laws prohibiting the marketing of pornography.

 

1973 (pages 65-75)  Judges adopt the radical feminist agenda, requiring all state legislators to accept the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade.

 

1985 (pages 92-96)  Judges assume the authority as judges to impose taxes on the public.

 

1993 (pages 35-46)  Judges war against marriage and the family, established and upheld for thousands of years.

 

1999 (pages 47-56)  Judges undermine US sovereignty by paying deference to the agendas and laws of foreign nations, including laws that prohibit capital punishment and give the citizen franchise to felons.

 

2003 (pages 69 and 141)  Liberal judges attack the Boy Scouts and other gender-specific organizations.

 

Resting upon legal precedents reaching back to 1945, the American Civil Liberties Union and leftist teacher union bosses are reaching beyond their control of public education to war against God and American values elsewhere.  For example, the Teachers [Union} Association of California spent $1.25 million in opposition to a Proposition 8 amendment that supported the marriage between one man and one woman.  That $1.25 million came from teachers' union dues.  According to Reg Weaver, outgoing president of the National Education Association, one-third of the NEA union members are Republicans and one-third are Independents.  "Each California teacher pays $922 each year in California Teachers Association dues" (Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2008, cited by the November Education Reporter, St. Louis, Missouri).

 

Stare decisis is no excuse for preserving bad court precedent.  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.  The practice of preserving court precedent was never intended to be a mandate for national suicide.

 

Judge Robert Bork observed that the courts, and especially the Supreme Court, have become "the enemy of traditional culture," in areas including "speech, religion, abortion, sexuality, welfare, public education and much else."  He continued, "It is not too much to say that the suffocating vulgarity of popular culture is in large measure the work of the Court."**

 

Full

*http://www.campaignforliberty.com/pillars/usconstitution.php

**Jeffrey Rosen, "Obstruction of Judges," The New York Times, August 11, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/magazine/11JUDGES.html?pagewanted=all

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Earl Warren Court of 1953-1969

The harm that has resulted from the activist Earl Warren Court (Supreme Court 1953 - 69) is beyond measure.

 

"On August 7, 1956, the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security held a hearing on the 'Limitation of Appellate Jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court' [arising from decisions by the Warren Court] at which Senator William E. Jenner testified:  'There was a time when the Supreme Court conceived its function to be the interpretation of the law.  For some time now, the Supreme Court has been making law--substituting its judgment for the judgment of the legislative branch.  We witness today the spectacle of a Court constantly changing the law, and even changing the meaning of the Constitution, in an apparent determination to make the law of the land what the Court thinks it should be.'  Echoing the testimony of others, Senator Jenner continued:  'The Senate was wrong.  The House of Representatives was wrong.  The Secretary of State was wrong.  The Department of Justice was wrong.  The State legislatures were wrong.  The State courts were wrong.  The prosecutors, both Federal and State, were wrong.  The juries were wrong.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation was wrong.  The Loyalty Review Board was wrong.  The New York Board of Education was wrong.  The California bar examiners were wrong…  The Ohio Committee on Un-American Activities was wrong.  Everybody was wrong except the attorneys for the Communist conspiracy and the majority of the United States Supreme Court.'"*

 

As long as the court fails to restore the First Amendment, intended to prevent, among other things, establishment of government employment guarantees, radical government teachers will continue to rip into the moral fabric of the American mind.  The Ten Commandments, featured on the walls of the US Supreme Court Building, will continue to be found and removed from schools and other public buildings throughout the nation.  Although this is being vigorously protested, American foundations in God-honoring faith were largely absent from the new Visitor Center that has now become a gateway to the Capitol Building in Washington DC.  Even the words "religion and morality" were stripped from the education mandate of the Northwest Ordinance displayed in the Visitor Center.**

 

The war against the Judeo-Christian foundation for American law, self-government and the spirit of liberty extends beyond the censorship of American history and foundational American beliefs from public school textbooks.  No nation, however great, can withstand the politicization of the soft sciences that comes with the establishment of teacher union tenure laws.  "All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."***  Perhaps the greatest damage has been the loss of quality education taught unabashedly by pro-family, pro-life and pro-American teacher majority.  Good teachers simply submit or leave the profession.  The soft sciences in schools saddled by tenure laws are not the only victim.  Student abilities in the hard sciences have suffered.****

 

Judicialactivism

*Phyllis Schlafly, The Supremacists:  The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, Dallas, TX:  Spence Publishing Company, 2004, p. 108.  This highly recommended book may be purchased at http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2004/june04/psrjune04.html

**http://www.onenewsnow.com/Journal/editorial.aspx?id=315560

***John Dalberg, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, an English historian refuting the dogma of papal infallibility, April 3, 1887.

****http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-25/us/students.science.math_1_math-and-scienc...:US

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Tighten Up the Language

Let's tighten up the language and clear the air about the basics for public education.  The language of secular open-mindedness along with Darwinian origin and meaning of life have proven to be diabolical enemies of the rule of law.  The underpinning for the rule of law rests in the July 4, 1776 Declaration that gave birth to the United States of America.  All men "… are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."  The Declaration of Independence is universal and immortal in scope.  Along with the Declaration, the citizen's Bill of Rights (of which government employees cannot legitimately violate) added later to the Constitution provides the design.  The Constitution is the tool for implementing that design.

 

Appellate court judges need not bow down to atheistic secular legalese.  The impartial non-sectarian Supreme role of a Higher Authority, emphasized in the Declaration, is justifiably appropriate when writing a court opinion.

 

It is needful that we reject the spirit of rebellion and enjoin the spirit of truth that empowers man to storm the strongholds of evil.  It is spiritual wisdom that enabled this nation to become the most blessed civilization in history.  The restoration of spiritual glory--the potential to reassert our culture's values of freedom, education, prosperity and truth--is at hand.

 

Using twisted renderings of the Bill of Rights, leftist lawyers and tenured radicals in education have forced Americans--good teachers, as well as the citizen majority--into submission.  They terrorize by denigrating the reputation of teachers who dare to disagree and endangering the financial solvency of those who must hire expensive lawyers to defend traditional American values.  Secular militants have shut down ideological competition by preventing religious, political and academic freedom on many campuses throughout the nation.  Militants who oppose citizen self-reliance and limited government in America are effectively muting the voices of tens of millions of concerned citizens.

 

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Exegesis of the Constitution

 

The importance of firmness in retaining the original meaning of the Constitution for judiciary, legislative and administrative separation merits repeated emphasis.  The duty of unelected judges is to settle disputes based upon the Constitution and Precedents consistent with the Constitution.  Responding to the question, "Is there a role for politics in our judicial system?" Atonin Scalia, who has now served for over twenty years on the Supreme Court, said:  "The absolute worst violation of a judge's oath is to decide a case based on a partisan principle or philosophical basis, rather than what the law [states]."*

 

Prior to the Everson v. Board of Education decision in 1947, the First Amendment protected religious liberty.  Liberals going to court to get the Ten Commandments removed from public property would have been wasting their time.  A disruptive student who objects to the statement "Jesus is the reason for the season" on t-shirts in the public school would not have threatened a lawsuit.  The force of government was on the side of the people's civic right to use their institutions, including public education, to proclaim belief in the nonsectarian God of creation.

 

The First Amendment upholds the unalienable right of the people to share their religious beliefs and make comparisons.  With this knowledge they can then choose what appears to be best.  This competition between the religions strengthens the Higher Authority "government of laws, and not of men" consensus among voters.

 

"On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed" (June 12, 1823, Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography Notes on the State of Virginia, Public and Private Papers, Addresses and Letters, New York: The Library of American, 1984).

 

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*V.P. Price "Are There Too Many Lawyers?" Parade, September 14, 2008, 9.

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John Marshall: A Government of Laws and Not of Men

A related cause of judicial incompetence is the foolishness of judges who have closeted the true role of the nation's basis for law--the non-sectarian Biblical principles of the Declaration of Independence.

 

John Marshall wrote the landmark 1803 Marbury v. Madison opinion that inaugurated the concept of judicial review.  He served as chief justice of the Supreme Court from February 4, 1801 to July 4, 1835.  Marshall saw the importance of biblical morality in civic affairs as did the other Founding Fathers.

 

When writing the Marbury v. Madison opinion, Marshall said:  "The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men… That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis, on which the whole American fabric has been erected.  The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental.  And as the authority, from which they proceed, is supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be permanent."*

 

The meaning and intent of Chief Justice Marshall's statement--"The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men"--is clear.  "The government of laws" is based upon impartial Higher Authority moral law, "and not of men."  The benefit is that "government of laws, and not of men" is anchored in the timeless principles revealed by Scripture and proven beneficial in the American experience.  This stands in contrast to arbitrary rule and oppression that follow governments "of men," meaning rule by privileged authoritarians.  Application of this basic understanding preserves the all-important predicate for the safe and impartial application of government power.  It is the "rule of law," emphasized by Moses, that identifies with the desirable outcomes that prevail over circumstances and diverse cultural environments.

 

The rule or "government of laws" occurs when the voting sovereigns base their preferences for government on the wisdom that is available from the Creator and the self-evident boundaries of creation's nature.  The people then elect like-minded representatives to serve as lawmakers.  In contrast, self-righteous liberals, especially law professors who are given captive audiences (not held accountable to those who pay their salaries), fool people by teaching them that God has no relevance.  Citizens and judges must reject the wisdom of creation's God.  Then hierarchical elites slip into the vacuum as god, and society experiences the tyranny of the rule or "government of man."

 

John Marshall's Higher Authority basis for rejecting the atheistic secular government "of men" also concurs in full with the public standard of Benjamin Franklin whose call for prayer was adopted by the delegates at the Constitutional Convention.  In this regard, Henry Steele Commager, eminent historian of the twentieth century, points to the Creator-based Declaration of Independence as the source of America's unique principles of government, and refers to America's new political system for the vindication of God-given rights as "matchless logic" and of "permanent" rather than "transient" value.**

 

Unabashed belief in the providence of the universal and impartial God of creation, as a political principle, is fully American.  This was the source of the courage of the Founding Fathers when risking confrontation by the greatest military force on earth at the time.  The Higher Authority standard for morality in matters of law is indelibly written in American history:  "The Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions… And for the support of this Declaration [of Independence], with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

 

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*http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/democrac/9.htm

**Henry Steele Commager, forward to McGuffey's Sixth Reader (New York: The American Library, 1962), xiv.

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Following the Rules for a Successful Government

All tools that deliver power--automobiles, atom bombs, governments and so forth--must have a moral predicate to guide their use.  The automobile has a steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedal that enable man to guide the tool for achieving a desired destination.  Speed limits, turning rules and stop signs are the predicate, the morally significant basis for safe travel.  Success is assured if the driver is educated to be responsible to avoid pitfalls and proceeds accordingly.

 

The  Constitution, which serves as the tool for governing, has seven articles with short subsections and a preamble that starts with the sovereigns under God, "We the People."  The moral predicate for guiding the use of the Constitution is the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights that was added later to the Constitution.  The power to finance government flows from the mammoth equivalent of a local Main Street bank, the taxpayer-funded public treasury.  Even small, privately-owned banks need the system of specific policy hurdles and audits to minimize theft by employees as well as decreasing the danger of authorizing bad loans.  For this same reason, many obstacles and verifiable checkpoints were included in the Constitution.

 

Beyond the need for internal checks for monitoring the proper use of the public treasury is the need for the principles of the Creator-based Declaration of Independence, later expanded and codified for the citizens' Bill of Rights.  The Bill of Rights provides specific protections against the violation of citizens' rights as the sovereigns under God over government by government employees.  This is necessary to protect society from pretender-gods who, as government officials, interfere with man's "unalienable rights" and industry.

 

Bald_eagle_and_declaration_of_independence

In his Farewell Address to the nation, President Washington said:  "Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts.  One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown."*

 

Liberals in our midst understand the value of stealthy, cradle-to-grave government (socialism) as a tool for subduing, ruling and exploiting the people.  They object to the impartial Creator-based principles, the absolutes for constitutional law that keep government on the side of citizen self-rule for liberty.  

 

"If we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality [allow leftist secular militants to dictate what students are taught], and recklessly destroy the… Constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury our glory in profound obscurity" (Daniel Webster, January 18, 1782-October 24, 1852, an attorney and statesman who argued several cases before the John Marshall court).**

 

Let us reverse the tragic move to atheistic secular jurisprudence!  Morality of the God-honoring Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights are the design, and the Constitution is the tool for implementing that design.

 

 

 

*http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

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

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Government by Written and Permanent Law: Liberty vs Oppression

"Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions, a government of FORCE [arbitrary and changeable decrees imposed by authoritarians], 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" (Alexander Hamilton, Tully Papers, 1794).

 

In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts:  "Governments in world history have so often abused the power, and people have suffered because of it.  The framers decided they were going to lay down some rules to try to keep that from happening--that's what the Constitution is.  Of all the major written constitutions in history, it is the shortest.  It's not an elaborate code.  They were laying down basic principles that they wanted to endure and it is timeless… our Constitution is different from a lot of others.  Many countries that have constitutions--they're really just political documents."**

 

Corruption is limited when the development of law comes from the people unless, of course, they become estranged from God and the moral certainties of creation's nature.  When this happens the people become vulnerable to exploitation and paternalistic authoritarians.

 

"In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

Thomas Jefferson

 

The American Principles One through Fifteen, Chapter 1, in the Restoring Education Central To American Greatness book that we have listed in previous blogs are changeless, practical and appropriate for government "by written and permanent law."  That "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

 

George Washington reminded future generations that they cannot neglect the personal responsibility for upholding the moral predicate for law:  "It is easy to foresee, that from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth ('keep alive the spirit of Liberty'); as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively directed.*

 

Wethepeopleimage2

 

 

*Chief Justice John Roberts, discussing the role of Constitutional American politics with C-Span host Lamb on August 5, 2006.

**George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796, in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources 1745-1799, published by the authority of Congress, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, vol. 35, 214-38.

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

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

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