Filed under: Bible

Education That Is Profoundly American

Sound education rests on respect for the First Principle, namely, the God of Creation is man's benefactor.  Increases in knowledge are made possible by the connecting links of intelligible design. Irrefutable third-grade math, for instance, is a link to the latest reliable advances in the physical sciences.

 

John Jay is thought to be one of the most influential among the Founding Fathers.  He served as president of the first Continental Congress and was the first chief justice of the United States.  When Jay applied for admission to King's College in New York at the age of fourteen, one of the requirements he had to fulfill was to translate the first ten chapters of the Gospel of John from Greek into Latin.*

 

The Founding Fathers recognized that the preservation of the family, self-government, and liberty depends upon applying the timeless and universal principles found in the Bible.  And for Americans to have firsthand knowledge of the Bible, they must be taught to read.  Public school textbooks taught the alphabet through Bible verses that started with each letter.

 

Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, Founding Father and a Signer who arranged  the final draft of the Constitution, wrote "Religion is the only solid basis for good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man toward God" (The Life of Governeur Morris, Jared Sparks, Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1832, Vol. III, p 483, from his "Notes on the Form of a Constitution for France"). **

 

Immigrants from diverse backgrounds came to America and worked peacefully together because they shared a common mind on the issue of human equality, moral law and responsible citizenship.  They wanted no more potentates, or authoritarian clergy, professors or kings.  The Constitution clarified the point, when forbidding titles "of nobility," that could undermine the sovereign authority of the people under God over government (Section 9, article 8).

 

"O Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto:  'In God is our trust.'  And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!" (From The Star-Spangled Banner).***

 

Gouverneur_morris_1752-1816

 

Gouverneur Morris

1725-1816

Founding Father and successful politician, diplomat and writer

He took twenty-three proposed resolutions and condensed them into the seven major articles

contained in the Constitution.

 

 

*John Eidsmore, Christianity and the Constitution (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 1987), 220.

**http://www.partyof1776.net/p1776/fathers/Morris%20Gouverneur/quotes/contents....

***"The Star-Spangled Banner" was made the national anthem of the United States by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. 301), and signed by President Herbert Hoover.

 

Image from http://www.americansfortheconstitution.com/founding-fathers/

 

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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."*

97vmk

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

Image from http://www.jeffersonquotes.com/2012_04_01_archive.html

 

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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).

 

Image_nea_booklet

 

*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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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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Government by Written and Permanent Law: Stability vs Manipulation

The most significant correction that came with the American Revolution was that citizens themselves were recognized as sovereigns under God over government.  In the United States, people looked to creation's God for higher authority.  The First Amendment rejection of power, claimed by government authoritarians, kings, academians, clergy, etc., unleashed competition for religion, education and speech among the people that enabled America to become the greatest nation in world history.

 

William Ellery Channing wrote, "Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole man.  Appetite knowing no restraint, and poverty and suffering having no solace or hope, man would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws.  Virtue, duty, principle would be moved and scorned as unmeaning sounds.  A sordid self-interest would supplant every feeling, and man would become… a companion of brutes."*

 

"Government by written and permanent law" is not complicated.  No matter what one's religion, birthright or political view, the principles of the Declaration and universal absolutes shown here clearly distinguish right from wrong.  Stealing property that belongs to another is violating an unalienable right upon which liberty depends.  Adultery is a violation of the sacred obligations of marriage and family, creating stress and shortening life.  Dishonesty cheats the victim out of an unalienable, God-given right and undermines the reliable communication upon which commerce and community depend.  Deliberately stopping the heart of an unborn child is an horrific offense to the God of life as well as to society.

 

How then can the people protect themselves from cavalier authoritarians who manipulate changes in laws that enable radicals to dumb down students and, by extension, over time, manipulate society?

 

Historians Will and Ariel Durant pointed out Solon of Athens' recognition of the critical procedural choice that is directly related to limiting the options for political deception.  Do we insist upon "government by written and permanent law," or do we permit "government by incalculable and changeable decrees?"**

 

Impressions of Solon of Athens and other lawmakers from different cultures, with the focus on Moses and the Ten Commandments, are displayed on the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC.  Although Solon did not support his understanding with references to the Old Testament for reliable standards, he did recognize the ongoing dangers of deception by authoritarians who manage to dominate soft sciences.

 

"Government by written and permanent law" provides long-term stability.  Mankind is protected from short-lived popular fantasies and preserved from the inroads of political deception.  Secular elitists who insist that the American charter for the use of government power is a "living constitution" now artfully advance "government by incalculable and changeable decrees."  To retain respect for the family and liberty, the Constitution must be anchored to the political truth adopted by the Founding Fathers.

 

Thomas_jefferson_quote_from_karen

 

*William Ellery Channing, 1820, The Great Doctrine of Retribution: The Founders' Views of the Social Utility of Religion, cited by James H. Hutson in a presentation to the John Courtney Murray Seminar at the American Enterprise Institute, 1150 Seventeenth Street, NW, Washington, DC, June 6, 2000.

**Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, the Solon of Athens "government by incalculable and changeable decrees" Vol. II, The Life of Greece, 1939, 118.

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Finding the Place of Personal Faith in Government

The two classifications of religion, civic and personal, can live openly side by side.  The fact that Americans are free to share their personal religious convictions in public is indispensable.  Different beliefs can then be known, evaluated and decided upon by individuals.  Citizens are to be trusted with this freedom to know and choose.  This is to be respected.

 

The morality in one's personal faith and beliefs about education, government, politics and law are inseparable.  Personal faith is primary, and the nonsectarian American civic religion which is so vital to public education is the composite result.  The purity of America's civic religion that advances individual liberty is totally dependent on religious freedom, which in turn requires freedom from intimidation by government-established ideologues (educators, clergy, etc.).

 

The Founding Fathers were not only avid Creationists; they were members of many different church denominations, and the vast majority of them were, in their personal faith, born-again Christians.*

 

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature:

old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

2 Corinthians 5:17

 

For you have been "born again, not of corruptible seed,

but of incorruptible, by the word of God,

which liveth and abideth for ever."

1 Peter 1:23

 

The Founding Fathers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution came from eleven Christian groups that held different views about church ordinances, baptism, communion, church polity, discipline, worship and so on.  Alexander Hamilton said in an essay published soon after the Constitutional Convention adjourned: "For my own part, I sincerely esteem it a system, which, without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests."**  Madison expressed the same belief in The Federalist No. 37.

 

"Hast thou not known?  Hast thou not heard, [that] the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?  [There is] no searching of his understanding.  He giveth power to the faint; and to [them that have] no might he increaseth strength."

Isaiah 10:28-29

 

Colonial churches were clearly Biblical.  Schools such as Harvard and the local public grade schools were Bible-based and evangelical.  Noah Webster (1758-1843), a contributor to the Constitution and widely acknowledged as the most influential educator for over a hundred years, unabashedly proclaimed his conversion to Christ during a campus revival at Yale.***

 

Webster, who was skilled in six languages, published the American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828.  In 1833, he said, "It is extremely important to our nation, in a political as well as religious view, that all possible authority and influence should be given to the scriptures, for these furnish the best principles of civil liberty and the most effectual support of republican [meaning republic] government."

 

Public school students must be taught to understand and appreciate the importance of the all-encompassing concept of an impartial, nonsectarian God of creation's nature.  This is America's civic religion.  Inculcation, however, in the personal faith relating to worship and a denomination's specific religious doctrine must not be allowed to become a function of government education.

 

64167_338209979564091_133149703403454_1001074_1990975054_n

 

 

*http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html

**http://www.zeios.com/OurRepublic/Author/22

***http://www.yalestandard.com/tidbits/voices-of-yales-past/

Image from https://ioan17.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/where-you-ats/

 

Note:  In the Judeo-Christian Bible, we learn of the personal faith shared by many different Christian denominations:  "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved" (John 3:16-17).

 

Justice and grace meet at the cross of Calvary, where the price of sin was paid by Christ, Who loves us more than we love ourselves (see also Romans 5:8-9; 10:9-13 for more context of the phrase "born again").  When individuals acknowledge their need for forgiveness and humbly accept God's gift of salvation from the penalty of sin, a divine God-to-man cooperative becomes a reality.

 

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America's Civic Religion in Light of Congress

Even Congress has recognized that America has a civic religion. 

 

Presidents, as well as many other citizens, attended church services held on Sundays in the United States Capitol building.  President Thomas Jefferson, "during his whole administration, 1801-1809, was a most regular church attendant," documents James H. Hutson in Religion and the Founding of the American Republic.  Ministers of several Christian denominations conducted the services.  Honoring the nonsectarian God of creation in public and on government property is an important manifestation of civic faith.  In addition to attending church services in the Capitol building, Thomas Jefferson made significant financial contributions to that ministry.

 

"After the Civil War, from 1865-1868, the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., permitted the newly organized First Congregational Church of Washington to use its chambers for church and Sunday school services.  During that same time, specifically on June 13, 1866, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment which, according to some later judicial foolishness, forbids religious activities on public property."*

 

Addressing Congress, Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed:  "I anticipate nothing but suffering to the human race while the present systems of paganism, deism and atheism prevail in the world."**

 

English language Bibles had to be imported from England until 1782 when Congress authorized Robert Aitken to commence the first American printing of the Bible in English.   Aitken was also the official printer of the Journals of Congress for the United States Congress.  The following year, George Washington wrote a letter of commendation to Robert Aitken for his "Bible of the American Revolution."***

 

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."****

 

In 1954, Congress ordered that "a room with facilities for prayer and meditation…" be made available in the United States Capitol.  The seventh edition of The Capitol, an official publication of the United States Congress, describes the stained-glass window of the Congressional Prayer Room:

 

"The history that gives this room its inspirational lift is centered in the stained glass window.  George Washington kneeling in prayer… is the focus of the composition…  Behind Washington a prayer is etched:  'Preserve me, O God, for in Thee I put my trust,' the first verse of the sixteenth Psalm.  There are upper and lower medallions representing the two sides of the Great Seal of the United States.  On these are inscribed the phrases:  annuit coeptis--'God has favored our undertakings'--and novas order seclorum--'A new order of the ages is born.'  Under the upper medallion is the phrase from Lincoln's immortal Gettysburg Address, 'This Nation under God'…  The two lower corners of the window each show the Holy Scriptures, an open book and a candle, signifying the light from God's law, 'Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path' [Psalm 119:105]."*****

 

A primary duty of government officials and most certainly the duty of professors and teachers whose salaries are funded by taxpayers is to promote the liberating principles of the nonsectarian American civic creed that has been discussed in this and earlier blog posts.

 

1

 

 

*James H. Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1998, 84.  The entire book is available at lastingsuccessedu.org

**Benjamin Rush, Annals of Congress 1834, vol. I (September 25, 1789), 949-50.

***http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/

and

http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/colonial-bibles.html

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

*****http://www.wallbuilders.com/downloads/newsletter/H.Res.888.pdf

 

Image from http://www.prayerforceone.com/news_item.asp?NewsID=215

 

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America's Civic Religion in Light of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln understood that America has a civic religion.  As previously noted, this civic religion is different than the personal faith of individuals--their manner of worship, fellowship and practice.  Religion is embedded in the foundation of our government.

 

George Washington, so immersed in the entire process of the founding of this nation, praised the effectiveness of critics for insisting upon the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, and he complimented both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton for their work in writing the Federalist Papers saying,  they "have thrown new light upon the science of government; they have given the rights of man a full and fair discussion, and explained them in so clear and forcible a manner as cannot fail to make a lasting impression."

 

During the swearing-in ceremony for President Washington, he placed his hand on an open Bible at Genesis, chapter 49..  Of his own volition, he took the oath of office concluding with the precedent-setting foundation, "So help me God."  Immediately the new president bent down and kissed the sacred book (Peter A. Lillback with Jerry Newcombe, George Washington's Sacred Fire, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Dickson Press, 2006, 224).

 

In his Farewell Address of 1796, Washington reminded Americans that:  "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.  In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.  The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.  A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.  Let it simply be asked:  Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?  And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.  Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."*

 

Contemporary liberals insist that the Declaration of Independence has no relevance to the Constitution.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  That was the argument used by Stephen A. Douglas in the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates.  Douglas, who practiced constitutional revisionism, rejected Abraham Lincoln's insistence that moral judgment applies to situations calling for decision.  Lincoln quoted from the Declaration of Independence to affirm the moral predicate of constitutional law.

 

The following is from Lincoln's Peoria speech, October 16, 1854:  "I have quoted so much [of the Declaration] at this time to show that according to our ancient faith, the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.  Now the relation of masters and slaves is, pro tanto, a total violation of this principle.  The master not only governs the slave without his consent:  but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those he prescribes for himself.  Allow all the governed an equal voice in their government, and that, and that only, is self-government."  Harry V. Jaffa, reviewing Lincoln's speech, added, "Aristotle, in his only reference to piety in the Nicomachean Ethics, says that virtue requires us to honor truth before our friends.  That is because we would not otherwise be worth having as friends."**

 

"I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man."

Abraham Lincoln

 

Presidents-day

 

 

*George Washington, Farewell Address, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=15

**Harry V. Jaffa, "In Defense of Political Philosophy," National Review, January 22, 1982, http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/6068362/defense-political-philosophy

 

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America's Civic Religion in Light of Its Documents

America has a civic religion.  In 1952, Justice William O. Douglas wrote, "We are a religious people and our institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."*  Note that this is different from the personal faith of individuals--their manner of worship, fellowship and practice.  This is civic religion--religion embedded in our government.

 

The natural-law philosophy, our civic religion foundational to the American constitution, is in direct conflict with secular law.  An example of this would be the secular law of open-mindedness required of teachers by Professor John Dewey (John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education Transition, New York: Harper and Row, 1958, 310).  It blindsides students to the horrific differences between good and evil and causes them to go along with the pagan laws of man contrived by liberal judges, legislators and educators.

 

The Declaration of Independence (1776), the Articles of Confederation (drafted 1777, ratified 1781) and the Constitution (ratified 1788) have been classified as the most important American charters.  Collectively they received a total of 143 signatures from 118 people.  By their affirmations, these individuals represented themselves to be believers in the providence of God, and they did so at the risk of being hung by British soldiers.

 

In a letter from Benjamin Rush to John Adams, Rush says of that fateful day when the Declaration of Independence was signed, "Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants?  The silence and the gloom of the morning were interrupted, I well recollect, only for a moment by Colonel [Benjamin] Harrison of Virginia, who said to Mr. [Elbridge] Gerry at the table:  'I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing.  From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.'  This speech procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the solemnity with which the whole business was conducted…"**  Out of the 56 signers of the Declaration, 29 held seminary degrees.***

 

Professor Donald S. Lutz of the University of Houston describes a ten-year study during which he and others assembled the writings and deliberations of the American Founding Fathers.****  The study brought into focus important sources that were used when determining priorities for the American constitution.  Aside from quotations from the Bible, the writings of Montesquieu, Blackstone and Locke were the sources relied upon most by the Founding Fathers.

 

Montesquieu's best-known work was The Spirit of Laws.  He emphasized the importance of separating personnel and duties for the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government.  The purpose of this separation of power was to prevent abuse of the people's rights as sovereigns over government (Isaiah 33:22; Jeremiah 17).  Blackstone emphasized the Law of Nature (man's nature both before and after the fall) and Revealed Law (Scripture).  His Commentaries on the Common Law of England was especially practical for the new nation.  Locke,  born into a Puritan family and son of a lawyer, provided the "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" and two treatises "On Civil Government."  His "life, liberty, or property" phrase is in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

 

The chief source for the Founding Fathers' understanding was the Bible.  It was cited three times more often than were these three men combined.  Thirty-four percent of all ideas referred to by the constitutional delegates came directly from the Old and New Testament books.  Furthermore, 60 percent of the references to opinions of Montesquieu, Blackstone and Locke were drawn from the Bible.  The most frequently quoted book was the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy.

 

"The fundamental basis of this Nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount.  The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul.  I don't think we emphasize that enough these days."*****

Harry S. Truman

 

Governments and authoritarians are not the source of man's rights.  Government is but a tool that should be used to protect man's right to worship creation's God.  This impartial Creator of life ordained and established the unalienable human rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence that demand representative governments to follow the rule of established law, not the arbitrary rule of man.  Legislators, administrators and judges who use laws (the power of government) to establish religious, ideological or employee union monopolies are fascistic.****** 

 

 

"The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.  I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God."*******

John Adams

 

Backoftwo

 

 

*Zorach v. Clauson, Docket 431, citation 343 US 306, 1952.

**http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/rushadams.html

***http://rodchaney2012.org/2012/02/11/a-message-from-rod/

****Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1988).

*****http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13707#axzz1t9qVQzTQ

******Fascism is a word used to identify the enemies of representative governments and governments limited for the protection of the people's freedom to be informed and to choose.

*******http://christianity.about.com/od/independenceday/a/foundingfathers.htm

 

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Old European Secular Philosophy vs Family

Karl Marx attacked the family.  He appealed to academia and others for the "abolition of the family."  "The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of parent and child" is "disgusting."*

 

Dr. John Dewey, a proponent of teacher employment guarantees at taxpayer expense, is the acknowledged father of modern-day public education.  He was an admirer of Margaret Sanger, Humanist of the Year in 1967 and the founder of Planned Parenthood.  Sanger also founded the publication The Woman Rebel, whose slogan was "No Gods! No Masters!"  Her first edition denounced marriage as a "degenerate institution" and sexual modesty as "obscene prudery" (George Grant, Legacy of Planned Parenthood, Wolgemuth & Hyatt Publishers, Inc).

 

Judith Stacey, a highly regarded member of the public school primary and secondary education faculty at the University of California (Davis campus), declared:  "The 'family' is not here to stay.  All democratic people, whatever their kinship preferences, should work to hasten its demise" ("Rights and Rites," The Washington Times, March 29 1993). Since the Supreme Court decision Everson v. Board of Education in 1947, tenured radical teachers have sought to take God out of education and ultimately turn the tide of education against the family.  

 

It is the collective political power granted to monopoly teacher unions and the establishment of tenure laws that empower the enemies of the family, human dignity, and self-government.  Tenured secular authoritarians have achieved control of curriculum used in the soft sciences and the study of law taught in government schools.  The weapons they use to enforce what must be taught include the ridicule and denigration of the reputation of anyone who dares to challenge leftist political correctness.  The use of the word "science" is code for their atheistic human origins, meaning and purpose; "diversity" is code for demanding the approval of evil life practices; and "social justice" is code for using government power to force the transfer of wealth from the thrifty to their own block of voters. 

 

"These [atheist] teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist [atheistic] values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the education level--preschool, daycare or large state university.  The classroom must and will become an area of conflict between the old and the new--the rotting corpse of Christianity" (The Humanist, January/February, 1983).

 

The change in the American family since the 1947 Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education, teacher unionization and tenure law has led to a colossal increase in family breakdown (See April 6 2012 blog entitled "Public Education Shuns Reality").

 

 

Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible

are so interwoven and intertwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally, I do not mean figuratively, but literally impossible for us to figure what the loss would be if these teachings were removed.  We would lose all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals;

all the standards toward which we, with more or less resolution,

strive to raise ourselves.**

Theodore Roosevelt

Teddy_roosevelt_and_family

President Theodore Roosevelt and Family

1903

 

 

*Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848, http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html

**http://www.prayerforceone.com/hailtothechief.asp

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